become a creative writing teacher

How to Become a Creative Writing Teacher (And Enjoy It)

If you’re passionate about writing and want to share your love of the craft with others, becoming a creative writing teacher may be for you.

Creative writing is an art that offers students the opportunity to explore their creativity and improve their writing skills. Teaching this discipline requires not only expertise in writing but also the ability to inspire and guide aspiring writers on their journey to becoming better wordsmiths. Whether you’re looking to make extra money on the side or considering a full-time career, this guide will walk you through the steps of becoming a creative writing teacher, including dissertation data analysis help and resources for aspiring educators.

Become a Creative Writing Teacher: The Basics

The first step is getting the right qualifications, which typically include at least a bachelor’s degree in English or another related field. Having prior teaching experience and certifications would be a big plus. Once you have these things lined up, familiarize yourself with different lesson-planning resources and strategies. It will propel you to start strong when it’s time to teach. Finally, always be open to feedback from both your students and colleagues so you can continue growing as an educator. If you have a passion for writing and enjoy teaching, becoming a creative writing instructor could be a fulfilling career path. Now let’s get into the specifics, so you can have a better understanding of what the job entails.

5 Tips for Becoming a Creative Writing Teacher

Teaching others how to write it’s very fulfilling and allows you to share your unique perspective with your students. But there are several requirements you will need to meet to do it properly. Keep reading to see what they are:

1. Get a Degree in English or Creative Writing

While not required, having a relevant degree can give you an edge when applying for teaching positions. Formal education on the subject gives you the foundation in literature and composition that will be helpful when teaching how to write. People who wish to become creative writing teachers often attend college for additional writing training before sharing their expertise with others. This equips them to use various teaching approaches, whether it be through a traditional academic setting, an online course, a summer camp workshop, etc.

2. Consider Getting a Teaching Certification

Many states require teachers to have certain teaching certifications. Although it is not required for all positions, having one can make you more attractive as a candidate. Full-time courses usually take three to four years, while part-time courses take four to six years. If you have undergraduate credits from previous studies, you might complete a course in two years. There are also a lot of online writing certificate programs you can explore. Some of them are even conducted by bestselling authors and renowned educators, so you should check them out.

3. Start Your Own Writing Group or Workshop

This is a great way to get experience leading other writers. You’ll gain some insights into what it takes to be an effective teacher and learn how to communicate with your students . The most wonderful thing about starting a creative writing group is that you can build it exactly what you want it to be. It could be a workshop-style group where you read each other’s work. You can form a group where you meet up together and write, or just talk about writing or each other’s personal experiences in honing their craft. There are no rules. You can contact your writing sessions in a local café, or if that’s not possible, you can host the whole thing on a Facebook group.

4. Volunteer to Teach Creative Writing in Local Schools

Many educational institutions have after-school programs or summer camps that are always looking for volunteers. This is a great way to get your foot in the door and see if teaching is right for you. Most schools collaborate with volunteers who are or want to learn how to become creative writing teachers. You can teach how to edit and publish creative writing.

5. Be Patient and Persistent

Getting a job as a creative writing teacher can be competitive. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t land your dream position right away. Keep applying and refining your resume , and eventually, you’ll find the perfect fit! To become a creative writing teacher, consider getting a degree or teaching certification in English or creative writing. You can also start your writing group or workshop, or volunteer to teach creative writing in local schools. These will give you the training and experience you need to get closer to your goal.

Teaching Writing With True Excellence

We all know the importance of teaching writing. After all, as the saying goes, “If you can’t write well, you can’t think well.” And in today’s world, with so much emphasis on effective communication and clear thinking skills, it’s more important than ever to make sure our students are receiving a top-notch education on learning how to write. So what does true excellence in teaching writing look like? Here are five key concepts to consider:

1. High Expectations

As teachers, we need to have high expectations for our students’ writing abilities. This doesn’t mean that we should be unrealistic or overly critical. Rather, it means that we should expect them to produce quality work that meets or exceeds our standards. By setting the bar high from the beginning, we’ll give them a goal to strive for and help them develop their skills more quickly.

2. Quality Feedback

For our students to improve their writing abilities, they need regular quality feedback . This feedback needs to be specific and objective. Simply telling them “good job” or “nice work” will not help them improve. We need to point out what they’re doing well and where they can make improvements so that they can see their progress. The more specific you can get while providing feedback, the better.

3. Focus on the Process

It’s important to remember that writing is a process, not a product. This means that we should focus on helping our students with each step of the process, from brainstorming ideas to editing and revising their work. By focusing on the process, we’ll help them develop strong writing skills that will serve them well through life.

4. Setting an Example

Another important aspect of teaching writing is modeling good behavior for our students. If we want them to produce quality work, then we need to show them how it’s done. We can do this by sharing our writings with them (with permission, of course), or by demonstrating proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation usage in our daily communications with them. Another great idea is to encourage them to read as much as possible and introduce them to the classics so they can fully grasp what a great piece of literary art looks like.

5. Encouragement

Finally, one of the best things we can do as teachers is to encourage our students in their writing endeavors. This includes offering positive feedback when deserved, but also giving them that extra push in the right direction when the going gets tough. Letting them know you believe in their ability to improve and achieve great things will go a long way in helping them reach their full potential as writers. Teaching writing effectively requires high expectations, quality feedback, a focus on process, modeling, and encouragement.

Testing Your Students Through Writing Tasks

As a creative writing teacher, it’s essential to test your students’ skills and knowledge regularly. One way to do this is through writing tasks. By setting regular writing assignments, you can gauge your student’s progress and identify areas that need improvement.

Here are some tips for making the most of the writing tasks in your classroom :

• Make sure the task applies to what your students are currently studying. This will help them engage with the material and produce their best work.
• Clearly instruct what you expect from the finished product. This includes specifying word count, formatting requirements, etc.
• Provide feedback on each student’s performance after they submit their work. This helps them understand where they need to improve. It will also give you an idea of how well they are grasping the concepts being taught.

In short, get your students engaged in their learning by setting regular writing tasks. By making the tasks relevant and providing clear instructions, you’ll help them produce their best work. Don’t forget to provide feedback so they can understand where they need to improve. Many writing teachers are worried about the influence of artificial intelligence on the writing process. That’s why you need to explain that using AI bots for writing will teach them how to write, as it’s a form of “creative plagiarism.”

FAQ About How to Become a Creative Writing Teacher:

1. how do i start teaching creative writing.

There is no single answer to this question since there are many ways to become a creative writing teacher. The best way to teach creative writing will depend on your qualifications, experience, and goals. For example, if you have a degree in English or Creative Writing , you may teach at the college level. Alternatively, if you have significant experience as a writer but no formal education in the field, you may teach creative writing courses at community colleges or adult education centers. There are also online programs that allow people with no teaching experience to lead classes on specific topics related to creative writing. This could be an option for someone looking for flexibility and wanting to share their expertise with others without committing to traditional employment. No matter what route someone takes to become a creative writing teacher, they must possess excellent communication skills, patience, and creativity so they can encourage students to reach their fullest potential.

2. Can you teach writing when only have a creative writing degree?

Yes, you can teach creative writing with a degree in the subject. There are many ways to become a creative writing teacher, but most involve some level of formal education. Many universities offer degrees in creative writing, and there are also specialized schools that focus solely on teaching the craft of writing.

3. What degree do you need to teach creative writing in college?

Requirements for teaching creative writing at the college level can vary depending on the institution. However, most colleges and universities will require that their creative writing instructors have at least a master’s degree in English or Creative Writing. Many institutions may also prefer or require that candidates for teaching positions have prior experience teaching at the college level.

4. How Much Does a Creative Writer Make?

According to Zip Recruiter, the average yearly salary for creative writing teachers is $53, 608.00. But the range goes to as low as $46,000 a year for beginners, and up to over $100,000 a year for those who are in the biz for several years.

If you’re passionate about writing and want to share your love of literature with others, becoming a creative writing teacher may be the perfect career for you. By imparting your knowledge and expertise to students, you can help them develop their skills and find their voice as writers. Are you interested in becoming a freelance writer, working remotely, or improving your productivity and side hustle? I offer coaching and consulting services to help you achieve your goals. Visit my website or contact me today to learn more about how I can help you reach your full potential. Next up, you may want to explore a guide on how to become a columnist .

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Inspiring Ink: Expert Tips on How to Teach Creative Writing

The world of creative writing is as vast as it is rewarding. It’s a form of expression that allows the writer to explore different worlds, characters, and narratives – all within the power of their pen.

But what exactly is creative writing and why is it important? Let’s explore the value of creative writing and how to inspire young (or old!) minds to embark on the curious and exciting journey of writing creatively – it’s easier than you think!

What is Creative Writing?

Creative writing, in its simplest form, is writing that goes beyond the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature.

It’s characterized by its emphasis on:

• narrative craft
• character development
• the use of literary devices

From poetry to plays, scripts to sonnets, creative writing covers a wide range of genres . It’s about painting pictures with words, invoking emotions, and bringing ideas to life . It’s about crafting stories that are compelling, engaging, and thought-provoking.

Whether you’re penning a novel or jotting down a journal entry, creative writing encourages you to unleash your imagination and express your thoughts in a unique, artistic way. For a deeper dive into the realm of creative writing, you can visit our article on what is creative writing .

Benefits of Developing Creative Writing Skills

The benefits of creative writing extend beyond the page.

It’s not just about creating captivating stories or crafting beautiful prose. The skills developed through creative writing are invaluable in many aspects of life and work.

1. Creative writing fosters creativity and imagination. 

It encourages you to think outside the box, broaden your perspective, and explore new ideas. It also enhances your ability to communicate effectively, as it involves conveying thoughts, emotions, and narratives in a clear and compelling manner.

2. Creative writing aids in improving critical thinking skills.

It prompts you to analyze characters, plotlines, and themes, and make connections between different ideas. This process activates different parts of the mind, drawing on personal experiences, the imagination, logical plot development, and emotional intelligence.

3. Creative writing is also a valuable tool for self-expression and personal growth.

It allows you to explore your feelings, experiences, and observations, providing an outlet for self-reflection and introspection. By both reading and writing about different characters in different situations, readers develop empathy in a gentle but effective way.

4. Creative writing skills can open up a host of career opportunities.

From authors and editors to content creators and copywriters, the demand for creative writers is vast and varied. You can learn more about potential career paths in our article on creative writing jobs and what you can do with a creative writing degree .

In essence, creative writing is more than just an art—it’s a skill, a craft, and a powerful tool for communication and self-expression. Whether you’re teaching creative writing or learning it, understanding its value is the first step towards mastering the art.

The 3 Roles of a Creative Writing Teacher

Amongst the many facets of a creative writing teacher’s role, three vital aspects stand out: inspiring creativity , nurturing talent , and providing constructive criticism . These elements play a significant role in shaping budding writers and fostering their passion for the craft.

1. Inspiring Creativity

The primary function of a creative writing teacher is to inspire creativity.

They must foster an environment that encourages students to think outside the box and explore new possibilities . This includes presenting students with creative writing prompts that challenge their thinking, promoting lively discussions around various topics, and providing opportunities for students to engage in creative writing activities for kids .

Teachers should also expose students to a range of literary genres , styles, and techniques to broaden their understanding and appreciation of the craft. This exposure not only enhances their knowledge but also stimulates their creativity, encouraging them to experiment with different writing styles .

2. Nurturing Talent

Nurturing talent involves recognizing the unique abilities of each student and providing the necessary support and guidance to help them develop these skills. A creative writing teacher needs to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each student and tailor their approach accordingly.

This means:

• offering personalized feedback
• setting realistic yet challenging goals
• providing opportunities for students to showcase their work

Encouraging students to participate in writing competitions or to publish their work can give them a confidence boost and motivate them to improve. Furthermore, teachers should educate students about various creative writing jobs and what you can do with a creative writing degree . This knowledge can inspire students to pursue their passion for writing and explore career opportunities in the field.

3. Providing Constructive Criticism

Providing constructive criticism is a critical aspect of teaching creative writing. It involves assessing students’ work objectively and providing feedback that helps them improve .

Teachers should:

• highlight the strengths of the work
• address the areas that need improvement
• suggest ways to make the piece better

Constructive criticism should be specific, actionable, and encouraging . It’s important to remember that the goal is to help the student improve, not to discourage them. Therefore, teachers need to communicate their feedback in a respectful and supportive manner.

In essence, a teacher’s role in teaching creative writing extends beyond mere instruction. They are mentors who inspire, nurture, and shape the minds of budding writers. By fostering a supportive and stimulating environment, they can help students unlock their creative potential and develop a lifelong love for writing.

3 Techniques for Teaching Creative Writing

When it comes to understanding how to teach creative writing, there are several effective techniques that can help inspire students and foster their writing skills.

1. Encouraging Free Writing Exercises

Free writing is a technique that encourages students to write continuously for a set amount of time without worrying about grammar, punctuation, or topic. This type of exercise can help unleash creativity, as it allows students to freely express their thoughts and ideas without judgment or constraint.

As a teacher, you can set a specific theme or provide creative writing prompts to guide the writing session. Alternatively, you can allow students to write about any topic that comes to mind. The key is to create an environment that encourages creative exploration and expression.

2. Exploring Different Genres

Another effective technique is to expose students to a wide range of writing genres. This can include fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, fantasy, mystery, and more. By exploring different genres, students can discover their unique writing styles and interests. This variety also offers the chance to expand their writing skills and apply them to various writing formats.

To facilitate this exploration, you can assign writing projects in different genres, conduct genre-specific writing workshops, or invite guest speakers who specialize in different genres. You can also encourage students to critically analyze how different authors approach their work.

3. Analyzing Published Works

Analyzing published works is a powerful way to teach creative writing. This technique allows students to learn from established authors by studying their:

• writing styles
• narrative structures
• use of language.

It also provides a practical context for understanding writing concepts and techniques.

As a teacher, you can select diverse pieces of literature for analysis , ranging from classic novels to contemporary short stories. Encourage students to identify elements they admire in these works and discuss how they can incorporate similar techniques into their own writing.

