Within the writing community the writing process is something that is looked at through narrow eyes.

Many articles have discussed the writing process, which is nothing new. They discuss the drafting, the prewriting, writing, reading, editin g, and finalizing over and over again always missing an important part of the pr ocess. (Lager, Perl, and Sontag) The writing process is often described as this direction-type idea and if you follow all the rules you will have the desired ou tcome. This is not as simple of a concept as everyone has made it sound and many authors have discussed all types of writing processes. Such as Stephen King in his piece, What Writing Is, where he talks about how he thinks of his own writin g process known as telepathy. Or Kent Haruf in his writing, To See Your Story Cl early, Start by Pulling the Wool over Your Own Eyes who describes in great detai l what is surrounding him while he writes, where he goes to produce his best wri ting, and even the type of things he does while writing (putting on a blindfold) . Everyone talks about their writing process and it shows how different they tru ly can be, but they always look over this one little aspect: Creativity. There is a fine line between creative and completely outlandish, and when no one has a clear definition of what creativity is it starts getting thrown around very loosely. According to most dictionaries creativity is defined as, the state or quality of being creative and then creative is defined as having the quality or power to create. (dictionary.com) So thanks dictionaries, you really didnt define anything at all. Along with the dictionaries is Robert Epstein in his article, Defining Creativit y, he starts explaining how a behavior is creative when its variables are unknown and how creativity is put in this natural category thus not being able to define it. (Epstein, p. 65) His ideas on variables not being known are very helpful whe n defining what I believe creativity is because it brings up the conflict that c reativity is having the ability to be complex and having limitless ideas and no boundaries making the variables unknown like Epstein had stated. But then, he rant s about how it cannot be defined because it is a natural category so he really doe s not make his definition of creativity any clearer. For me, creativity can be defined. And pieces of work whether it is a painting, sculpture, writing, or other forms of art can be clearly determined if it is cre ative or not. My definition of creativity in writing is; a subjective piece that does something different than expected, it is personal to you but also personal to the reader, and having the ability to be complex with combining multiple ide as making variables unknown and limitless (Epstein). Along with defining creativ ity you have to bring up that when one is judging the creativity of something it cannot be based on whether or not you like it, but if it fits the criteria defi ned previously. The reason I have given this definition of creativity is because today in writin g courses and English classes teachers have focused more on the writing process instead of creativity. Most of the time the teacher barely mentions creativity i n discussing an upcoming paper, and that makes students focus on the basics; how many paragraphs, how many sources, how many words, having an introduction, body , and conclusion, discussing main points, etc. This is a major problem because t he main focus of writing/English as a whole is the creativity in it and the abil ity to express something new and different, as how it is relevant to you. It sho uld not be about following steps, checking off things on a rubric, or how you go about writing. Writing should be about being, what I stated, creative is. Amazi ng Paragraph Many authors that I have previously stated do not even mention creativity in the ir works, which was very interesting to me coming from a school that is focused on the fine arts and deeply involved in creativity. I noticed while taking a pol l from students about whether or not their schools English and Writing classes f ocused on writing process or creativity, that 72% of the kids said that is was a ll about criteria and fitting the criteria, 18% stated that they thought it was a mix of both, and 10% of the students said it was focused more on creativity, a nd those students who focused more on creativity are in a wide variety of majors . (state where you get the statics from) Some of them are engineers, some our jo urnalism majors, some were trying to be a doctor, and some were simply business

