WHY CREATIVE WRITING?
“If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.”
― George Orwell
People who lack reading and writing skills have difficulty expressing who they are. Their words are strangled and they learn to be silent. Rachel’s Writers teaches adolescents there is creative reading as well as creative writing and offers them approaches to discovering and creating community; deconstructing myths; finding their voice.
Many people, adolescents in particular, view the whole process as mysterious and inaccessible. The good news is: anyone can learn to write and every writer has their own unique process. The writing process has distinct phases that all writers go through: planning, reflection, drafting, and revision—though not necessarily in that order. But there are many more ways in which writing empowers us. Writing can help adolescents to:
― George Orwell
People who lack reading and writing skills have difficulty expressing who they are. Their words are strangled and they learn to be silent. Rachel’s Writers teaches adolescents there is creative reading as well as creative writing and offers them approaches to discovering and creating community; deconstructing myths; finding their voice.
Many people, adolescents in particular, view the whole process as mysterious and inaccessible. The good news is: anyone can learn to write and every writer has their own unique process. The writing process has distinct phases that all writers go through: planning, reflection, drafting, and revision—though not necessarily in that order. But there are many more ways in which writing empowers us. Writing can help adolescents to:
- Enhance their problem solving and critical thinking.
- Develop integration of process, content, and skills.
- Develop organizational strategies depending on the form of the writing.
- Develop the skill of inquiry (which includes: collecting and evaluating information, comparing and contrasting, imagining situations from another perspective, building argument for a particular position or point of view, learning the importance of not only asking questions of others but of ourselves, of not only revising the information we receive but being willing to revise the questions).
- Increase decision making abilities.
- Develop a healthy skepticism which leads to exploration of ideas, an enlarged worldview and a confident imagination.
- Improve one’s self-insight, confidence and self-acceptance.