These techniques for teaching creative writing are effective ways to inspire creativity, encourage self-expression, and develop writing skills. As a teacher, your role is crucial in guiding students through their creative journey and helping them realize their potential as writers.

Creative Writing Workshops and Exercises

One effective method on how to teach creative writing is through the use of targeted workshops and exercises. These interactive sessions can stimulate creativity, foster character development , and help in understanding story structures .

Idea Generation Workshops

Idea generation is a crucial aspect of creative writing. It is the starting point that provides a springboard for writers to explore and develop their narratives. Idea generation workshops can be an interactive and fun way to help writers come up with fresh ideas.

Workshops can include brainstorming sessions , where writers are encouraged to think freely and note down all ideas, no matter how unconventional they may seem. Another method is the use of writing prompts , which can serve as a creative spark.

A prompt could be:

• even an image

Editor’s Note : Encourage children to create a big scribble on a scrap piece of paper and then look for an image in it (like looking for pictures in the clouds). This can be a great creative writing prompt and students will love sharing their writing with each other! Expect lots of giggles and fun!

Character Development Exercises

Characters are the heart of any story. They drive the narrative and engage the readers. Character development exercises can help writers create well-rounded and relatable characters.

Such exercises can include character questionnaires , where writers answer a series of questions about their characters to gain a deeper understanding of their personalities, backgrounds, and motivations. Role-playing activities can also be useful, allowing writers to step into their characters’ shoes and explore their reactions in different scenarios.

Story Structure Workshops

Understanding story structure is vital for creating a compelling narrative. Story structure workshops can guide writers on how to effectively structure their stories to engage readers from start to finish .

These workshops can cover essential elements of story structures like:

• rising action
• falling action

In addition to understanding the basics, writers should be encouraged to experiment with different story structures to find what works best for their narrative style. An understanding of story structure can also help in analyzing and learning from published works .

Providing writers with the right tools and techniques, through workshops and exercises, can significantly improve their creative writing skills. It’s important to remember that creativity flourishes with practice and patience .

As a teacher, nurturing this process is one of the most rewarding aspects of teaching creative writing. For more insights and tips on teaching creative writing, continue exploring our articles on creative writing .

Tips to Enhance Creative Writing Skills

The process of teaching creative writing is as much about honing one’s own skills as it is about imparting knowledge to others. Here are some key strategies that can help in enhancing your creative writing abilities and make your teaching methods more effective.

Regular Practice

Like any other skill, creative writing requires regular practice . Foster the habit of writing daily, even if it’s just a few lines. This will help you stay in touch with your creative side and continually improve your writing skills. Encourage your students to do the same.

Introduce them to various creative writing prompts to stimulate their imagination and make their writing practice more engaging.

Reading Widely

Reading is an essential part of becoming a better writer. By reading widely, you expose yourself to a variety of styles, tones, and genres . This not only broadens your literary horizons but also provides a wealth of ideas for your own writing.

Encourage your students to read extensively as well. Analyzing and discussing different works can be an excellent learning exercise and can spark creative ideas .

Exploring Various Writing Styles

The beauty of creative writing lies in its diversity. From poetic verses to gripping narratives, there’s a wide range of styles to explore. Encourage your students to try their hand at different forms of writing. This not only enhances their versatility but also helps them discover their unique voice as a writer.

To help them get started, you can introduce a variety of creative writing activities for kids . These tasks can be tailored to suit different age groups and proficiency levels. Remember, the goal is to foster a love for writing, so keep the activities fun and engaging .

Have Fun Teaching Creative Writing!

Enhancing creative writing skills is a continuous journey. It requires persistence, curiosity, and a willingness to step out of your comfort zone. As a teacher, your role is to guide your students on this journey, providing them with the tools and encouragement they need to flourish as writers – and most of all – enjoy the process!

For more insights on creative writing, be sure to explore our articles on what is creative writing and creative writing jobs and what you can do with a creative writing degree .

Brooks Manley

Creative Primer  is a resource on all things journaling, creativity, and productivity. We’ll help you produce better ideas, get more done, and live a more effective life.

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Enriching Creative Writing Activities for Kids

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How to Prepare to Teach Creative Writing

Last Updated: November 3, 2022

wikiHow is a “wiki,” similar to Wikipedia, which means that many of our articles are co-written by multiple authors. To create this article, 16 people, some anonymous, worked to edit and improve it over time. This article has been viewed 13,701 times.

Preparing to teach creative writing requires a mixture of formal instruction in teaching methods as well as an inborn appreciation of the craft of writing honed by instruction and practice. If you wish to teach others how to write, here are steps to take and things to consider in building a career as a creative writing teacher.

Academic and Writing Preparation

• Required courses for a bachelor's in English include classes in language and literature as well as in writing. English majors may be required to take classes in technical as well as creative writing. Students preparing for a bachelor of science in education with a concentration in English also take classes in the nature of language and how to teach an English class to others. Some programs may also require a certain number of hours in foreign language classes.

• Most MFA programs require a 2- to 3-year commitment, which culminates in preparing a thesis, consisting of some form of creative writing, such as a novel or anthology of short stories or poetry. Programs consist of a mixture of writing opportunities and coursework, which may either be conducted on-campus or online. Some programs offer stipends to fund students' writing projects, while others offer teaching assistant positions to pay students' expenses and may even offer graduate students the opportunity to design their own courses.

• PhD programs in creative writing are structured similarly to MFA programs, but over a longer period of time (8 years on average), with a greater amount of independent study and the requirement to create a doctoral dissertation. It is possible to engage in a more research-oriented PhD program, although some colleges may consider this a detriment instead of an advantage for candidates applying for teaching positions.

• While being published by a college or university press still has more cachet than a mainstream publisher or small press, the rise of print-on-demand publishers has raised the status of non-university presses. You still need to provide your best-quality writing samples when applying for a college position.

• Other activities you can take part in include reading submissions to literary magazines or raising funds for them.

Applying for a College Writing Teacher Position

• One candidate used his prior experience to learn the names of his interviewers and what works they had published. On many of his interviews, he was complimented for being the only candidate to have an interest in his interviewers' work.

• Letter of application: A 2-page summary of your credentials, written in a clear, captivating style and tailored to the position you're applying for. If you're already teaching writing somewhere, you can use the letterhead of the institution you're presently teaching at.
• Curriculum vitae (CV/resume): Your CV should list your education, teaching experience, list of publications, service, list of references with contact information, and availability of letters of recommendation. Although you don't have to list every last publication, your CV should be comprehensive. (Unlike a business resume, which is typically 1 to 2 pages in length, a CV can be whatever length it needs to be to cover everything significant you've done.)
• Writing sample: Choose your best writing sample that is most appropriate to the institution you're applying to, preferably a book if you have one and can afford to send a copy to each institution you're applying to.
• Recommendations: You should have 4 to 8 letters of recommendation from professors and other writers who know your work and are familiar with your teaching style. The letters should be written as close to the time you start applying for positions as possible; allow 6 weeks' time for your recommender to draft the letter. Letters should be sent to the career center of your current institution or to the dossier service run by the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) if you're applying for your first position.
• Transcript: Not always required, but many institutions require a transcript as a quick means to verify that you actually earned the degrees you claim to hold. Photocopies are acceptable.

• Interviews may be held either on-campus or at the Modern Language Association (MLA) convention, held either December or January in a major city. Your travel expenses to a college campus are usually covered by the institution, but you'll have to pay your own way to the MLA convention.

Community Q&A

• You may find it helpful to have writing experience outside the field or genre for which you plan to apply. Skills in journalism and grant writing can be particularly beneficial. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Competition for tenure-track creative writing teaching positions can be fierce, due to the number of MFA and PhD programs in creative writing and the number of graduates from those programs who have published their work. It's helpful to prepare as fully as possible, while also considering other options for using your degree, such as advertising or working for a publishing house. Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0

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What is a creative writing teacher and how to become one

A creative writing teacher is an educator who helps students develop their writing skills. They create lesson plans, grade essays, and use teaching strategies to improve student learning. They also design curriculum, develop unit and daily lesson plans, and create teaching materials. They often specialize in teaching creative writing, literary analysis, and writing development. They also work with students with special needs, using modifications to help them learn. They may also lead workshops, provide tutoring services, and participate in professional development opportunities to stay up-to-date on the latest teaching methods. They encourage students to participate in class discussions and projects, and they may also publish student work.

How long does it takes to become a creative writing teacher?

It typically takes 5-6 years to become a creative writing teacher:

• Years 1-4: Obtain a bachelor's degree in a relevant field such as English, journalism, or creative writing. This includes coursework in writing, literature, and teaching methods.
• Years 5-6: Gain the necessary work experience, typically 1-2 years, in teaching or related fields. This may involve teaching creative writing classes, leading writing workshops, or working as a writing tutor.
• Salary $63,027
• Growth Rate 4%
• Jobs Number 71,982
• Most Common Skill Classroom Management
• Most Common Degree Bachelor's degree
• Best State Connecticut

Creative Writing Teacher career paths

As a creative writing teacher, you can explore a range of career paths. You might consider becoming a tutor or instructor, or even a lead teacher or assistant director. You could also pursue a role as a center director or assistant principal. If you're interested in education management, you might consider becoming a director or education director. Some creative writing teachers also go on to become department chairs, assistant principals, or even elementary school principals. Additionally, you might consider pursuing a career as a special education teacher or a language arts teacher. If you're interested in higher education, you could consider becoming an adjunct professor.

Key steps to become a creative writing teacher

Explore creative writing teacher education requirements.

The educational requirements for a creative writing teacher typically include a bachelor's degree, with a majority (63.84%) of creative writing teachers holding this level of education. Common majors for this role are English, Writing, Elementary Education, and General Education. Some teachers may also pursue certifications such as Teaching English as a Foreign Language or Microsoft Certified Educator. According to Dr. Audrey Church Ph.D. , Chair, Department of Education and Counseling; Professor of School Librarianship at Longwood University, "In the field of education, skills that will become even more important and prevalent are really at, what I would consider, opposite ends of a spectrum: at one end, interpersonal skills--strength and knowledge in the areas of social and emotional learning and trauma-informed teaching; at the other end, technology skills-refining and enhancing information literacy and digital literacy skills."

Most common creative writing teacher degrees

Bachelor's

Master's

Start to develop specific creative writing teacher skills

A creative writing teacher's main goal is to help students develop their writing skills. They create a positive learning environment that encourages active participation and fosters self-esteem. They provide individualized instruction to cater to the diverse learning styles of each student, including those with special needs. They also assess and track student progress, and differentiate instruction to improve student learning.

Research creative writing teacher duties and responsibilities

A creative writing teacher's responsibilities include providing tutoring services, leading workshops, and developing curriculum. They must ensure understanding of course content and utilize remediation, modification, and enrichment. They also work with special education teachers to create plans for students with special needs. Dr. Audrey Church Ph.D. , Chair, Department of Education and Counseling; Professor of School Librarianship at Longwood University, adds, "In the field of education, skills that will become even more important and prevalent are really at, what I would consider, opposite ends of a spectrum: at one end, interpersonal skills--strength and knowledge in the areas of social and emotional learning and trauma-informed teaching; at the other end, technology skills-refining and enhancing information literacy and digital literacy skills."

• Lead professional development for colleagues on integrating graphing calculators into the curriculum.
• Include poetry, memoirs, and short stories, with a strong focus on figurative language.
• Administer examinations and mark exam scripts.
• Prepare lessons and materials according to the syllabus assign.

Prepare your creative writing teacher resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your creative writing teacher resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a creative writing teacher resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose From 10+ Customizable Creative Writing Teacher Resume templates

Apply for creative writing teacher jobs

Now it's time to start searching for a creative writing teacher job. Consider the tips below for a successful job search:

• Browse job boards for relevant postings
• Consult your professional network
• Reach out to companies you're interested in working for directly
• Watch out for job scams

Are you a Creative Writing Teacher?

Share your story for a free salary report.

Average creative writing teacher salary

The average Creative Writing Teacher salary in the United States is $63,027 per year or $30 per hour. Creative writing teacher salaries range between $31,000 and $124,000 per year.

What Am I Worth?

How do creative writing teachers rate their job?

Creative writing teacher reviews.

Kids, teaching lessons, co-teachers, hours, weekends off, salary, holidays off, summers off, paid sick and personal days

Administration, observations, being told what to teach and HOW to teach it, expecting us to participate in things we might not want to or have the time for, staff meetings with no substance

Making a difference in the lives of students and their families.

I do not enjoy the copious amounts of ever increasing paperwork.

Ability to share knowledge and guide students in learning new things.

Some students' non-challant attitude towards learning.

Updated April 25, 2024

Editorial Staff

The Zippia Research Team has spent countless hours reviewing resumes, job postings, and government data to determine what goes into getting a job in each phase of life. Professional writers and data scientists comprise the Zippia Research Team.

Creative Writing Teacher Related Careers

• Biology Teacher
• Certified Teacher
• ESL Teacher
• French Teacher
• Guest Teacher
• High School English Teacher
• High School Teacher
• History Teacher
• Language Arts Teacher
• Language Teacher
• Math Teacher
• Mentor Teacher
• Middle School Teacher
• Reading Teacher
• Science Teacher

Creative Writing Teacher Related Jobs

• Biology Teacher Jobs
• Certified Teacher Jobs
• ESL Teacher Jobs
• French Teacher Jobs
• Guest Teacher Jobs
• High School English Teacher Jobs
• High School Teacher Jobs
• History Teacher Jobs
• Language Arts Teacher Jobs
• Language Teacher Jobs
• Math Teacher Jobs
• Mentor Teacher Jobs
• Middle School Teacher Jobs
• Reading Teacher Jobs
• Science Teacher Jobs

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• What Does a Biology Teacher Do
• What Does a Certified Teacher Do
• What Does an ESL Teacher Do
• What Does a French Teacher Do
• What Does a Guest Teacher Do
• What Does a High School English Teacher Do
• What Does a High School Teacher Do
• What Does a History Teacher Do
• What Does a Language Arts Teacher Do
• What Does a Language Teacher Do
• What Does a Math Teacher Do
• What Does a Mentor Teacher Do
• What Does a Middle School Teacher Do
• What Does a Reading Teacher Do
• What Does a Science Teacher Do

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There’s nothing more rewarding than inspiring students to bring words to life in creative writing. Creative writing teacher jobs are often combined with the responsibility of teaching English or literature, in a secondary school setting. Past experience in creative writing and published works will give you the competitive edge in this field. Most public and private schools will require a bachelor’s degree in education and state licensure as a teacher. If you want to hold private workshops or clinics, a reputation as an accomplished, published writer is a must.

