Happy Halloween! In our last post for October, senior Anna Ravenelle discusses her experiences with the creative writing program within the English department. For her and for many others, creative writing classes provide an opportunity to explore the arts while earning credit and getting feedback from esteemed authors and poets.
By: Anna Ravenelle '17
As an English major, I’ve known for a long time that I’ve wanted to work in the publishing field or even write professionally. At Cornell, I’ve channeled that into a course-load full of English classes, but most prominently, as many creative writing courses as possible. Arts and Sciences offers three levels of creative writing courses: the introductory class, a 2000-level, instructs in both narrative and verse writing, while intermediate (3000-level) and advanced (4000-level) courses split off into two tracks for aspiring novelists and poets. Even if you’re just curious about writing creatively, however, taking ENGL 2810 can still be a great addition to a semester’s schedule—once you finish up those First-year Writing Seminar requirements!
Each section of creative writing differs depending not only on the instructor, but on your fellow classmates. The courses are set up in a seminar format where you have an assigned workshop day where your work will be discussed by the rest of the class. Each new story or poem from a classmate brings something new to the table and, because of this, I often find myself learning just as much about writing from my fellow classmates’ collective knowledge as I do from my professor. Which professor instructs your section can also make the class an entirely different experience – some professors give broad, open-ended prompts (or no prompts at all!) while others give more specific ones to inspire your writing. No matter, the entire creative writing faculty are well-respected and published in the field and can help shape your writing, whether you’re taking the class to complete an elective requirement or writing to reach your career goals. Beyond teaching writing semantics, creative writing workshops also foster important, resumé-worthy skills: how to give (and take) constructive feedback, how to make your voice heard in a group conversation, and how to adjust to a shifting workload—some nights a classmate’s story will be six pages, while others’ stories will be three times that length. Most importantly for me, though, creative writing classes can offer an outlet for creative energies that many students (like myself) find difficult to make time for otherwise. When you have two prelims the next week, it can be hard justifying taking the time to paint or play music, but writing for class can have the same cathartic effect while also helping cross something off your to-do list.
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