Creative Writing
Too much emphasis on subjective states, on memories, on feelings, even on thoughts
Leslie Epstein, Director
Graduate Creative Writing Program
Boston University

Boston University
College of Arts and Sciences
236 Bay State Road
Boston, Massachusetts 02215
Department of English
November 23, 2000

Will Fitzhugh
The Concord Review
National Writing Board
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776

Dear Mr. Fitzhugh,

I have been teaching creative writing for over two decades at Boston University and before that led workshops in fiction and composition at
Queens College. Over that time I've watched as the crisis in the ability to write-to think, to plan, to organize, to punctuate, to feel the rhythms of language, to engage one's imagination, even to see and hear on the page-deepened to the point of what I fear is no return.

Even my graduate students at perhaps the best writing program in the country have to be shown how to use semi-colons and avoid echoes and
indent for new speakers and the rest. And by the time they reach me, or for that matter their undergraduate instructors, it is probably too late. The job has to be done earlier.

That is why I am so impressed with your efforts with the National Writing Board. I have read the essays in The Concord Review; those students are well on the way to having been saved. I don't think there is much difference between what goes on in the heads of those in my fiction workshops and the brains of the young writers who produced these essays. There is, in my view, far too much emphasis on subjective states, on memories, on feelings, even on thoughts, in the writing of fiction. If anything, the kind of hard-edged logic at work in the Concord Review essays stands as a corrective to the easy feeling that spills over all too much fiction. These young students need encouragement, support, praise. They need to know that what they are writing is appreciated and that it matters.

All of this, and a great deal more, the National Writing Board has already accomplished. I hope it will prosper so that its effort can reach more young people; indeed I would hope that it can eventually stand as a goal and model for all.

Sincerely,
Leslie Epstein, Director
Graduate Creative Writing Program
Boston University

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Will Fitzhugh
The Concord Review
National Writing Board
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, MA 01776 USA
http://www.tcr.org
email: fitzhugh@tcr.org
(800) 331-5007