Creative Writing Teacher Job Description

Creative writing jobs include a vast array of responsibilities that span beyond teaching the art of teaching writing to students. You can expect to build lesson plans, interact with parents, grade papers and participate in professional development, as a teacher. In the classroom, creative writing teachers may teach a variety of classes including language arts, American literature, advanced placement (AP) literature and composition and other electives. In most schools, creative writing is considered an elective. Students who take creative writing are often engaged and excited to learn as much as possible about how to write poetry, drama, fiction and journalistic pieces.

Continuing education and professional enhancement: In addition to classroom teaching duties, you’ll have the opportunity to meet with your colleagues to work on curriculum development and discuss strategies to encourage student success in school. Some professional development sessions are mandatory, and others may be options to help you maintain your teaching license.

Parent communication and interaction: Expect to interact with parents about student progress and other issues related to student learning or conduct. After a long day at work, you may find several emails from parents in your inbox that need to be answered.

Paperwork: In addition to teaching and classroom management, you’ll have to evaluate writing assignments, create lesson plans and even write college references for students. Most school systems have a grading portal that needs to be regularly updated to allow students and parents to track academic progress.

Creative Writing Teacher Education Requirements

Most creative writing jobs in a high school setting require a four-year college degree in education. For example, the University of Arizona offers a degree in creative writing, and you’ll need to pair this with an education degree so that you have the appropriate teaching background. Some of the courses that you can expect to take include:

• Writing of Creative Nonfiction
• Writing of Poetry
• Writing of Fiction
• British and American Literature
• Literary Analysis
• Curriculum Development
• Philosophy of Education Teaching English as a Second Language

You’ll also complete one semester of student teaching to help you practice your skills.

Creative Writing Teacher Industry

The creative writing salary varies based upon district size and location. In 2019, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a median annual salary of ​ $59,420 ​. The top salary shared was ​ $97,900 ​, and the lowest was ​ $39,020 ​. You’ll find that these states have the highest salaries for teachers:

• Massachusetts
• District of Columbia
• Connecticut

Creative Writing Teacher Years of Experience

As you gain more experience, seniority and your salary will increase incrementally. You may have the opportunity to mentor student teachers or help develop new courses and curriculum. Some schools offer creative writing groups that meet after school, and you may be able to serve as an advisor to add to your salary.

Creative Writing Teacher Growth Trend

The teaching field is projected to grow slightly, by 4 percent, between now and 2029. The states that might have the highest need for teachers include:

Since creative writing isn’t offered in every district, research course options before applying. This is particularly true in smaller school districts.

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: High School Teachers
• University of Arizona: Degree Requirements – Creative Writing
• If you've taught creative writing before, consider writing a book about teaching creative writing. This will give you a marketing boost.
• Teach English at a public school. While you won't get to teach creative writing all the time, it will be part of the curriculum.
• Gain experience teaching creative writing by hosting creative writing groups in your home or leading them in a public space.
• If there's little demand for creative writing courses in your community, offer an online class.

Dr. Kelly Meier earned her doctorate from Minnesota State Mankato in Educational Leadership. She is the author and co-author of 12 books focusing on customer service, diversity and team building. She serves as a consultant for business, industry and educational organizations. Dr. Meier has written business articles and books for Talico, Inc, Dynateam Consulting, Inc. and Kinect Education Group.

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Writing Curriculum

Teach Writing With The New York Times: Our 2021-22 Curriculum

A flexible, eight-unit program based on the real-world features found in newspapers, from editorials and reviews to personal narratives, profiles and podcasts.

By The Learning Network

Update, Aug. 3, 2023: Find our 2023-24 writing curriculum here.

What can the news, features, essays, interviews, photos, videos, podcasts and graphics in The New York Times teach your students about composing for a real audience? So much, we hope, that the units we detail below are just a beginning.

Our annual writing curriculum is both a road map for teachers and an invitation to students. For teachers, it organizes our offerings — lesson plans, writing prompts, mentor texts and student contests — into eight distinct units, each of which focuses on a different genre of writing that your students can find not just in The Times but in all kinds of real-world sources.

For students, it offers confirmation that they have something valuable to say, a wide range of choice in how to say it, and a global audience eager to listen. Promoting student voice has always been a pillar of our site, but in these extraordinary times we think it is critical. Through the opportunities for publication woven throughout each unit, we want to encourage students to go beyond simply consuming media to becoming creators themselves.

Though our offerings are aimed at middle and high school students, we know that they are used up and down levels and across subjects — from elementary school to college. So have a look, and see if you can find a way to include any of these opportunities in your curriculum this year, whether to help students document their lives, tell stories, express opinions, investigate ideas, interview fascinating people or analyze culture. We can’t wait to hear what they have to say!

Each unit includes:

Writing prompts to help students try out related skills in a “low stakes” way.

We publish new writing prompts every school day, and have since 2009. You can find categorized collections of these prompts, or just scroll through to see the latest. Your students can respond on our site, using our public forums as a kind of “rehearsal space” for practicing voice and technique.

Daily opportunities to practice writing for an authentic audience.

If a student submits a comment on our site, it will be read by Times editors, who approve each one before it gets published. Submitting a comment also gives students an audience of fellow teenagers from around the world who might read and respond to their work. Each week, we call out our favorite comments and honor dozens of students by name in our Thursday “ Current Events Conversation ” feature.

Guided practice with mentor texts .

Each unit we publish features guided practice lessons, written directly to students, that help them observe, understand and practice the kinds of “craft moves” that make different genres of writing sing. From how to “show not tell” in narratives to how to express critical opinions , quote or paraphrase experts or craft scripts for podcasts , we have used the work of both Times journalists and the teenage winners of our contests to show students techniques they can emulate.

“Annotated by the Author” commentaries from Times writers — and teenagers.

As part of our Mentor Texts series , we’ve been asking Times journalists from desks across the newsroom to annotate their articles to let students in on their writing, research and editing processes, and we’ll be adding more for each unit this year. Whether it’s Science writer Nicholas St. Fleur on tiny tyrannosaurs , Opinion writer Aisha Harris on the cultural canon , or The Times’s comics-industry reporter, George Gene Gustines, on comic books that celebrate pride , the idea is to demystify journalism for teenagers.

But in the 2020-21 school year, we also started asking teen winners of our contests to analyze the craft moves they made that led to successful work. Check out their ideas on how to choose a great topic , embed evidence , use metaphors and more .

A contest that can act as a culminating project .

Over the years we’ve heard from many teachers that our contests serve as final projects in their classes, and this curriculum came about in large part because we want to help teachers “plan backwards” to support those projects.

All contest entries are considered by experts, whether Times journalists, outside educators from partner organizations, or professional practitioners in a related field. Winning means being published on our site, and, perhaps, in the print edition of The New York Times.

Additional support for teachers.

For each of the eight units in this curriculum, we offer either on-demand or live webinars that feature Learning Network editors as well as teachers who use The Times in their classrooms. Our webinars introduce participants to our many resources and provide practical how-to’s on how to use our prompts, mentor texts and contests in the classroom.

We also invite teachers to join our P.L.C. on teaching writing with The Times , where educators can share resources, strategies and inspiration about teaching with these units.

Below are the eight units we will offer in the 2021-22 school year.

September-October

Documenting and Reflecting on Teenage Lives

This unit was first developed in 2020 to acknowledge the profound effects of that tumultuous year on a generation of teenagers. Our open-ended invitation to “show us — in words or images, video or audio — how the events of this year have affected you” resulted in a deluge of extraordinary submissions, some of which were featured online and in a special print section .

Now, as schools reopen, teachers have asked us to run the unit and related contest again, this time to acknowledge a new set of issues and concerns. We all hope to return to something that looks like “normal life” soon, yet we will all return changed. How can we make space for students to process their experiences, but be mindful that these months have been traumatic for many? How could a project like this one help bring school communities together? And how might teaching students to document and reflect give them skills they can use, in and out of the classroom, for the rest of their lives?

This time we are asking , Who are you now? How do you think the last year and a half has shaped — and will continue to shape — you and your generation? What can you show or tell us that might help explain what it’s like to be a teenager in 2021? In answering these questions, students can choose any aspect, big or small, of what it means to be growing up in this moment, and send us work in almost any medium they can upload digitally.

Writing will be used as a tool throughout the unit to help students brainstorm, compose and edit, and all students will be asked to craft written artist’s statements to accompany their submissions. (Contest dates: Sept. 15-Oct. 27, 2021)

October-November

The Personal Narrative

While The Times is known for its award-winning journalism, the paper also has a robust tradition of publishing personal essays on topics like love , family , life on campus and navigating anxiety . And on our site, our daily writing prompts have long invited students to tell us their stories, too. Our 2019 collection of 550 Prompts for Narrative and Personal Writing is a good place to start, though we add more every week during the school year.

In this unit we draw on many of these resources, plus some of the 1,000-plus personal essays from the Magazine’s long-running Lives column , to help students find their own “short, memorable stories ” and tell them well. Our related mentor-text lessons can help them practice skills like writing with voice , using details to show rather than tell , structuring a narrative arc , dropping the reader into a scene and more.

As part of our “Annotated by the Author” series, we also spotlight the work of three teenage winners of this contest. We invite students to use their advice, on keeping conclusions open-ended and using metaphors, for example, as inspiration and to submit their own stories to our Third Annual Personal Narrative Writing Contest. (Dates: Oct. 13-Nov. 17, 2021)

November-DECEMBER

Book reports and literary essays have long been staples of language arts classrooms, but this unit encourages students to learn how to critique art in other genres as well. As we point out, a cultural review is a form of argumentative essay. Your class might be writing about Lizzo or “ Looking for Alaska ,” but they still have to make claims and support them with evidence. And, just as they must in a literature essay, they have to read (or watch, or listen to) a work closely; analyze it and understand its context; and explain what is meaningful and interesting about it.

In our Mentor Texts series , we feature the work of Times movie , restaurant , book and music critics to help students understand the elements of a successful review. In these and other guided lessons, we also spotlight the work of teenage contest winners from previous years.

As a culminating project, we invite students to send us their own reviews of a book, movie, restaurant, album, theatrical production, video game, dance performance, TV show, art exhibition or any other kind of work The Times critiques. (Contest Dates: Nov. 10-Dec. 15, 2021)

January-February

The Journalistic Profile

How can focusing on one form of journalistic writing teach students cross-curricular skills like researching, asking effective questions, listening, note-taking, fact-checking, storytelling, connecting with local experts, and, of course, writing and editing to compose with clarity, voice and style?

We hope to show students how to do all of this in our step-by-step guide for participating in our new profile-writing contest . First, we will introduce them to Times profiles across sections, inviting them to read pieces about people who range from the world famous to the locally distinctive. Then, our curriculum will help walk students through the steps of choosing someone they are interested in to research, interview, photograph and introduce in their own short profile pieces .

Contest Dates: Jan. 5-Feb. 16, 2022

February-March

Informational Writing

Informational writing is the style of writing that dominates The New York Times as well as any other traditional newspaper you might read, and in this unit we hope to show students that it can be every bit as engaging and compelling to read and to write as other genres.

Via thousands of articles a month — from front-page reporting on politics to news about athletes in Sports, deep data dives in The Upshot, recipes in Cooking, advice columns in Style and long-form investigative pieces in the magazine — Times journalists find ways to experiment with the genre to intrigue and inform their audiences.

This unit invites students to take any STEM-related discovery, process or idea that interests them and write about it in a way that makes it understandable and engaging for a general audience — but all the skills we teach along the way can work for any kind of informational writing. Via our Mentor Texts series, we show them how to hook the reader from the start , use quotes and research , explain why a topic matters and more.

At the end of the unit, we invite teenagers to submit their own writing to our Third Annual STEM Writing Contest to show us what they’ve learned. (Dates: Feb. 2-March 9, 2022)

March-April

Argumentative Writing

The demand for evidence-based argumentative writing is now woven into school assignments across the curriculum and grade levels, and you couldn’t ask for better real-world examples than what you can find in The Times Opinion section .

This unit is, like our others, supported with writing prompts, mentor-text lesson plans, webinars and more. But thanks to the fact that we’ve run the related contest for eight years now, we also have several lesson plans and videos that focus on winning teenage work, on topics as varied as policing , anti-Asian racism , toxicity in gaming , saving the snow day , the “life-changing magic” of being messy and how “Animal Crossing” might save Gen Z .

At a time when media literacy is more important than ever, we hope that our annual Student Editorial Contest can encourage students to broaden their information diets with a range of reliable sources, and learn from a variety of perspectives on their chosen issue. (Dates: March 2-April 13, 2022)

Writing for Podcasts

Most of our writing units so far have all asked for essays of one kind or another, but this spring contest invites students to do what journalists at The Times do every day: make multimedia to tell a story, investigate an issue or communicate a concept.

Our annual podcast contest gives students the freedom to talk about anything they want in any form they like. In the past we’ve had winners who’ve done personal narratives, local travelogues, opinion pieces, interviews with community members, investigative journalism and descriptions of scientific discoveries.

As with all our other units, we have supported this contest with excellent examples from The Times and around the web, as well as with mentor texts by teenagers that offer guided practice in understanding elements and techniques. (Contest Dates: April 6-May 18, 2022)

June-August

Independent Reading and Writing

At a time when teachers are looking for ways to offer students more “voice and choice,” this unit, based on our annual summer contest, offers both.

Every year since 2010 we have invited teenagers around the world to add The New York Times to their summer reading lists and, so far, over 70,000 have. Every week for 10 weeks, we ask participants to choose something in The Times that has sparked their interest, then tell us why. At the end of the week, judges from the Times newsroom pick favorite responses, and we publish them on our site.

