By Fiona McGaraghan
Menlo-Atherton High School

“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.” 

Almost every high schooler recognizes this iconic opening line from the novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” and many could write a great essay incorporating it. However, few could write a line like it. For how much school systems emphasize the analysis of creative works, they are remarkably apathetic towards actually teaching creative writing. Creative writing is equally as important as traditional writing and requiring creative writing would add considerable value to students’ education.

 While many schools offer creative writing courses, they are elective courses–treated like a fun add-on to education and not a core discipline. This attitude ignores the fact that creative writing is an integral skill for many jobs, including ones where writing is primarily fact-based.

“Every writer, even if you’re a nonfiction writer, you have some elements within you that want to be creative,” says Piedmont Mass Communications Chair Joe Dennis. “I think creative writing has a strong impact in journalistic writing and nonfiction writing… When I was in college I was really close friends with a very excellent creative writer and she ended up taking a journalism class with me. Her influence in that class was so important because she helped people be more visual in their words and painting a better picture for people who were really well trained in writing facts… [she] really did a great job of embellishing the stories to make them come to life.”

The immersion in literature that a creative writing class offers gives students a new perspective on writing. “It’s experiential learning, and that’s something that I feel like a lot of people would benefit from,” says Madeline Willcocks-Hodlick, who took creative writing as a sophomore at The New School of Atlanta. 

Rose Klingsporn, a rising sophomore at Berklee College of Music who took creative writing in her senior year of high school, adds: “you’re doing a lot of reading of creative writing, and therefore you’re doing a lot of interpretation of creative writing. And that really helps in terms of general media literacy… a lot of English class is, like: these are the characters’ motivations. This is the character’s feelings. This is why they’re doing these things in the universe of the story. Creative writing is more [from] a technical perspective: why does this work? What technique are they using to make this poem good?” 

Getting hands-on experiences is valuable for students’ academic growth as well as their confidence in applying their skills outside the classroom. Klingsporn explains, “I go to music school. I’m talking about art all the time, and it helps to have those tools where I’m able to engage with art on a critical and technical level.” 

While not everyone has the opportunity to directly apply creative writing skills to their jobs, they can still apply in everyday life. Klingsporn says, “Going into that class, I was like, I don’t really like poetry… Now I write poems for fun sometimes, which I never used to do.” 

Writing in free time can boost vocabulary, critical thinking and empathy. An English class that encourages students to write outside of class is valuable to students’ personal and professional life, but also to their academic success. While discussing the idea of creative writing as a core class, Willcocks-Hodlick predicted that, in addition to promoting success in English,  “Work for other classes would be higher quality, too, because people would fall into the norm of kind of forging their own path and being creative with every process.”

Creative writing class gives students the chance to see academia from a new perspective. At the prospect of adding Creative Writing as a core English class, Klingsporn lights up: “[It would give] students a different way to engage with writing,” she says, “and hopefully foster some creative spirits in kids, because we need more of that.”