majors; which shows how creativity broadens the mind in more aspects than just w riting. So when I read all these articles about the writing process and the form ula for a good paper, or when I sit in a class where the professor is telling th e students that they need an introduction, body, conclusion, 2500 words, 5 pages , and 10 sources I want to scream, That is not what helps students reach their fu ll potential! to show anger blod your statement. I have had incredible teachers through out my schooling, ones who have taught me a lot of things that I would need for the read world such as how to calculate c ompound interest or how much I need to exercise and eat in a day to maintain a h ealthy weight but some teachers have taught me things without even knowing they were teaching it to me. For example John Boe writes about his favorite teacher i n his article, From the Editor: My Best Teacher, which with some irony isnt even a teacher but his mother. He talks about the rules his mother gave him and the n umber one rule was, Dont worry about your grades, and dont be the first one home fr om a party (Boe, 256). Focusing on creativity and not worrying about the formal i ssue [grades] helps students branch out to new things [unassigned reading] and g ives an intrinsic motivation to the student helping create better papers. Which is where the argument of what a good paper is comes up. good choice of source ma kes a great point Writing itself is something that is very unique to the individual, some people l ove papers that seem to relate exactly to them, some like papers that are factua l and leave personality out of it, so what is a good, well-written paper? Having strategic awareness is something that is discussed in many papers and making su re teachers are teaching strategies and helping students be strategic in the ways in which they approach a task (Langer, 842). So how in the world are these formu laic and strategic strategies combining all the different styles of writing? Its not. This idea that I will call Plugging and Chugging, where you plug in your info rmation into a formula then it chugs out the right answer, is not what makes wri ting good. This makes the papers all the same and boring as hell to read, this a ctually makes them completely opposite of what well-written writing is. Creativity in writing on the other hand benefits students in multiple ways, and if teachers were to focus more on creativity instead of the writing process not only would students want to write, it helps the students build problem solving s kills, teaches them to be more complex, it makes their writing more unique makin g it more successful, and it also teaches them to take risks. Once writing is focused on creativity the change within the students is remarkab le. Within a few weeks, it was easy to see not only the changes in the students ow n writing, but also in their attitudes toward writing (Steinberg, 35). Is a comme nt that was stated by Michael Steinberg when talking about his involvement in, An experimental course requiring students to read and respond to a variety of pers onal essays, to write their own essays, and to keep a weekly response journal to the readings, their writing, and the course itself (Steinberg, 35). This helps s how that when it isnt about a grade, or a rubric students get more involved and h ave a desire to write. For myself, I have noticed that being involved and in-touch with my creative sid e I have incredible problem solving skills. Thinking creatively is about being a ble to see, not just one angle of an idea/subject, but multiple sides and being complex with your ideas and having limitless directions in which the subject cou ld be taken. So the results of my original poll about creativity in classrooms p roves that once exposed to creativity you can think on so many levels that your options for anything can be limitless. Which is why the fact that they are in ma ny different majors is intriguing to me. Risk taking is also gained through the exposure of creativity. Within the writin g community taking risks is a minefield (Johns, 515). Once you have broken a rul e there are many negative and positive consequences that could happen. Part of w riting a good creative paper is taking those risks, bending the rules, testing t he limits. Not only does this benefit your writing skills but it also helps you gain the skill for out of the classroom type situations. Taking risks makes your writing unique, making yourself unique, building character, and not being cookie cutter (Johns 515).

Lastly, bringing creativity involves a whole new level of complexity. Having the ability to tie scenarios, thoughts, images, and words all into one form is a ve ry difficult and sometimes in the eyes of pessimists, impossible. With creativit y being instilled in students they learn to do this with ease just from involvin g themselves as a whole and really diving into the writing that is for them. It brings back the ideas of gaining problem solving skills and that is a worldwide skill. Many people will bring up arguments about creativity in writing classes. They ca n say that systematic writing teaches the basics and students learn to build off that, but in reality it should be the opposite. The idea of teaching kids to be all out of control and all types of crazy and then being able to pull it all to gether and create a paper that makes sense is brilliant. It is easier to be give n a box and fill it up, then to have all of these items you want in the box and then trying to find one worth enough to hold it all. Great use of a metaphor Another argument is that if we focus more on the writing process and everyone do es it all in the same format it makes it easier to navigate through all papers a nd people are able to find information more quickly because it is all in the sam e place as every other paper. This may be true, but it takes away the interest a nd the fun in finding new information in new pieces of work. Some people would say that if we focus more on creativity students wont be learni ng anything really they will always just be making no sense at all and saying it is creative to validate that it isnt just junk. This is complete nonsense, student s will always, bull-shit, for lack of a better word. This is nothing new and teache rs who are focused on teaching it correctly will know the difference between a c reative paper and a paper that was written the night before. I am a student who is going to school to be a teacher, and so I know both parts of this argument. I want to be a teacher who instills in my students that creati vity is what matters not if you fit the criteria and how you went about doing it . I want to inspire my students to be writers not people who can write. Ive had a ll kinds of teachers; the strict one, the laid back one, the artsy one, the weir d one, the one who youre not sure is even certified to teach, and the one that in spires you and makes you who you are suppose to be. Those ones, are the teachers that I remember the most, and those teachers who encouraged me to go out on a w him and break the rules, do something different, and pushed me to my limits were the teachers who taught me all about creativity and they are the ones that I am forever thankful to. Creativity is a powerful thing, and if focused on more when in class we could be doing great things. It is not about getting a good grade; it is about doing som ething new and different. There are many pros and cons with doing this, but I be lieve that the pros outweigh the rest of the negative. So in theory, if creativi ty is focused more on (we are) I found this wording confusing not only creating better writers, we are helping create better people.