Our related Mentor Text feature spotlights the work of past winners , explains why newsroom judges admired their thinking, and provides four steps to helping any student write better reader-responses.

Because this is one of our most open-ended contests — students can choose whatever they like, and react however they like — it has proved over the years to be a useful place for young writers to hone their voices, practice skills and take risks . Join us! (Contest Dates: June 10-Aug. 19, 2022)

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How to Teach Creative Writing | 7 Steps to Get Students Wordsmithing

“I don’t have any ideas!”

“I can’t think of anything!”

While we see creative writing as a world of limitless imagination, our students often see an overwhelming desert of “no idea.”

But when you teach creative writing effectively, you’ll notice that  every  student is brimming over with ideas that just have to get out.

So what does teaching creative writing effectively look like?

We’ve outlined a  seven-step method  that will  scaffold your students through each phase of the creative process  from idea generation through to final edits.

7. Create inspiring and original prompts

Use the following formats to generate prompts that get students inspired:

• personal memories (“Write about a person who taught you an important lesson”)
• imaginative scenarios
• prompts based on a familiar mentor text (e.g. “Write an alternative ending to your favorite book”). These are especially useful for giving struggling students an easy starting point.
• lead-in sentences (“I looked in the mirror and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Somehow overnight I…”).
• fascinating or thought-provoking images with a directive (“Who do you think lives in this mountain cabin? Tell their story”).

Don’t have the time or stuck for ideas? Check out our list of 100 student writing prompts

6. unpack the prompts together.

Explicitly teach your students how to dig deeper into the prompt for engaging and original ideas.

Probing questions are an effective strategy for digging into a prompt. Take this one for example:

“I looked in the mirror and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Somehow overnight I…”

Ask “What questions need answering here?” The first thing students will want to know is:

What happened overnight?

No doubt they’ll be able to come up with plenty of zany answers to that question, but there’s another one they could ask to make things much more interesting:

Who might “I” be?

In this way, you subtly push students to go beyond the obvious and into more original and thoughtful territory. It’s even more useful with a deep prompt:

“Write a story where the main character starts to question something they’ve always believed.”

Here students could ask:

• What sorts of beliefs do people take for granted?
• What might make us question those beliefs?
• What happens when we question something we’ve always thought is true?
• How do we feel when we discover that something isn’t true?

Try splitting students into groups, having each group come up with probing questions for a prompt, and then discussing potential “answers” to these questions as a class.

The most important lesson at this point should be that good ideas take time to generate. So don’t rush this step!

5. Warm-up for writing

A quick warm-up activity will:

• allow students to see what their discussed ideas look like on paper
• help fix the “I don’t know how to start” problem
• warm up writing muscles quite literally (especially important for young learners who are still developing handwriting and fine motor skills).

Freewriting  is a particularly effective warm-up. Give students 5–10 minutes to “dump” all their ideas for a prompt onto the page for without worrying about structure, spelling, or grammar.

After about five minutes you’ll notice them starting to get into the groove, and when you call time, they’ll have a better idea of what captures their interest.

Did you know? The Story Factory in Reading Eggs allows your students to write and publish their own storybooks using an easy step-by-step guide.

4. Start planning

Now it’s time for students to piece all these raw ideas together and generate a plan. This will synthesize disjointed ideas and give them a roadmap for the writing process.

Note:  at this stage your strong writers might be more than ready to get started on a creative piece. If so, let them go for it – use planning for students who are still puzzling things out.

Here are four ideas for planning:

Graphic organisers

A graphic organiser will allow your students to plan out the overall structure of their writing. They’re also particularly useful in “chunking” the writing process, so students don’t see it as one big wall of text.

Storyboards and illustrations

These will engage your artistically-minded students and give greater depth to settings and characters. Just make sure that drawing doesn’t overshadow the writing process.

Voice recordings

If you have students who are hesitant to commit words to paper, tell them to think out loud and record it on their device. Often they’ll be surprised at how well their spoken words translate to the page.

Write a blurb

This takes a bit more explicit teaching, but it gets students to concisely summarize all their main ideas (without giving away spoilers). Look at some blurbs on the back of published books before getting them to write their own. Afterward they could test it out on a friend – based on the blurb, would they borrow it from the library?

3. Produce rough drafts

Warmed up and with a plan at the ready, your students are now ready to start wordsmithing. But before they start on a draft, remind them of what a draft is supposed to be:

• a work in progress.

Remind them that  if they wait for the perfect words to come, they’ll end up with blank pages .

Instead, it’s time to take some writing risks and get messy. Encourage this by:

• demonstrating the writing process to students yourself
• taking the focus off spelling and grammar (during the drafting stage)
• providing meaningful and in-depth feedback (using words, not ticks!).

Reading Eggs also gives you access to an ever-expanding collection of over 3,500 online books!

2. share drafts for peer feedback.

Don’t saddle yourself with 30 drafts for marking. Peer assessment is a better (and less exhausting) way to ensure everyone receives the feedback they need.

Why? Because for something as personal as creative writing, feedback often translates better when it’s in the familiar and friendly language that only a peer can produce. Looking at each other’s work will also give students more ideas about how they can improve their own.

Scaffold peer feedback to ensure it’s constructive. The following methods work well:

Student rubrics

A simple rubric allows students to deliver more in-depth feedback than “It was pretty good.” The criteria will depend on what you are ultimately looking for, but students could assess each other’s:

• use of language.

Whatever you opt for, just make sure the language you use in the rubric is student-friendly.

Two positives and a focus area

Have students identify two things their peer did well, and one area that they could focus on further, then turn this into written feedback. Model the process for creating specific comments so you get something more constructive than “It was pretty good.” It helps to use stems such as:

I really liked this character because…

I found this idea interesting because it made me think…

I was a bit confused by…

I wonder why you… Maybe you could… instead.

1. The editing stage

Now that students have a draft and feedback, here’s where we teachers often tell them to “go over it” or “give it some final touches.”

But our students don’t always know how to edit.

Scaffold the process with questions that encourage students to think critically about their writing, such as:

• Are there any parts that would be confusing if I wasn’t there to explain them?
• Are there any parts that seem irrelevant to the rest?
• Which parts am I most uncertain about?
• Does the whole thing flow together, or are there parts that seem out of place?
• Are there places where I could have used a better word?
• Are there any grammatical or spelling errors I notice?

Key to this process is getting students to  read their creative writing from start to finish .

Important note:  if your students are using a word processor, show them where the spell-check is and how to use it. Sounds obvious, but in the age of autocorrect, many students simply don’t know.

A final word on teaching creative writing

Remember that the best writers write regularly.

Incorporate them into your lessons as often as possible, and soon enough, you’ll have just as much fun  marking  your students’ creative writing as they do producing it.

Need more help supporting your students’ writing?

Read up on  how to get reluctant writers writing , strategies for  supporting struggling secondary writers , or check out our huge list of writing prompts for kids .

Watch your students get excited about writing and publishing their own storybooks in the Story Factory

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How to Teach Creative Writing

Last Updated: March 13, 2024 References

This article was co-authored by Christopher Taylor, PhD . Christopher Taylor is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at Austin Community College in Texas. He received his PhD in English Literature and Medieval Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2014. There are 13 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been viewed 117,269 times.

Creative writing is one of the most enjoyable types of writing for students. Not only does it allow students to explore their imaginations, but it helps them to structure their ideas and produce writing that they can be proud of. However, creative writing is a relatively difficult type of writing to teach and offers challenges to both new and seasoned teachers alike. Fortunately, though, with some work of their own, teachers can better develop their own abilities to teach creative writing.

Providing Students with the Fundamentals

• Theme. The theme of a story is its message or the main idea behind it.
• Setting. The setting of a story is the location or time it takes place in.
• Plot. The plot is the overall story, narrative, or sequence of events.
• Characterization. Characterization is how a character or person in a story is explained or presented to the reader.
• Conflict and dramatic action. Conflict and dramatic action are the main events of focus in the story. These events are often tense or exciting and are used to lure the reader in. [1] X Research source

• Explain how your students, as writers, can appeal to the humanity of their readers. One great way to do this is to ask them to explore character development. By developing the characters in their story, readers will become invested in the story.
• Discuss the triggers that engage readers in an effective story. Most great stories start with a problem, which is solved with the resolution, or conclusion of the story. Encourage students to create an engaging problem that will hook the readers in the first few pages of a short story or novel. [2] X Research source

• By setting the tone and atmosphere of a story, the author will establish his or her attitude to the subject and the feel of the story.
• Tone can be positive, neutral, or negative. [3] X Research source
• Atmosphere can be dark, happy, or neither.
• Descriptive words like “darkness” or “sunshine” can help set both the tone and atmosphere. [4] X Research source

• Active verbs are used to show action in the story.
• Active verbs are very often a better alternative to passive voice, as it keeps your writing clear and concise for your readers. [5] X Research source
• For example, instead of writing “The cat was chased by the dog” your student can write “The dog chased the cat.”

Guiding Students through the Process

• Tell your students to brainstorm about ideas they are truly interested in.
• If you must restrict the general topic, make sure that your students have a good amount of wiggle room within the broad topic of the assignment.
• Never assign specific topics and force students to write. This will undermine the entire process. [6] X Research source

• Letting your students know that the outline is non-binding. They don’t have to follow it in later steps of the writing process.
• Telling your students that the parts of their outline should be written very generally.
• Recommending that your students create several outlines, or outlines that go in different directions (in terms of plot and other elements of storytelling). The more avenues your students explore, the better. [7] X Research source

• Tell students that there is no “right” way to write a story.
• Let students know that their imaginations should guide their way.
• Show students examples of famous writing that breaks normal patterns, like the works of E.E. Cummings, William Faulkner, Charles Dickens, and William Shakespeare.
• Ask students to forget about any expectations they think you have for how a story should be written. [8] X Research source

• Gather the first drafts and comment on the student's work. For first drafts, you want to check on the overall structure of the draft, proper word use, punctuation, spelling, and overall cohesion of the piece. [9] X Research source
• Remind them that great writers usually wrote several drafts before they were happy with their stories.
• Avoid grading drafts for anything other than completion.

• Let students pair off to edit each others' papers.
• Have your students join groups of 3 or 4 and ask them to go edit and provide feedback on each member’s story.
• Provide guidance so students contribute constructively to the group discussion. [10] X Research source

• Reward your students if they are innovative or do something unique and truly creative.
• Avoid evaluating your students based on a formula.
• Assess and review your own standards as often as you can. Remember that the point is to encourage your students' creativity. [11] X Research source

Spurring Creativity

• Teach your students about a variety of writers and genres.
• Have your students read examples of different genres.
• Promote a discussion within your class of the importance of studying literature.
• Ask students to consider the many ways literature improves the world and asks individuals to think about their own lives. [12] X Research source

• Make sure your room is stocked with a wide variety of fiction stories.
• Make sure your room is stocked with plenty of paper for your students to write on.
• Line up other writing teachers or bring in writers from the community to talk to and encourage your students.

• Cut out pictures and photographs from magazines, comic books, and newspapers.
• Have your students cut out photographs and pictures and contribute them to your bank.
• Consider having your students randomly draw a given number of photos and pictures and writing a short story based on what they draw.
• This technique can help students overcome writer's block and inspire students who think that they're "not creative." [13] X Research source

• Pair your students with students from another grade in your school.
• Allow your students to write stories that younger students in your school would like to read.
• Pair your students with another student in the class and have them evaluate each others' work. [14] X Research source

• If you just have a typical classroom to work with, make sure to put inspirational posters or other pictures on the walls.
• Open any curtains so students can see outside.
• If you have the luxury of having an extra classroom or subdividing your own classroom, create a comfortable space with a lot of inspirational visuals.
• Writing spaces can help break writer's block and inspire students who think that they're "not creative." [15] X Research source

• Involve students in the printing process.
• Publication does not have to be expensive or glossy.
• Copies can be made in the school workroom if possible or each student might provide a copy for the others in the group.
• A collection of the stories can be bound with a simple stapler or brads.
• Seek out other opportunities for your students to publish their stories.

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You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://www.writersonlineworkshops.com/courses/creative-writing-101
• ↑ https://kobowritinglife.com/2012/10/14/six-tips-for-engaging-readers-within-two-seconds-the-hook-in-fiction-and-memoir/
• ↑ https://www.dailywritingtips.com/in-writing-tone-is-the-author%E2%80%99s-attitude/
• ↑ http://ourenglishclass.net/class-notes/writing/the-writing-process/craft/tone-and-mood/
• ↑ https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/539/02/
• ↑ http://www.alfiekohn.org/article/choices-children/
• ↑ https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-fiction/7-steps-to-creating-a-flexible-outline-for-any-story
• ↑ http://thewritepractice.com/the-formula-to-write-a-novel/
• ↑ https://student.unsw.edu.au/editing-your-essay
• ↑ http://orelt.col.org/module/unit/5-promoting-creative-writing
• ↑ http://education.seattlepi.com/grade-creative-writing-paper-3698.html
• ↑ http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/04/educating-teenagers-emotions-through-literature/476790/
• ↑ http://www.wrightingwords.com/for-teachers/5-tips-for-teaching-creative-writing/

About This Article

To teach creative writing, start by introducing your students to the core elements of storytelling, like theme, setting, and plot, while reminding them that there’s no formula for combining these elements to create a story. Additionally, explain how important it is to use tone and atmosphere, along with active verbs, to write compelling stories that come alive. When your students have chosen their topics, have them create story outlines before they begin writing. Then, read their rough drafts and provide feedback to keep them on the right path to storytelling success. For tips from our English reviewer on how to spur creativity in your students, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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How to Teach Writing - Resources for Creative Writing Teachers

Fiction writing course syllabus with lesson plans, fiction writing exercises and worksheets, resources for teaching introductory poetry writing, resources for teaching children.

