Q: What happens when creative writing collides with the community?
A: A beautiful explosion that rains down the amalgamation of teenaged minds and words onto the doorsteps of creative recovery.
When the opportunity to teach creative writing to the wonderful teens of Avalon High School came knocking, I didn’t hesitate to swing the door wide open. I jumped at the chance to unleash on their curious minds the creative literary tools that I accumulated throughout my learning years (to some degree, I’m still learning). I excitedly dove into my writing toolbox to conceptualize what the journey could look like for them. And, because it has always been my dream to offer creative writing classes for the community, seeing my desires come to fruition has left me elated since we began a few weeks back.
The journey, I imagine, has yet to even begin.
I’m a firm believer that creative writing is more than just delicately dotting “I’s” and collaboratively crossing “T’s”. It’s more than properly perfecting verb and noun agreements. It goes beyond fusing comma spliced sentences. And it dives a little deeper than conjugating words to convey proper mood. Creative writing is a holistic endeavor. And, in this endeavor toward harnessing our creative side, the journey actually dives into a rediscovery of what once was lost. I operate under the conviction that we were all once more creative than we are. The fact that we were created by something or someone leads me to believe that we possess hints of creativity. Unfortunately, through the course of life and our maturation toward adulthood, our creativeness has subsided into the depth of our own black holes and simply hibernates until we wake it up.
Our goal then is to awaken our creative beasts.
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