Creative Writing Professor

A person’s creativity grows inside them like a plant. The job of a Creative Writing Professor, therefore, is to water the seeds inside aspiring Writers, then fertilize the seedlings like a grammatically correct Gardener as they sprout, grow, and blossom.

Employed by colleges and universities, Creative Writing Professors do their figurative gardening inside classrooms, where they help students improve their writing — poetry, fiction, and nonfiction — as a sort of literary Coach.

As a Creative Writing Professor, like other Professors, you teach lessons, assign homework and reading, and grade student work. Your classroom is unique, however, because it features a workshop setup instead of a lecture format.

The hallmark of most creative writing programs, a “writing workshop” is a roundtable conversation about student work. It usually opens with a short lesson on a focused writing topic, such as tone, character, or diction, then continues with group conferencing. Rather than giving your students tests and worksheets, you ask them to author original works, including poems, stories, and essays, which the class then reads and discusses — focusing on the Authors ’ strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities — so the students can revise and rewrite them. Through peer conferencing and group editing, the goal is to help students hone their craft while also teaching them the nuts and bolts of the writing process.

In fact, the process is what it’s all about: Because good writing is subjective, you don’t grade students’ creativity or craft; instead, you take a “practice makes perfect” approach to grading their effort and improvement. (In gardening parlance: It’s not how pretty the flower is; it’s how high it grows!)