How to teach writing - general thoughts

• help students to understand the elements of craft (e.g., story structure, poetic meter, etc.) so that they can recognize them in their reading and consciously experiment with them in their writing.
• open students' eyes to the options available to them when they write a story or poem (e.g., "showing" instead of "telling", using different kinds of narrators and narrative viewpoints, using different poetic forms).
• encourage students to become close observers of the world around them and to find creative material in their environments.
• teach students the value of specificity, of using all five senses to discover details that may not be obvious to the casual observer.
• help students to separate the processes of writing and editing, to avoid self-criticism while writing their rough drafts to allow ideas to flow freely (for this to work, their teachers also have to avoid criticizing rough drafts!). Teach students to treat self-editing as a separate stage in the writing process.
• get students reading in the genre they'll be writing; e.g., if they're writing poetry, encourage them to read a lot of poems.
• help students learn to trust their own perspectives and observations, to believe that they have something interesting to say.
• teach students not to wait for inspiration, that they can write even when not inspired.
• get students excited about writing!

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How to become a creative writing teacher, how to become a japanese teacher.

Becoming a creative writing teacher requires a particular skill set and a level of education. Different educational settings carry differing requirements for credentials, licensing, and education. However, a particular set of talents and exercised skills will be useful across these different settings. A creative writing teacher guides workshops and mentors students one-on-one, offering constructive feedback on stories, poems or essays.

Earn the appropriate degree for the job you desire. For a high-school teaching position, you will need at least a bachelor's degree and the appropriate state licensure to teach in a K-12 school. However, most creative writing teacher positions are in private or post-secondary schools, since creative writing is not often an individual course offered in public school systems. Typically a private or post-secondary level educator in creative writing carries a terminal degree, meaning an MFA or a Ph.D. The MFA is a masters of fine arts degree and renders an applicant qualified to teach creative writing at the college level, guiding workshops and critiquing student writing. MFA programs are offered nationwide, and many offer tuition scholarships and stipends for teaching assistantships and research appointments. Some teaching positions will require or prefer both the MFA and Ph.D. degrees.

Gain classroom experience in graduate school. During your MFA or Ph.D. program, take any opportunity to teach courses as a teaching assistant. This teaching experience will allow you to compete for jobs on a national level and will give you more to point to on a resume than your degree and published work. Most schools look for applicants who have a solid teaching record and references who can attest to their talents and professionalism in the classroom.

Publish widely. Most creative writing positions, especially at the graduate level in universities, require applicants to have published multiple books in the genres they plan to teach. You will have the most success on the market if you can demonstrate that you are actively writing, publishing and even editing in literary journals and small or major presses, particularly if your work is well-reviewed. Universities seek professors of creative writing who will bring experience and knowledge of the writing process to the classroom. Therefore, books and published poems, stories and essays demonstrate your success in the market as well as in academia.

• It can be difficult to balance your pursuit of an advanced degree with your desire to write creatively, but if you wish to teach creative writing, you must write and seek publication.

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Jan Archer holds a Bachelor of Arts in political science and a master's degree in creative writing. Roth has written trade books for Books-a-Million and has published articles on green living, wellness and education topics. She taught business writing, literature, creative writing and English composition at the college level for five years.

Teacher’s Guide: Tips and Tricks in Teaching Creative Writing

John anderson.

• February 6, 2019

Creative writing is one of the most enjoyable forms of writing that students learn in school. Unlike in the case of academic and formal theme writing, students are able to express their creativity in such writing classes. They can craft stories, describe characters and settings, and share with the readers their thoughts and ideas. Through creative writing, they can share their experiences, make their own world, design their heroes and villains, and create and solve conflicts for their characters.

Teachers play a big role in encouraging their students to enjoy writing. As the captain of the ship, you should lead and inspire them to enjoy the craft and later on, be good at it. However, how can you be an effective creative writing teacher? Here are some tips and tricks for you:

As with teaching any subject, planning is of great importance when teaching writing. Plan ahead to make sure that you and your class will be on the right track. Schedule your lessons and arrange topics chronologically. Start with the basics such as plot and character development. Look for materials to supplement your lessons. There are plenty of creative writing worksheets online . Make use of them as part of your students writing activities—either as seatwork or homework.

Set themes and topics

It also helps to line up themes and topics for your students to draw inspiration from. Browse through magazines and books to get ideas. List down topics as your “seed ideas” and arrange them according to your scheduled lessons. This should help students use their imagination as they work on subjects that may not be familiar to them.

Challenge your students

Test your students’ skills by giving them writing challenges. One good example is writing a six-word story. Writing stories can be daunting, especially when you’re required to write at least three pages, for instance. But the thing is that it’s harder to write when you’re limited to just a few words. This kind of challenge will make your students get those creative juices oozing for good.

Encourage competition

Friendly competition is great for every class. Encourage your students to step up their game by giving them activities that will earn them points and bragging rights. Give them contests such as character designing and making their own story endings, as well as homework like word bank and journaling. Give them points for their output and give recognition to top scorers. Remember that creativity is subjective, so create a simple rubric to assess their written works.

Allow review and feedback

Let your students review the works of their classmates. You can group your class into small groups wherein they can share their stories and writing pieces.  This should help your young writers to gain confidence in what they’re doing and listen to other people’s comments and suggestions to better their skills. At the same time, it helps you gauge the competencies and weaknesses of your students through the eyes of other audience.

The best thing about teaching a subject like creative writing is that you don’t just get to teach, you also learn in the process. It is truly a great experience seeing your students get better at writing. Who knows, you could very well be training the next Hemingway or perhaps the next J.K. Rowling.

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How to Teach Creative Writing to High School Students

Creative Writing was forced onto my schedule; I didn’t ask for it. But it ended up becoming my favorite class period of the day. While academic English courses can feel high-stakes and always short on time, Creative Writing can be a refreshingly relaxed elective class. In many districts with loose curriculums, Creative Writing is what you make of it. In this post, I outline six steps to show you how to teach creative writing to high school students.

Why Teach Creative Writing

Before we get into the how , let’s first address the why . Why bother teaching Creative Writing in the first place? Students’ basic skills are lower than ever; is now really the time to encourage them to break the rules?

If you want to get really deep into why you should teach Creative Writing, I have a whole post about it here.

But think about why you love reading. Is it because you were made to annotate or close read a bunch of classic novels? Probably not. You probably fell in love with reading while you were reading something that was fun. And because it was fun, you read more, and your skills as a reader grew.

The same principle applies to writing. If we can make it fun for our students, perhaps we can foster a love for it. And passion is what leads, eventually, to mastery.

Giving our students the opportunity to fall in love with writing is a gift that might help them grow in their academic writing later.

Teach Creative Writing to High School Students Step #1: Decide on Your Standards or Goals

Your school or district may have a mandated syllabus or curriculum. Mine did not. 

Whether you’re given student goals or have to create them, you must have an overall vision for what your Creative Writing class will accomplish. 

Is this a laid-back, engaging course designed to help students discover the fun in writing? Or is it a supplement to rigorous academics for college-bound high school students? 

If you know your school’s student population well, I encourage you to think about their needs. Some students just need to write more–more of anything, but lots more. Some students are high achieving and ready to write their first novels! If possible, design your course around the needs and interests of the general student population in your school or district. 

Regardless of how rigorous your Creative Writing course will be, deciding on these goals first will help you in backwards planning. 

Teach Creative Writing to High School Students Step #2: Choose Your Final Assessments and Big Projects

Before we can start planning our lessons, we have to decide what skills or knowledge our students will need. And to know what they need, we have to decide on their summative assessments.

Will your final assessment be a short story? A collection of poetry? Are you required to offer a final exam?

Once you know what students will need to do, you can make a list of the skill they’ll need. This list will become a list of lessons you’ll need to teach.

Fairy Tale Retelling Project

My Fairy Tale Retelling Project is a great Creative Writing assessment. For this project, students had to first choose a fairy tale. Then, they rewrote the story from the perspective of the villain.

This project works really well because students have structure. They can pick any fairy tale they want, but they can’t write about just anything.

Secondly, students already know the story, so they don’t have to worry about a beginning, middle, and end. The open-endedness of writing a story completely from scratch has paralyzed my students before. Structure allows students lots of creative freedom without the excuse of “I don’t know what to write.”

Author Study Project

If you’d like your Creative Writing class to help beginner writers have fun and just get some practice with fiction writing, a Fairy Tale Retelling Project would probably be perfect for your class.

Another project I’ve done with my students is an Author Study . In this project, students choose one author to study in-depth. Then, they attempt to replicate that author’s style in an original work.

If you’d like your class to also include lots of exposure to other writers or classic literature, then this might be a great assessment for your class.

Learn more about doing an author study in this step-by-step post.

Test or Final Exam

I also gave my students a final exam focused on literary terms.

This Literary Terms Test allowed me to test students on the academic knowledge they gained throughout class instead of their writing ability. This test also helped me fulfill my district’s requirement of having a final exam at the end of each course.

Once you’ve decided on your class’s major projects and assessments, you can begin designing the rest of your class.

Teach Creative Writing to High School Students Step #3: Backwards Plan

Now that you know what your students will need to do at the end of this class, you can list out everything you need to teach them in order for them to be successful.

For example, if you opt for an author study as a final project, you know what you will need to cover. You will need to teach students some literary terms so that they can describe an author’s style. You’ll need to show them how to analyze a poem.

During the course of your class, you’ll also want to expose students to a variety of authors and mentor texts. Students will need to practice basic writing techniques in order to replicate those of their chosen authors.

If you need some inspiration for what kinds of lessons to teach, check out this post on essential Creative Writing lessons.

Teach Creative Writing to High School Students Step #4: Decide on Your Class Structure

Once you’ve decided on the end goals for your Creative Writing class, you can use them to help create day-to-day plans. 

What will your class look like? Will it be full of lots of quiet and independent work time? Will it be full of frenetic energy with students working in collaborative groups? Are students writing in notebooks or on laptops?

Of course, a successful class will most likely include a mixture of all of the above. But it’s up to you to decide on your ratio. 

Again, I encourage you to think about your school’s population. If you’re on ninety-minute blocks, is it realistic for students to be quietly writing that whole time? If you have high-achieving students, might they benefit from working independently at home and then getting and giving peer feedback during class time?

Use your goals to help decide on a general class structure. 

Warm-ups for Creative Writing

You’ll need a consistent way to begin each class.

When I initially began teaching Creative Writing, I just wanted to provide my students with more time to write. We began every class period with free writing. I gave students a couple of prompts to choose from each day, and then we’d write for about ten minutes. 

( Those journal prompts are right here . Every day includes two prompts plus a third option of freewriting.)

Students were given the option to share part of their writing if they wanted to. Every couple of weeks I’d flip through their notebooks to make sure they were keeping up, but I only read the entries they starred for me in advance. 

Later, I wanted to add some rigor to my Creative Writing class and leverage more mentor texts. I created a Poem of the Week activity for each week of the course. 

This gave students the opportunity to study professional writing before using it as a mentor text for a new, original piece. 

(You can read more about using these Poem of the Week activities here.) 

As my goals for the class and my students change, so did the way we began class. 

How can you begin your class in a way that supports the end goals or teaches the desired standards? How often will peers work together?

Teach Creative Writing to High School Students Step #5: Focus on Engagement Strategies

Now you can actually start planning lessons and projects!

But as you do so, focus on creating engaging ones–especially if your class is meant to be a fun elective.

Need more tips? Check out this post full of Creative Writing teaching tips!

Use Mentor Texts and Lots of Examples

Have you ever tried putting a puzzle together without knowing what the image was going to look like? It would be pretty difficult! Similarly, students need lots of examples of strong writing to aspire to. 

Without clear models or mentor texts , students will happily turn in unread drafts. They’ll choose the first word that comes to their mind instead of searching for a better one. 

But if you surround students with great writing, highlight strong technique when discussing the writing of others, and challenge them to notice the details in their own writing, they’ll naturally become better at self-editing.

I don’t believe that you can provide students with too many mentor texts or examples of strong writing. As you teach Creative Writing, keep or take pictures of strong writing samples from students to use as examples later. 

Nearly all of my lessons and projects include an example along with instruction.

Model and Create with Your Students

You can even use your own writing as an example. When I had students free write to creative writing prompts, I always wrote with them. Sometimes I would then put my notebook under the document camera and model reading my own work.  

I would cross out words and replace them or underline phrases I thought were strong enough to keep. Model for students not just great writing, but the process of strengthening writing.

And then give them plenty of time to edit theirs. This is when having students engage in peer feedback is a game-changer. 

Without great writing to aspire to, however, students easily become lazy and turn in work that is “good enough” in their eyes. Don’t let them get lazy in their writing. Keep throwing greater and greater work in front of them and challenge them to push themselves. 

(This is another reason I love using Poem of the Week warm-ups –they expose students to a new writer every week!)

Set Clear Expectations

Creative writing causes a lot of students anxiety. There’s no “right” answer, so how will they know if they creatively wrote “correctly?”

Help them out by setting clear expectations. Offering a rubric for every project is great for this. If you can, give them specifics to include. “At least 500 words” or “three or more similes” are nice, concrete guidelines that students can follow.

Give Students Choice

Offering students choice always boosts engagement. It lets students take charge of their learning and pursue something that interests them.

For example, when I teach odes , students are given the opportunity to write about something they love.

With an author study , students can study a writer whose style and work they admire.

Teach Creative Writing to High School Students Step #6: Use Clear and Structured Expectations

While showing students excellent prose or perfect poetry should help inspire students, your writers will still need some hard parameters to follow. 

Academic writing is often easier for students than creative writing. Usually, academic writing follows a structure or certain formula. The rubric dictates exactly how many quotes need to be included or how long an essay needs to be. MLA or APA formats tell students how to punctuate quotes and citations. 

These rules don’t apply to creative writing. And while that’s exactly what makes creative writing awesome, it’s often overwhelming. 

So do your students a favor and give them some clear expectations (without, of course, entirely dictating what they need to write about).  

The project also includes a rubric, so young writers know what should be included in their stories.

Don’t give your students so much creative freedom that it paralyzes them! Your writers are still students; give them the same level of structure and organization that you would in any other class. 

Engage your students in more creative writing!

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Teach Creative Writing to High School Students Step #7: Give Students Choices

So how do you give students frameworks, requirements, and uphold high expectations without stifling their creativity?

Give students choices. You can write about A, B, or C, as long as you meet requirements 1, 2, and 3. 

