ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the place of creative writing in the secondary English curriculum. Writing narratives is a way of critiquing all narrative. Communicative writing has to be learnt, and the best teachers are an ‘audience’, to tell the writer whether meanings have been made. As one example of ordering of experience, writing has the advantages of externalising, preserving and sharing. The primary task of a teacher of writing for children (and inexperienced writers) is not to induct into form, but to help students discover the purposes and uses of writing: as satisfying ways of interpreting, preserving and sharing experience and imagination. Writers need to find both the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of writing at the same time. Writing has to live on fertile ground. It has to be wanted and loved for it to survive. It cannot survive in an atmosphere of indifference, cynicism, and harsh judgement.
