Keywords: Theory

Bishop, Wendy and David Starkey. Keywords in Creative Writing. Longan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 2006. Print.

Bishop and Starkey offer a gentle, commonsense apology for theory to CW folk who are resistant. This more or less answers some of my questions from last post (how to address these issues to this audience?) by way of demonstration. I'll quote at length without comment:

Theory is political, particularly in the hierarchies of English departments where many writers now house themselves. To feel angry about or indifferent to theory, to lack a bit of theory knowledge and theory talk is to make oneself vulnerable and defensive. To do the reverse is to participate in what is—for now—the lingua franca of these departments.

Theory is rhetorical and there are any number of genre arguments in contemporary writing programs; knowing which genres have currency for which reasons can matter...//

Theory is practical and performative...for there are any number of moments...when writers have a need to articulate their practices, their beliefs, their field, their genre, and so on...

Practice into theory and theory into practice is the normal ebb and flow of excellent teaching. Teachers evaluate student texts and need to have understandings of/ability to articulate their theories of reading, their values and beliefs, their judgments...

Theory is a tool for thinking and innovation. There is no experimentation without convention. There is nothing to rebel against without a community to approach or retreat from. Without theories of writing and writers, there are no genre innovations, movements, schools of writing...

Theory can be serious but theory can also be play when a writer is not on the run, on the defensive...Theory is language and language is the grubstake of writing. (175-176)

As for the rest of the book, I didn't draw much from it. A nice discussion of identity politics, which I may want to revisit at a later date. So I guess this book counts as its own lead.