Offering choices works with small one-day assignments or lessons as well as bigger, longer-term projects. 

The previously mentioned Fairy Tale Retelling Project is a great example of offering a narrow selection of choices that uphold expectations without dictating what students write. 

Another one of my favorite examples of offering students choices is my “Show. Don’t Tell” Mini-lesson . This lesson touches on everything students need to successfully learn creative writing. 

First I teach them the concept of showing vs. telling in writing through direct instruction. I show them lots of examples of expanding a “telling sentence” into a “showing paragraph.”

Then I model for students how I would write a paragraph that shows crucial information, rather than telling it. 

Lastly, I have students pick a strip of paper from a hat or a bag. Each strip of paper contains a “telling sentence” that they must then write as a “showing paragraph.” Students are limited by the sentences I provide, but they still have complete freedom over how they achieve that detailed paragraph. 

If you wanted to give students even more freedom, you could let them pick their sentences or trade with a peer rather than blindly choosing. 

Any time you can give students a choice, you give them permission to use their creativity and allow them to take some of the initiative in their own learning.

Teach Creative Writing to High School Students Step #8: Encourage Peer Collaboration and Feedback

We can tell students something a hundred times, but they won’t listen until a peer says the same thing. Us educators know the value of positive peer interaction, so don’t limit it in a creative writing class!

There are a ton of ways to implement peer interaction in a creative writing class. I often do this on the first day of class with a writing game. You’ve probably heard of it: everyone writes a sentence on a piece of paper, then everyone passes the paper and adds a sentence, and so on. 

I highly encourage you to use peer feedback throughout the class. I usually start having students share their work from day one with my free “I Am” Poem Lesson so that they can start getting used to having their work read by others immediately.

Make getting feedback so routine in your room that students don’t even question it.

It’s really tempting to let students get away without sharing their work. We don’t want to make shy or anxious students uncomfortable. I mean, what better way to completely ruin creative writing for a student than to make them feel embarrassed all the time, right?

But keep trying to encourage shy students to share. Even if that means you share it anonymously or read it aloud for them. 

I recommend including some kind of peer feedback with every writing assignment . Yes, even short practice assignments. This will work as a kind of “immersion therapy” for receiving feedback on more involved work.

After some time, you might find that your students even begin to share their work without your prompting! 

I like to organize the desks in my Creative Writing class so that students are in little groups. I’ve found that at least half of my classes will begin talking and sharing with one another in their little groups while working on projects. 

They’ll ask each other questions or to remind them of a word. They’ll read sentences aloud and ask if they sound right. Personally, I would much rather hear this kind of chatter in my class than have a dead silent room of boring writers!

However you decide to allow students to work together, be sure to provide the opportunity. Reading and getting feedback from peers could possibly teach students more about writing than any of your instruction (sorry!).

One of the truly great things about teaching creative writing to high school students is that there often isn’t a rigid curriculum. Of course, this is also sometimes one of the worst things about teaching creative writing to high school students!

You have total freedom over the assignments you give, the standards you teach, and how you organize and structure your classroom. After a few years of teaching Creative Writing, however, I’ve found that sticking to these six steps is a great way to have a successful semester.

If you’re excited about teaching your Creative Writing class, but are running low on prep time, check out my complete 9-week Creative Writing course ! Included are two different types of warm-ups, poetry analysis activities from well-known authors, mini-lesson, projects, and more!

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My Writing Students Were Arrested at Columbia. Their Voices Have Never Been More Essential

O n April 30, 56 years after Columbia sent the police in to arrest student protesters who had taken over Hamilton Hall in protest of the Vietnam War—protests the school loves to promote—I was walking my 12-year-old daughter home after her choir performance. We had gone an extra stop on the subway because the stop at 116th, Columbia’s stop, was closed. Instead, we had to walk back to our apartment from the 125th stop. When we got within sight of Columbia, a line of dozens of police blocked our path. I asked them to let us through; I pointed to our apartment building and said we lived there. As a Columbia professor, I live in Columbia housing.

“I have my orders,” the cop in charge said.

“I live right there,” I said. “It’s my daughter’s bedtime.”

“I have my orders,” he said again.

“I’m just trying to get home,” I said.

We were forced to walk back the way we came from and circle around from another block. Luckily, our building has an entrance through the bodega in the basement. This is how I took my daughter up to her room and sent her to bed.

Read More: Columbia's Relationship With Student Protesters Has Long Been Fraught

A week earlier, I had brought some food for the students camping out on Columbia’s West Lawn and had met with similar resistance. Security guards asked whether I was really faculty; I had already swiped my faculty badge that should have confirmed my identity. They asked to take my badge, then they said I hadn’t swiped it, which I had, two seconds earlier, as they watched. They said their professors had never brought food to them before. I didn’t know what to say to this—“I’m sorry that your professors never brought you food?” They called someone and told them the number on my badge. Finally, they were forced to let me through. They said again that their professors had never brought them food. “OK,” I said, and walked into campus. I reported their behavior and never received a reply.

On April 30, after I had got my daughter to bed, my partner and I took the dog down to pee. We watched the protesters call, “Shame!” as the police went in and out of the blockade that stretched 10 blocks around campus. Earlier that day, we had seen police collecting barricades—it seemed like there would be a bit of peace. As soon as it got dark, they must have used those barricades and more to block off the 10 blocks. There were reports on campus that journalists were not allowed out of Pulitzer Hall, including Columbia’s own student journalists and the dean of the School of Journalism, under threat of arrest. Faculty and students who did not live on campus had been forbidden access to campus in the morning. There was no one around to witness. My partner and I had to use social media to see the hundreds of police in full riot gear, guns out, infiltrate Columbia’s Hamilton Hall, where protesters had holed up , mirroring the 1968 protests that had occupied the same building.

In the next few days, I was in meeting after meeting. Internally, we were told that the arrests had been peaceful and careful, with no student injuries. The same thing was repeated by Mayor Adams and CNN . Meanwhile, president Minouche Shafik had violated faculty governance and the university bylaws that she consult the executive committee before calling police onto campus. (The committee voted unanimously against police intervention .)

Read More: Columbia Cancels Main Commencement Following Weeks of Pro-Palestinian Protests

Then, Saturday morning, I got an email from a couple of writing students that they had been released from jail. I hadn’t heard that any of our students had been involved. They told me they hadn’t gotten food or water, or even their meds, for 24 hours. They had watched their friends bleed, kicked in the face by police. They said they had been careful not to damage university property. At least one cop busted into a locked office and fired a gun , threatened by what my students called “unarmed students in pajamas.”

In the mainstream media, the story was very different. The vandalism was blamed on students. Police showed off one of Oxford Press’s Terrorism: A Very Short Introduction . (This series of books offers scholarly introductions that help students prepare for classes, not how-to pamphlets teaching them to do terrorism.)

“I feel like I’m being gaslit,” one of my students said.

I teach creative writing, and I am the author of a book about teaching creative writing and the origins of creative-writing programs in the early 20th century. The oldest MFA program in the country, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, was funded by special-interest groups like the Rockefeller Foundation and, famously, the CIA, and was explicitly described by director Paul Engle as a tool to spread American values.

Read More: 'Why Are Police in Riot Gear?' Inside Columbia and City College's Darkest Night

The way we teach creative writing is essential because it shapes what kinds of narratives will be seen as valuable, pleasurable, and convincing. Today’s writing students will record how our current events become history. One of the strategies Columbia took with its police invasion was to block access of faculty, students, and press to the truth. It didn’t want any witnesses. It wanted to control the story.

For weeks, Columbia administration and the mainstream media has painted student protesters as violent and disruptive—and though there have been incidents of antisemitism, racism, and anti-Muslim hatred, including a chemical attack on pro-Palestine protesters , I visited the encampment multiple times and saw a place of joy, love, and community that included explicit teach-ins on antisemitism and explicit rules against any hateful language and action. Students of different faiths protected each other’s right to prayer. Meanwhile, wary of surveillance and the potential use of facial recognition to identify them, they covered their faces. Faculty have become afraid to use university email addresses to discuss ways to protect their students. At one point, the administration circulated documents they wanted students to sign, agreeing to self-identify their involvement and leave the encampment by a 2 p.m. deadline or face suspension or worse. In the end, student radio WKCR reported that even students who did leave the encampment were suspended.

In a recent statement in the Guardian and an oral history in New York Magazine , and through the remarkable coverage of WKCR, Columbia students have sought to take back the narrative. They have detailed the widespread support on campus for student protesters; the peaceful nature of the demonstrations; widespread student wishes to divest financially from Israel, cancel the Tel Aviv Global Center, and end Columbia’s dual-degree program with Tel Aviv University; and the administration’s lack of good faith in negotiations. As part of the Guardian statement, the student body says that multiple news outlets refused to print it. They emphasize their desire to tell their own story.

In a time of mass misinformation, writers who tell the truth and who are there to witness the truth firsthand are essential and must be protected. My students in Columbia’s writing program who have been arrested and face expulsion for wanting the university to disclose and divest, and the many other student protesters, represent the remarkable energy and skepticism of the younger generation who are committed not only to witnessing but participating in the making of a better world. Truth has power, but only if there are people around to tell the truth. We must protect their right to do so, whether or not the truth serves our beliefs. It is the next generation of writers who understand this best and are fighting for both their right and ours to be heard.

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United Middle School teacher honored for KGNS Teacher of the Month

LAREDO, Tex. (KGNS) - Creative writing students at United Middle School have come together to nominate their beloved teacher, Maria Ramirez, affectionately known as Mrs. Ram, for the KGNS Teacher of the Month award.

Mrs. Ram received multiple nominations from her students, who love how she teaches their 7th-grade creative writing class. One student said, “She makes us feel important and that our opinions are valued,” which many others agreed with.

Mrs. Ram herself acknowledges the profound impact of receiving nominations directly from her students, emphasizing how it changes the dynamic of the award. “It makes it a world of difference because we know every day we come to work, we come here to do a job, and we do the best that we possibly can. However, when you know that the people sitting there across from you actually understand and are grateful for what you are doing and just reciprocate this way, it just makes it a thousand times better,” she remarked.

The KGNS Teacher of the Month program, sponsored by the Joey Tellez Law Firm, honors outstanding teachers in the community. The winner gets a $250 gift card, a basket of goodies, and a mug and t-shirt.

For more headlines. click here .

Copyright 2024 KGNS. All rights reserved.

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The Creative Penn

Writing, self-publishing, book marketing, making a living with your writing

How Writing Work For Hire Books Led To Becoming An Indie Author With Aubre Andrus

posted on May 13, 2024

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:09:09 — 56.1MB)

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How can you blend ‘work for hire', ghostwriting, and being an indie author into a successful hybrid career writing books for children? Aubre Andrus gives her tips.

In the intro, Countdown Pages on FindawayVoices by Spotify; the impact of AI narrated audiobooks on Audible [ Bloomberg ]; Ideas for short fiction anthologies and Kevin J. Anderson's Kickstarter ; Penguin Random House launches internal ChatGPT tool for employees [ Publishers Lunch ]; 2024 is the year AI at work gets real [ Microsoft ].

Plus, reasons for the new theme music, licensed from AudioJungle for 10m downloads (the podcast is up to 9.7 million with the old tune); and planning for my Kickstarter launch for Spear of Destiny .

This podcast is sponsored by  Kobo Writing Life , which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the  Kobo Writing Life podcast  for interviews with successful indie authors.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at  Patreon.com/thecreativepenn  

Aubre Andrus is an award-winning children's author with more than 50 books, as well as being a ghostwriter and former American Girl magazine editor. Her books, The Look Up Series, feature women in STEM careers.

You can listen above or on  your favorite podcast app  or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

• The background of the American Girl brand
• Pros and cons of work for hire and ghostwriting
• Work for hire best practices to make it worth the money
• Differences in work for hire contracts and payment models
• How to seek out work for hire projects
• Using lessons learned from past projects in your own series
• Creative control over content and marketing a self-published author
• Marketing self-published children's books

You can find Aubre at AubreAndrus.com .

Transcript of Interview with Aubre Andrus

Joanna: Aubre Andrus is an award-winning children's author with more than 50 books, as well as being a ghostwriter and former American Girl Magazine editor. Her books, The Look Up Series, center around women in STEM careers. So welcome to the show. Aubre.

Aubre: Thank you so much for having me.

Joanna: I'm excited to talk about this today. So first up—

Tell us a bit more about you, how you got into writing children's books originally, and how you started out in work for hire.

Aubre: So I started at a kids' magazine right out of college. If anyone is familiar, the company was American Girl. So they publish magazines, books, and also have an extensive doll collection that's very popular in the US.

So while I was working at the magazine, I noticed the book department next door and all the wonderful books they were creating that I had also read as a child. I learned that they were developing all of their concepts in house, and then just hiring authors to execute those ideas.

I also learned that a lot of them were former magazine editors. So it was interesting to me that one day, perhaps, I could leave the magazine and then pitch myself to become one of these authors. So that is what I did.

It was interesting because American Girl was based in Middleton, Wisconsin, in the US. That's very much in the Midwest, not near New York City publishing. So we're very much an island separate from any other type of children's publishing, like the industry.

So even though I got my foot in the door in publishing books, I was still kind of stuck. Like, uh oh, is there any way I can expand this anymore? Do other publishers in New York do this also? I had no idea.

I just started networking at children's book conferences, and frankly, just blindly reaching out to people and saying, “Hey, do you offer any work for hire projects? I've done a couple. I'm interested in doing more.” So I was able to slowly build up that work for hire career.

Joanna: I have a few questions about this. So first of all, I have been in of the American Girls stores in New York. So I am aware of this, but I know some listeners won't be. So can you maybe just talk a bit about that?

I was just fascinated. It did seem to be more modern as in it wasn't just really old school stuff, there were more modern female role models, I guess. I mean, that's what the worry is with these older IP brands, is that they have an old, outdated version of what women are.

Talk about how these IP brands work, and if people don't even know what American Girl is.

Aubre: So it started as kind of like an heirloom doll company from a former teacher and textbook author. So she was really like an educational entrepreneur. So she was sort of not interested in Barbie for her nieces, and she was trying to create something better, in her mind's eye.

