madison zuñiga – Sculpting words

Four recently published articles offer unique insight into how work in the writing center extends beyond traditional support for academic essays. During my years as a writing consultant, I’ve always been most interested in the alternative perspectives and strategies that can be applied within the writing center environment.

3. Lizzie Hutton’s “There is no rubric for this”: creative writers’ bids for writing center support.”

As someone embedded in both the fields of creative writing and writing center work, I found much valuable affirmation and information raised in this article. While I never balked at the thought of facing creative writing assignments in our writing studio, I realized that I’d never received or even observed creative writing-specific training in my three years of writing center work. As we served a small, private, liberal arts institution, we always were more attentive to the STEM papers that came our way, even though our campus had begun developing a rich community of creative writers. Without intentional awareness about the creative writer and their work, this developing community might be undermined in terms of individualized, reliable, and authentic support.   

In her article, Hutton firmly agrees that “writing center work is essentially creative” because “writing center practitioners are already adept at the highly collaborative, responsive, improvisatory, peer-feedback models that also structure many workshop-based creative writing courses.” Though writing centers tend to boast the most interdisciplinary, versatile, and high-achieving students as consultants, Hutton highlights the lack of training and research that would allow these consultants to refine and supplement their approach toward creative writing. As with any discipline, creative writers will require support particular to their craft, but Hutton points out that their “actual needs and values” are deeply understudied. 

Hutton’s research revealed that creative writers overwhelmingly sought holistic improvement of their content, in contrast with a much higher percentage of corrective support requested for non-creative writing assignments. She relates this to the phenomena where creative writers explained that “there is no rubric” for their work, causing for their writing center experiences to be far more malleable in intention and broad in scope, seeking authentic interest in their work. This leads Hutton to the conclusion that, when they seek out support from a writing center, creative writers “present no such Burkean parlor” (in reference to Kenneth Burke’s concept of the ‘unending conversation’ in scholarship). Instead, creative writers prefer personal, individual, and evaluative responses from consultants.

For consultants who hesitate at such feedback requested of them, Hutton advises that they familiarize themselves with the “foundational characteristics” of creative writing as a field rather than a genre and the process a creative writer endures. Additionally, consultants can become comfortable with articulating their genuine reactions to the creative piece, in terms of emotion, theme, and association, as this feedback will address the creative writer’s concern regarding honest interest.

At the end of her article, Hutton identifies paths for future research on this topic. Due to the burgeoning interest in and scaffolding for creative writing at Concordia University Irvine, I would recommend our Writing Studio as a fruitful environment in which to expand upon Hutton’s findings.

Hutton, L. (2023). “There is no rubric for this”: creative writers’ bids for writing center support. Praxis: A Writing Center Journal.