Nellie Konopka ’16: Episcopal’s Creative Writing Club provides students with the opportunity to engage in creative writing in an environment that seeks to eliminate the stress and pressure that can result from constantly focusing on grades, obligations, and the expectations of others. The Creative Writing Club aims to let students write what they feel without having to be concerned about the academic merit of their compositions. Instead, students are encouraged to experiment with new approaches to writing and find their own voice. The club gives students who are enthusiastic about writing but may not otherwise have the time to explore their talents an opportunity during Activity Block to be productive and work on improving their writing. The expectation of the club is that writers will initially use meetings to craft small, less ambitious pieces and then perhaps move on to larger, more challenging assignments as their confidence and inspiration grow. The hope is that working together in the company of other motivated writers will kick-start the creative process for club members and motivate them to push themselves to become more accomplished writers.
Chris McCreary, the Howard E. Morgan Chair of Creative Writing and faculty advisor to the Creative Writing Club, said that everyone is eligible and welcome to join the club. “This club is not exclusively for serious writers; rather it is for people who have a desire to write and to grow as writers through experimentation and creativity,” stated McCreary. McCreary hopes that writers will enjoy themselves, but also that they will gain inspiration from the club. The club is based on the concept that being around other writers and seeing their creativity and productivity can make finding one’s own inspiration less difficult and intimidating.
Chris Whalen ’14, a three-year member of the club, said he enjoys the Creative Writing Club because of “the spontaneity and energy of it all. We all have fun together and it’s different from the average school setting.” As Whalen points out, the club is a pressure free place where writers can take risks and learn from their mistakes. No one is judged for trying, and potentially “failing.” In fact, in the club there is no “failing” because the club places a high value on the process of trial and error. The process of writing creatively and freely is viewed to be just as important as the finished product.
Furthermore, the club’s “no stress” atmosphere is designed to let writers go out on an artistic limb occasionally, often with positive results. In keeping with this philosophy, there are no formal obligations related to the club, so a writer could come one day and miss the next two meetings and still be welcome. Paige Dunlap ’14, who has been attending club meetings since her freshman year, explained, “Most of our projects don’t extend over a long period of time, so you can just come once to try it out and have something finished by the end of the period.”
The Creative Writing Club uses fun, creative exercises to encourage students to try new writing styles. For example, one popular club activity is Newspaper Blackout Poems. For this assignment, writers take a newspaper clipping and draw over the majority of the text, leaving only a few seemingly random words to manipulate into a poem.
The dynamic of the Creative Writing Club is fast-paced and expressive. Members of the Club are always looking for new writers, even if they initially only come to one meeting. All who like to write, or even those who think they might like to write, should come to Episcopal’s Creative Writing Club to write a great poem or short story and discover a new talent they never knew they had.
The Episcopal Academy