Stop Grading Your Creative Writing: Write a Story with a Recovering English Teacher
Introduction
I believe there are two types of creative writers reading this.
You’re engaging in creative writing for the joy of it. You might show it to friends and family, or you might not. I love that.
You’re engaging in creative writing for the joy of it, and you hope to take your writing to the professional level one day. I love that too. Whichever kind of creative writer you are, this applies to you.
The Problem with Grading
We are conditioned to expect a grade or score for our work, especially written work. It started in school. We completed assignments, and our teacher gave our work a grade. A good grade meant that you succeeded. A bad grade meant that you…failed. (I don’t even like to say ‘failed.’ It’s too final.)
For some of us, being graded continued in our professional lives. When I became a teacher, two things happened. First, I became the person assigning grades to students’ written work. It’s hard to turn off the critical mind when part of your job is to be critical. Second, I continued to be evaluated and graded on my teaching performance. The system to evaluate teachers in my parish used a scale of 1-5, so it was easy to translate the number into a letter grade, too.
I used a rubric to grade student essays and short answers. I was evaluated with a rubric on my teaching performance. I have a negative association with the word ‘rubric,’ which probably isn’t fair, but I don’t like it. A rubric feels like someone else’s expectation being imposed on me. It feels limiting. Some of the rubrics I was required to use on student writing were so detailed and specific that I worried I would forget some of the requirements with the rubric right in front of me. Being graded or assigning grades easily translates into our creative writing. How do we know if our writing or work is good? Someone grades it.
How Grading Shows Up in Our Creative Writing
Maybe your profession doesn’t use a grading or scoring system, but I bet you know if your report or proposal was acceptable or not. Maybe the grade is positive or negative feedback from the higher-ups or a straight-up rejection of your work. They may not assign you a grade, but they give you approval or disapproval. You know if you succeeded or…failed. (I still don’t like saying ‘you failed.’)
We are so conditioned—especially high-achieving people in high-pressure jobs—to seek good grades, and that bleeds into our creative writing life.
Before we look at what grading yourself might look like, I want to acknowledge that there is a time to evaluate your writing and edit your words. You would not want to send a novel manuscript to a literary agent without correcting spelling, punctuation, and other storytelling elements, but most of us start grading ourselves from the first word on the page. Editing, not grading, should come much later in the writing process.
Finding Your Own Creative Path
How does grading show up in our creative writing lives?
A voice in your head points out every mistake, weak sentence, and misplaced word.
Constantly rewriting the same sentence or paragraph before moving forward, believing it must be perfect immediately.
Avoiding writing certain ideas or themes because you worry they won’t be “good enough” or will be judged harshly.
Delaying writing because of the anxiety and pressure to produce something “perfect” from the outset.
Strictly following writing rules or guidelines to the point where it stifles your creativity and unique voice.
Constantly critiquing your writing with harsh, discouraging thoughts like “This is terrible” or “I’ll never be good enough.”
Feeling like a fraud and doubting your abilities, regardless of your achievements or positive feedback from others.
Frequently starting new projects but abandoning them midway due to self-doubt or the feeling that they aren’t good enough.
There is no rubric for your creative writing. If you have one, then you’re not doing creative writing. You’re writing something to fit the specifications that someone already established.
If you find that you’re grading your work, whether consciously pointing out flaws or unconsciously assigning success or failure to your writing, I want you to ask yourself this question:
Who is grading this?
We’re not talking about an assignment for your boss. We’re talking about your personal creative writing. Who is grading it? You. Who are you responsible to? You.
You set the rules. You make the rubric. The earlier you are in the writing process, the fewer rules there should be. A first draft should have no rules. Nothing should be off limits.
Practical Tips to Embrace Creativity
Criticism, grading, and rubrics are the enemy of a creative mind. The moment you impose a rubric or grading scale on your writing, ideas and pathways close up. It’s like a rockslide cutting you off from an entire mountain range of beauty.
What can you do?
Listen to songs that make you feel rebellious. Make a playlist, because creativity is a wonderful way to embrace and showcase your rebellious spirit.. Two suggestions to get you started: “All I Know So Far” by Pink and “Before He Cheats” by Carrie Underwood.
Get into nature. Touch grass. Leave rules behind.
Break a rule on purpose. Whatever you think you’re doing wrong in your writing, do it harder. You don’t have to keep it that way, but see what it’s like. Did the world crumble because you left a word misspelled (for now)?
Free write. Start writing and don’t stop until you get all the ideas out. Don’t stop to fix things. Don’t stop to think. Write until the idea is out of you, then, later, you can edit it.
The definition of Creative Writing is: writing, typically fiction or poetry, which displays imagination or invention. Imagination or invention can’t happen if we’re too busy pointing out the mistakes and assigning a score to our writing.
For more guidance on creative writing and the creative writing life, check out the creative writing course I created with Storybold Studios.