So she developed this line of three dolls that were historical characters that then also had a series of six books that accompanied them. It basically was teaching girls what it was like to be a girl back in time.

You know, so what was it like to grow up during World War Two? What was like to grow up as an immigrant coming to the US for the first time? Then it kind of expanded from there, the historical doll collection.

Then it really ballooned into just creating contemporary content for girls. That's what I was a part of at the magazine, which was just like a lifestyle magazine for 8- to 12-year-old girls.

Similar to at the time there was Nickelodeon Magazine, Disney Magazine, Highlights Magazine, like in that same vein, but specifically targeted about girlhood and for girls in that 8 to 12 age range.

Then from there spun the contemporary line of books, and a lot of like crafts, and activity, and recipe, and slumber parties, and just anything that kind of celebrates that girlhood from ages 8 to 12. Then the dolls also then became more contemporary, a line of dolls that looked like you.

Joanna: Like customized content.

Aubre: Yes, and that's really where the company stands today. The historical characters, I think maybe girls today aren't as interested in them, but there is the line of dolls that look like you and you can dress.

They have partnerships with Harry Potter and anything you can imagine, so it's quite a fun company. I loved it as a kid, so it was amazing for me to work there as a grown up.

Joanna: I mean, as business people, we have to think this way. I feel like so often because we are, and the listeners, we're authors first, we're books first, and I think we forget that there's so many other things .

Brands like American Girl, they're good examples. Even if no one is interested in that particular type of thing, the business model is great. I mean, obviously, Barbie does it so well as, as well. So I do like this idea of thinking further than just a book, even if, of course, we're not going to grow a whole empire like this.

You mentioned it was separate from New York publishing. Did you almost feel like sort of second rate? I don't want to use that word, but you know what I mean. Did you find that difficult?

Aubre: I did. I mean, we were so isolated from New York publishing. I think, you know, this isn't an offense to anyone who's working there, I think they would all agree. Some of them have gone on to work for more like New York City publishers, and it is more fast paced, and it's just different.

We sort of had our own little bubble and had our lovely little pace, and we were creating amazing stuff for kids. So I felt like I knew American Girl publishing, but I did not necessarily know children's book publishing. So it was a little intimidating to dive into that.

Joanna: Yes, and on that, I mean, you mentioned networking and going to conferences. I still remember how it felt as a newly self-published author, to feel kind of second rate, to feel looked down upon, to feel like I was a second-class citizen . I imagine you kind of felt that way when you were networking and at conferences.

How did you get through that mindset in order to meet people at these conferences?

Aubre: Well, I mean, I felt that way, that second rate way, in so many ways, because A, I had only done publishing in Middleton, Wisconsin, and then B, I was doing middle grade, which at the time was not hot, not sexy. Everyone was doing YA.

Then I was also doing nonfiction, which also is not fiction, which is where most people want to be. Then also, I was doing work for hires, I wasn't even developing the concepts myself. So there were so many reasons why I felt like a second-rate author. Like, am I a real author? I don't know. So for a while there, I really second guessed myself. Then I just kind of had to get over it like that .

I started working with really amazing brands, like National Geographic Kids and Disney. I mean, these are amazing, and people would kill to have these opportunities . So I just really started embracing work for hire. I get to work on so many fun projects for really amazing brands and IP, and that's really cool. So, yes, I just had to kind of mindset shift.

Joanna: You gave yourself like a talking to and said, make the most of it.

Aubre: Yes.

Joanna: I do think it has to be a mindset shift if people feel that way. Like you mentioned, whether it's the type of publishing you do or whether it's the type of genre you're writing.

What's so funny, I think, with the self-publishing world, is that the romance writers in old school publishing were always looked down upon. People who wrote romance were considered sort of lesser in some way. Now, it's very clear, and it always has been true I think, but before it wasn't so known that they make so much money and they prop up basically the rest of the industry.

Aubre: Exactly. I mean, it blows my mind if anyone ever looks down upon romance. It is the industry, and they are so savvy . I actually keep quite an eye on the romance industry because they are just so smart and what they're doing works. So even though I'm writing books for kids, I'm always kind of peeking over there. Like, wow, they're creating these universes, they're doing this on TikTok. I'm always so impressed by the romance community.

Joanna: They are always ahead. Well done, romance writers listening. I always wish I could do it, but I can't.

Aubre: I'm thinking about it. I'm always like, hmm could I do that? I'm starting to read more in that genre because it is interesting.

Joanna: That's interesting. Okay, so let's come back to the work for hire because, of course, you mentioned some of the great brands you've been writing with. So I guess one thing is that that is an amazing experience.

What are some of the pros and cons of work for hire and ghostwriting?

Aubre: Well, for me, it was a great way to dip my toes into the water, instead of just jumping into the deep end, and slowly build up my skills as an author. I imagine some people who hit it big on their first novel, I mean probably are just absolutely drowning in the industry and don't feel very savvy.

I've really been able to build up a knowledge of different publishers, of different types of projects, discover what I'm good at, what I like . I've really just got a wide range of experience that has only made me a better author.

So after I left American Girl, I took a job in marketing, but I was freelance writing on the side. So compared to freelance writing—because then my dream was to eventually go freelance and just to be a freelance writer—I would have had to take on so many freelance writing projects that pay like two hundred bucks .

I mean, I still see some of these come across my social media feeds. So if they're paying $200 for an article, I mean, how many articles would you have to write and pitch to make a living?

So compared to freelance writing, this is fewer higher paying projects. I like that so much more. I get to control the workload. I can even take on some freelance projects outside of this field. In the past, I've dabbled in content marketing and social media to kind of balance my day.

I don't need to come up with the ideas, I just need to execute someone else's ideas. So it's a little bit, you know, I have felt that I was on a hamster wheel of content production, for sure, absolutely.

There is a hustle element to it of always trying to find the next gig, but I have to remind myself that I'm in control of my workload.

I can turn down a project, if it doesn't pay well, I can hold out for the higher paying project.

I do get a lot of the benefits of a traditional process. I get royalties, I've gone on book tours, I have fan mail, I do school visits, I've done book events . So really, I've gotten everything I wanted out of being a children's book author from these work for hire projects. Also, I see that most books don't earn out their advances.

So there is a balance to it, where I'm like, am I on a hamster wheel? Can I ever get over this hump? But at the same time, I feel like we're all kind of on a hamster wheel. Unless you really hit it big on one huge book project, like you're always going to have to keep pumping out books in a series or—

Joanna: Marketing the backlist.

Aubre: Exactly. I mean, marketing is exhausting as well. So in general, I've very much had a good experience with work for hire. I get my name on the cover and on the spine, depending on the project. I think it just really depends on the publishers you're working for and the relationships you establish. Then from there, you can put your own ideas, you know.

Then the cons would be like, maybe you're working on some projects that you're not as excited about. You can always say no, but you know, when you're getting your foot in the door, you might take on a few things that aren't exactly in your wheelhouse.

I always saw these projects as stepping stones to where I wanted to go , whether it was a stepping stone to get into a certain publisher, or just establish myself with an editor, or kind of wade into new waters.

I kind of slowly stepped into narrative nonfiction and eventually started doing narrative nonfiction novels. Now I'm doing a lot of short story fiction, and I hope that leads to a fiction novel. So there's these ways to slowly build up your skills through work for hire.

Joanna: Yes, I mean, I think some people will be like, yes, but you said they're not your ideas. You're basically writing someone else's ideas, and that, to me, seems one of the biggest issues. So I have co-written a few fiction projects and nonfiction. The fiction, I found extremely hard because I don't play well with others. I was like, I do not want to write anything that is not what I feel is me. So how do you get over that?

I mean, tell us how the process works. If you take one of these projects on, do you get given story beats? Is there anything you can do that's individual or—

Do you just flesh out what someone else has written as an outline?

Aubre: Well, I can speak to my experience in the nonfiction children's book world, and that is often I'm just given like a title . So I really can run with it. You know, I get a lot of control and a lot of the responsibilities put on me to flesh out a project.

I have also done ghostwriting for fiction, so I think it just depends on the project. I agree with you that fiction is much harder. I have a place where I want the story to go, and it might not be the place where what we would call the author—which is the person who came up with the idea, you would be the ghostwriter—where they want it to go.

So you've got to look at it more like, this is my client, and I am trying to make my client happy. On those type of projects, I don't want my name on them. I want my name on the paycheck, I don't want my name on the book.

I think that's how I get over it. I'm just like, this is not mine. I am helping them do theirs, this is their thing, and that is what it is .

In the kids' nonfiction, I've had a ton of fun and a ton of agency to do what I want with the project. They're looking for my expertise to really bring this to life.

Joanna: So the other thing I've learned about people, like yourself, is you have to be incredibly professional, and you have to work to deadline, and you have to do a whole load of things that, frankly, some authors can't do. So tell us about the level of professionalism and your best practices.

How do you get these projects done in a timely manner that make it worth the money?

Aubre: Yes, so most of the projects have pretty quick deadlines, like the writing portion is really just going to be like three months. So I'm a fast writer, my background is in journalism.

So at this point in my career, I just know what I need to do to get this project done. Get your butt in the chair, get the outline, just start writing . I might start at the middle of the book, the beginning of the book, the end of the book, whatever is like hitting me in that moment so that I can get it done.

If some idea is flowing, I'm going to run with it. I'm not going to necessarily write the book from beginning to end because, again, I'm doing a lot of nonfiction. So that has helped me make these projects worth it. Also, maybe not like over researching , because I know, especially with a journalism background, I could easily fall into that rabbit hole.

For the most part, I've had very few projects where I'm like, ugh, that was not worth my time. Those were mostly like kids' craft and science experiment books. Those just take more time because you have to test the crafts, test the science experiments, maybe something didn't work and you have to scrap that whole page or that chapter, do it again. So again, I've just kind of learned that if I'm going to take on a project like that it has to pay quite high.

If I'm going to take on an early reader for National Geographic or something, those are really fun and quick to write and they pay well. So there's such a wide range in the kids' publishing world.

I have friends who do a lot of work for hire fiction, and they are just excellent at it. They love developing story and just pumping it out, like that's their favorite part of the process. They're just going through the process and can just do it as fast as they can. I'm not super fast with fiction, which is why I haven't taken as many fiction projects. I do really well with short stories where I have some constraints, but not the idea of a whole fiction project that is work for hire .

I think, for me, it's good because you are given some characters and a loose outline and an idea. So it's more almost like a writing prompt. You know, like I'm almost getting paid to execute a writing prompt.

So it kind of just depends on if that's something that sounds exciting to you or not. Like, for me, I work good under deadlines, I work good when I have a little prompt and a format. You're often given a title and the page count.

Usually it's part of a series because this is work for hire. So I wrote something for American Girl, it was A Smart Girl's Guide: Travel , and they have a whole Smart Girl's Guide series.

Joanna: So you get a style guide?

Aubre: Yes, like I know what these other books look like, I know kind of how they're divided up. I've read a lot of them. I'm just familiar with it, so it just comes faster.

Joanna: I've met quite a lot of writers who have written in the Star Wars universe, or The X Files. All of these franchises, they do have the book of the TV show or the film. You know, Doctor Who, or that kind of thing. So I feel like this is quite common. It's funny, it's kind of common, but not talked about that much.

Aubre: Well, exactly, which is why I wanted to talk about it.

Joanna: It's so interesting. You said earlier that you do get royalties. Now, I thought this was one of the biggest issues, certainly with some of the worlds and universes that people have written in, is that they do not get royalties. Often work for hire is—whatever's in the contract, obviously—but usually it's: you write it, we pay you once, and you never see any other money. That is kind of the freelance model.

Does that just differ by contract?

I mean, even if you do get royalties, it must only be a small percentage.

Aubre: Yes, it just depends on the contract and depends on the publisher. So I've gotten them for multiple publishers. Then also some publishers decide, well, if we came up with the idea in-house and you executed, then it's a flat fee. If you come up with an idea and we run with it, then we'll give you royalties. So I've had that happen too.

So it just depends on the project, and the publisher, and the budget, and also on negotiating . Most people don't use an agent for work for hire projects because the pay is less. So it's not really financially worth an agent to go seek out these projects.

So when you establish these connections and relationships, you can learn a bit more depending on the publisher . There's certainly a lot of work for hire opportunities that pay royalties.

I mean, I just see like Disney Publishing coming out with a lot of different fiction series and working with big name authors. I have to assume that those are paying royalties. So there's all different levels of work for hire projects.

Joanna: Okay, so you said there's loads of work out there. So how would people get into it if they wanted to? Like I sometimes say to people, well, you can write a book for them, and one for you. You can use it as almost day job type money while you're building up your own stuff.

How would people get that kind of work?

Aubre: So I think particularly in the kids' book industry, it would be beneficial if you had some experience writing for kids.

Whether that be magazines, or your own stuff that you've created, or even if you have a teaching background, you've developed curriculum, or you've created programming and libraries. School teachers and librarians often become children's book authors.

Then I do a lot of networking at, as I said, children's book conferences. So very occasionally there'll be a panel about work for hire, but even if there's not, anytime you meet an editor you can just ask them. “Do you do any work for hire projects? Does your publishing house do any work for a prior projects?” You know, “Do you know an editor who does any work for hire projects?”

You can find a lot of this on LinkedIn too if you search for editors at various publishing houses . Not everybody fills out their LinkedIn, but if you are looking for keywords like “works with freelancers,” “hires freelancers,” like “develops concepts in house,” and then “finds writers to execute them.”

If you look, a lot of these editors work in the licensing division because this is who's in charge of the intellectual property and franchise and those types of projects.

There's so many TV shows, and if you've walked around a bookstore, you've seen this.

So many TV shows, movies, brands who then want to create a publishing program around that IP.

They reach out to a publisher, and the publisher acts as a consultant and helps them develop this program.

Usually, that means they're developing the concept in house, and then they're hiring a writer to execute it. So basically, LinkedIn and conferences is where I've done a lot of my networking. Then I have—I'm a little bit extra—so I have like flown to New York and set up meetings and gone out of my way to really get my face in front of some editors.

Joanna: Then I guess once you've done one or two things, then you know the right people.

