The Cal Poly Creative Writing Club began last spring and has since become a source of inspiration and motivation to many student writers. The laid-back environment takes away the stresses and demands of a classroom setting and allows creative writing to be, well, creative.
English professor and the club’s faculty adviser Todd Pierce said that it was based on a student initiative and is a place for people to share their interests in writing.
“People are writing stuff, they are reading stuff and that’s fabulous,” he said. “Because once you get outside of college it becomes more difficult to find people with the same interests as you. This is a great thing for them to be doing.”
Pierce said that the club offers more freedom than a classroom, because the people truly want to be there.
“It’s all about the love of writing, or the love of stories or the love of poems,” he said. “It’s about really wanting to be involved with language.”
Currently run by English seniors Cody Morales and Cheryl Cochran, the club is a great way to connect all majors and styles of writing together in one place.
Morales said that club meetings usually include some sort of warm-up writing exercise, as well as a chance to share any work that students would like critiqued.
“Usually someone brings in a piece, either commissioned or we commission everyone to write two pages of something and we will help with what they have so far,” he said. “What we did last meeting was I thought of a basic plot line, and then I had people draw perspectives out of a hat.”
Morales said that the club caters to people who are not interested in a rigorous academic environment, but just want a place to share their writing, whatever it may be.
“Whether it’s just the poetry they scribbled in their notebook, or whether they just like short stories for fun, we’re not very judgmental,” he said. “It’s really a ‘for the love of the game’ type scenario.”
Both Morales and Cochran have known they wanted to be writers since a very young age, but without an outlet to share their work, it was easy to lose the drive to improve.
“It’s really important in order to improve your writing, or just to keep writing, that you do things like this,” Cochran said. “For me, I won’t write much or revise if I don’t have people to show it to. Otherwise whatever I write stops when I stop writing it. It’s a motivation to keep producing things and to see what other people are doing.”
Morales said that having a community of writers is important if you want to expand your writing and get a sense of what other people think of it.
“I have been writing since I was in junior high, but if you don’t show anybody you can’t really improve, and eventually that part of you stops sometimes,” he said. “But if you have people there to encourage you and say, ‘hey, I like this,’ or ‘this isn’t working here.’ that’s what is so nice about the club. It is there every week, and it’s not stressful.”
Morales said that the club allows people to show different aspects of themselves in a safe and friendly environment.
“I think it is neat to meet other people who enjoy that activity,” he said. “You get some good criticism and perspective. It’s all very positive in working towards improving. I would encourage people to come check it out and not feel intimidated. The more people the better.”
The club is currently on a brief hiatus but will start back up the second week of spring quarter. Morales and Cochran encourage everyone with an interest in writing to come out and give the meetings a try. They are open to all majors and all genres of writing.
If you would like more information about the club or to join the mailing list, contact cpcreativewriters@gmail.com.