Aubre: Yes, then it's much easier to spin those projects into further work.

Joanna: I just want to come back on another of the negative things here. So there's been some court cases around this type of stuff, so if you're writing in someone else's world, even if the contract is that you come up with your own ideas. Let's say you come up with a new character, but you write it into an American Girl world, you no longer have control of that character. That's usually the way it works.

If you've written it into their world, then they own it.

Aubre: Right. I feel like even in the traditional model of publishing, you're giving up the copyright as well. So I don't see it as too different than that way. Even if you pitched your project to a traditional publisher, and they signed you, they would own the copyright to that project, you know.

Joanna: Only if that's what the contract was, how long you assign the copyright to a publisher. Only if they ask for life of term of copyright, do they have it for term of copyright.

I think this is really important in terms of mixing IP. So it might be tempting. Like, I know people who get co-writing deals with bigger names, and then they kind of feel like they want to write a character from their series into someone else's world.

You just have to be so careful with this commingled IP because you don't know. I mean, the thing is that so many authors think, oh, well, my stuff isn't that valuable, and that other person's stuff is more valuable. That may not be where it is in like 20 years though.

Aubre: Right. I've never experienced that. Any fictional character writing that I've done has been in a pretty strict universe , like Disney Princess, you know, where there's very strict brand guidelines. I wouldn't even be allowed to necessarily create a new character. It would really be existing characters within the universe. So I haven't really confronted that.

Joanna: Okay. So it's interesting because, of course, you've done a lot, and you still do a lot of this writing in other universities, but you also have your own series, The Look Up Series.

Tell us more about that and why you're so passionate about STEAM.

I thought it was “STEM” and you used both, I think. Explain that if people don't know.

Aubre: So STEAM and STEM. STEM is science, technology, engineering, and math. The A in STEAM is for art . So STEM has sort of naturally progressed into STEAM because, and as I've met many women in STEM and interviewed them, you really can't do a lot of these more scientific and technical fields without a creative mindset.

As a kid, I was always creative and thought that meant I'm an author, I'm an illustrator, that's where I am. I'm not a scientist, I'm not good at math. I t turns out that these more scientific and technical fields actually require you to be super creative when it comes to problem solving or anything. So I have a series called The Look Up Series, and it features real women in STEM. It's targeted for 8- to 12-year-olds, it's like a middle grade nonfiction series.

Each book features a really awesome career, really amazing woman, and sort of what she was like as a kid, what this career is like, how do you get into this career.

So for example, I have Dr. Maya, Ice Cream Scientist . So she's a real woman who is an ice cream scientist. So it's interesting to see how she has her PhD in food science, but she's also being very creative using flavor, and visuals, and ice cream.

It's this cool mix of science, and arts, and just helping kids get excited about really cool careers in science and technology and engineering , and also learning that just because they have maybe been pegged as creative or artsy, doesn't mean that they can't also land in these more scientific and technical fields.

These jobs are really in high demand, you know, as the next generation enters the workforce. We need people to be solving the world's biggest problems, which is often in these STEM fields. There's obviously a huge wage gap and gender gap when it comes to these careers, which is why I'm featuring women. I have diverse women on the cover, just so every kid can see themselves in these roles.

Joanna: What did you bring to your series, in terms of the lessons learned from all these other IP worlds you've worked in?

Aubre: So it was very important to me to, one, create a series. So I'd always been interested in self-publishing. I'd always been traditionally published, I've written more than 50 books for kids for like major publishers.

For many reasons, like we mentioned the content hamster wheel, we mentioned royalties, IP, all that, and I wanted to create my own thing and have more income potential. I also just wanted to write on a project that was purely me that I was super passionate about .

I certainly could have pitched this to a publisher, and I think I could have got some bites, but I really wanted to do it myself. It was a nice test of all of my publishing knowledge. So it was important to me to create a series, so there was more potential in marketing it and making an income . Then I really just got to learn everything.

I would say it's been both easier and harder than I thought . Easier, in that like none of the systems, or the technology, or the gatekeepers behind ads, or awards, or reviews, or whatever are complicated. Like you can definitely figure it out as an indie author.

What was harder for me was like the mindset and the investment, like you really have to cut out to be an entrepreneur. That means spending money on ads and maybe not turning a profit right away. That was really hard, and still is hard for me.

It's an investment, but it brings me back to the books I've written where, you know, a lot of my books are only marketed for couple of weeks. So the benefit is that I can continue to market this series, and it won't get pulled off the shelf. I can recover it, I can retitle it, I can kind of do whatever I need to do with this series.

Also, as we mentioned with American Girl, thinking beyond the book. I can create a web series, or I see a lot of indie children's book authors creating plushies or like little stuffed animals to accompany their books. So there's just like more potential because I chose to do this project on my own.

Then I was pregnant with my second daughter as I was creating the series. I was like birthing five books while also preparing to birth a child. So I created this whole series while I was pregnant with her. It was just like I felt more of a legacy to leave for them. I felt like it was a passion project , and it just felt good to do this project. So that was why I wanted to do it on my own.

Joanna: Yes.

A lot of it comes down to control when traditionally published authors go indie.

Most people say it's creative control, that's the main reason, because you don't have that. Once you've written something, even if you've got a lot of freedom in writing some of these things before, you weren't in control of anything else. You can't fix it later or change the cover, and like you said, there's no point in marketing those projects.

Aubre: Yes, if I'm not getting royalties on a book, what's my incentive to market it, and many books have been taken off the shelf.

So it just felt, as I said, just really good to be in creative control, know that my efforts are going to continue to help this series be a success , and also know that it was just aligned with my beliefs. It was just a project I was truly passionate about. It was funny how it kind of came to be because I was actually pulling onto the Disney campus for a project, I was meeting with my editor, and I passed the Disney Imagineering building.

I used to, when I was a kid, I wanted to be an Imagineer. They're like the engineers and artists that designed the theme park rides, and I had just completely forgot about it. I was like, oh my god, in another life, I would have been going into that building instead of this building. Like, you know, what was missing that I didn't become an Imagineer? So every project informs another project, I guess.

Joanna: Absolutely. Well, it's interesting, I mean, you did mention that you're an illustrator.

Did you illustrate these?

Aubre: Well, I wouldn't call myself an illustrator, but I was always very into art. So on these books, because my background is at American Girl and we were very until girl aesthetic, I decided to make little doodles on the cover.

So the covers have my doodles , which are not great because they're supposed to look like girl doodles. So I have made doodles for American Girl Magazine and some books, but I am not a formal illustrator.

Joanna: So you didn't hire someone separately to do that?

Aubre: I didn't. The books are nonfiction, so each book is sort of a combination of a biography and activity book. So I relied on the women I interviewed to provide a lot of photos from their childhood. Then combined with these doodles of mine, we were able to piece this project together without an illustrator, because frankly, it would have been quite expensive. I was funding this project myself and launching with five books from the jump.

So maybe one day, I'll be able to invest in an illustrator and add that to this project. I know my covers feature real women on them, like we did a little photoshoot . So that makes the series stand out a little bit, in a good way or bad way, in that it's a biography for kids, but it features a non-illustrated cover because these are real women. So it was just kind of a creative decision that I decided to give a try.

Joanna: Yes, because there is a series for girls that has real people, but a sort of cartoon version of them, isn't there? Like sort of Maya Angelou and people like that.

Aubre: Yes, most of them are illustrated. Even if they feature real people, the covers are illustrated.

Joanna: That's interesting. It's interesting that you have based this on, and you've got photos from, real people.

You must have had some proper contracts done to work with those people and use their image and their photos in your books.

Like that must have been a bit of a process.

Aubre: Yes, I did work with a lawyer to draft up some contracts . Also, I didn't want them to think I was like owning their story. Like they can go on and write more books about themselves if they would like.

I basically did the two-plus hour interview with each woman and then translated that into a biography, like a first-person biography. Then I combined it with knowledge of what the field is like, and you know, what this particular career is like.

There were also just questions like: What is college? What is a major? What is a PhD? Then I created some activities at the end so kids can feel like they are an ice cream scientist. We also have Amanda, Toy Engineer , and Angella, Beauty Chemist , and Tracey, Theme Park Designer . So I didn't get to become an Imagineer, but I did get to interview one. So I got part of what I wanted as a kid.

Joanna: That's very cool. I guess that contract with those women—

They understand that they're not getting royalties from the books.

Aubre: Correct. I did compensate them for their time , which is unheard of in a journalistic sense, but I felt that was important. I was really relying on their knowledge, and I think the women I work with are really passionate about getting other girls into STEM. So it was a passion project for them as well. They were very happy to be a part of it.

Joanna: I think all of that is so important. So if people are wanting to work with real people, in whatever situation, there should be communication of what everything is and contractual terms.

The point of a contract is it doesn't need to be confrontational in any way, it's more a case of just making sure everything's right for copyright and all of that.

In the self-publishing space, I get questions from people because people are bootstrapping, they're doing it themselves. But in these cases, it is very important to get all of those permissions and stuff up front.

Aubre: Yes, that's one of the reasons I didn't have an illustrator because of the legal fees.

Joanna: Yes, I get you. Although if people do use an illustrator, for example, then they also need a contract to make sure the copyright is assigne d, and all of that kind of thing. So publishing is a business, like it's a proper business.

Aubre: It is. Absolutely.

Joanna: You've learned that as well. So I do want to ask you about the marketing, because of course, when you're doing work for hire, the marketing is not really your job, but when you're self-publishing, it is your job.

How are you doing marketing for your own series?

Aubre: So I feel like I kind of have two customers. It's the kids' book world, so it's different. So I've got parents, but then I also have teachers and librarians.

So I'm on Amazon, I did KDP, I did print on demand to start with. Then I've also done a print run and have a direct-to-consumer site, thelookupseries.com, so I can offer discounts to teachers and librarians and discounts on bulk orders.

I went to the American Library Association Conference, and it was very clear to me very quickly that they don't have large budgets. You know, they are really tight in these schools and libraries. So it was important to me to be able to offer something off of Amazon where I could offer like a bulk discount.

Then I've got the Amazon business, relying on Amazon ads. I do a little bit of Facebook marketing where I'm offering a free activity download, kind of targeting Girl Scout troop leaders or teachers or anyone who has like a STEM space, like a makerspace in a library.

I've pulled a little activity from Amanda, Toy Engineer and from Tracey, Theme Park Designer , to capture email addresses and build up my email list. I have done the LA Times Festival of Books and some other children's book specific conferences.

My next step is I want to go to more STEM-focused conferences. I live in Los Angeles, and there are a lot of like STEM events for kids. Free one-day events where you can get a booth, and I think that would be a great place for me to be.

So I need to remind myself to step out of the children's publishing world a little bit. I'm very much like, oh, I'm going to go to the library conference and go to LA Times Festival of Books.

It's like, oh, there are other marketing opportunities besides book people . Like there are STEM people and people who are looking for science content for their kids. So I'm trying to be better about marketing on a more broader sense to those people as well.

Joanna: I think that's such a great idea, because let's face it, the children's book conferences are full of traditional publishers, but also all the other books are there. Whereas if you if you've got a booth, and then you're next to some science thing and some genetics thing, you're the only one with books , and that makes you stand out.

So I think that's so good for anyone who writes anything that has a theme, some kind of theme. It doesn't have to be nonfiction, I think you could still do it with fiction, as long as the theme aligns with that.

Aubre: Absolutely.

Joanna: Do you do any live events?

Going into schools or anything like that? Or is that just not scalable enough?

Aubre: I do. I'm looking at building that up more. COVID really took a hit on that. So I had a little momentum, and then it got squashed. Now I'm trying to maybe pick that up again. Now that I have done my own print run, and I can offer bulk discounts and that kind of thing, I feel better about investing some time into that.

So I have done some school visits, in particular, that are more like going into the auditorium for multiple grade levels , something a little bit bigger than just visiting one classroom. I do offer like a free 15-minute virtual visit on my website , just for individual classrooms. I just kind of see that as a volunteer thing I can offer. That's kind of where I'm at right now with that.

I do think it's important that you've done your own print run and are able to offer your books at a discount. If you're buying your author copies from Amazon, from KDP, like I don't know if the financials will start to work out for you.

Joanna: Oh, no, completely. A lot of kids' authors use Ingram Spark, and then the schools can order direct .

Aubre: Yes, so I do have that as well. I just have a little bit more of a royalty from my separate print run.

Joanna: Absolutely. Well, then how do you see your future?

How are you going to balance the work for hire with building your own brand and your own book series?

Aubre: I mean, I definitely focused solely on The Look Up Series for like six months as I was launching them, before I had my second daughter. Then coming back, I really hit the ground running on marketing those books, even more after my maternity leave.

Now I'm doing both, I'm balancing work for hire projects with The Look Up Series. It's actually really nice because with work for hire, like I mentioned, it can feel like you're on a treadmill and hustling your next gig. Now I feel like I can kind of calm down a bit and wait for the next good gig that I actually want.

I know I'm not wasting my time because I'm in the between because I'm working on The Look Up Series. I'm bringing in an income and building up my business for this more financially lucrative potential.

I'm not just like wasting my time waiting around for a project, and maybe taking a project that doesn't pay well or that I don't want to do. I just feel like I'm actually working on something that can last with The Look Up Series.

Joanna: Fantastic.

Where can people find you and your books online?

Aubre: So I'm at AubreAndrus.com . You can check out The Look Up Series at TheLookUpSeries.com .

If you want to learn a little bit more about work for hire, you can go to AubreAndrus.com/WFH. If you're interested, in particular, in like how to break into the children's book industry, you can learn a bit more about my background in that.

Joanna: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for your time, Aubre. That was great.

Aubre: Thank you for having me. It was so nice to bring this to light. I know so many people who it's their life dream to become a children's book author. So that's why I like sharing this like secret backdoor, this other part of the industry that people don't really talk about.

It's just another skill in your toolkit, like as an author and a writer. If you ever have a goal to write for a TV show or something one day, writing in these IP, and these characters, and for these brands is just always like a really good skill to have.

Joanna: Yes. Well, thanks so much for your time.

Aubre: Thank you.

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