On Teaching Creative Practice
Nadine Santoro. Photo credit: Andrea O’Bert
By Nadine Santoro
When asked what I wished I’d received during my time as a student in Fordham’s Creative Writing Concentration, my answer was immediate—a reminder of why I did this crazy thing called art in the first place, and an idea of how to figure out methods for building and sustaining the kind of creative practice and community that filled me up rather than drained me. In essence, I wished someone had told me how to live a meaningful life as an artist. No big deal.
Obviously, although no one has the answer to that dilemma—namely, because there isn’t just one answer—this is a topic I’ve spent years researching. I’ve read countless books, I’ve talked to and interviewed other creatives, I’ve experimented and tested different paths, tools, routines, and methods in my own life. Drawing on my own experience and my work as a facilitator and retreat leader, I’ve learned a thing or two about that process of discovery, where we tend to hit stumbling blocks or brick walls, and how to identify practices that bring us back to ourselves when we stray too far from our centers. I’ve witnessed what it feels like to get back to our roots, to touch something larger than ourselves, to find that magic in other people. I don’t have the answers. But I do have doorways to step through, paths and portals of possibility.
In the 10-week course on building a creative life that I designed for a cohort of twelve Fordham students this fall, we began first by noticing. It seems simple, almost too obvious, but it’s amazing how many of us create without really knowing why. Many of us are chasing a dream that probably formed in the annals of childhood, when we created unselfconsciously—for the thrill of it, for the way our minds raced and churned and burst with ideas—long before we knew about things like query letters or advances or marketing budgets. I knew from my own experience that coming up into the writing and arts world as a young person, it’s all too easy to go from a starry-eyed dreamer with visions of late-night salons over bottles of wine and sunny midday writing stints in a local coffee shop to a frantic prey animal scouring job listings for gigs that pay anywhere close to a living wage and skimming acknowledgement sections to find out who published authors where before they got their book deals. In the thick of the rat race, especially in a place like New York, it’s all too easy to stop noticing how we feel, or how we’ve changed, or what really lights us up.
Does this resonate with you? Try this brief exercise for yourself.
Set a 7 minute timer and answer the following questions (don’t overthink it):
What are your creative roots? What are some of your earliest memories of creating as a child?
How did that childhood creation make you feel?
When’s the last time you felt like that? What were you doing?
How do you feel when you pursue creative endeavors now?
When you settle in for this practice of noticing, your job is to do so without judgment. You may be surprised by what you find. Whatever comes up for you as you read over your answers, write that down, too—judgment, curiosity, shame, frustration, delight. Maybe you wrote songs in your notebook every day on the bus on your way to elementary school, and now trying to put lyrics to a melody fills you with a deep sense of dread. Maybe you recall the sense of satisfaction you had when you finished a puzzle as a kid, and you feel that same feeling arising in the kitchen as an adult when you manage to perfect a complicated recipe. Maybe you were really into collaging in the third grade, and echoes of that patchwork process come through for you now when you create erasure poetry. Or maybe you still really love collaging, but you haven’t done it in ages because it doesn’t feel serious or productive in the way that your writing does.
Whatever you notice, let it be. It’s all good information; there are no “shoulds” here. When we cultivate attention, we open ourselves up to discovery. If there’s one thing we can glean from all the hundreds of books, interviews, and essays out there attempting to dig into the core practices and habits of successful creatives, it’s that there is no one way to be an artist or to live a creative life. It doesn’t matter what Steven King or Ursula Le Guin or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie do every day, because you’re not them. And what’s more important, at least in my mind, is that even if you managed to copy their schedules and replicate their success, it doesn’t mean it would make you happy.
I view creativity not just as a talent and practice that many of us have, but as an integral part of our humanity. Creative practice can help us make meaning of our lives, it can help us play, and it can brighten and sharpen our worlds. In teaching, my goal is to guide people back towards the part of themselves that creates for the sake of creation itself. And, of course, this kind of creative practice can only deepen and enrich the more directed, “serious,” or public-facing creative projects one might choose to pursue.
Students meeting on Zoom in October 2023.
Students put together altars of creative devotions.
Students practiced collaging as a form of creative play.
Over the course of the fall semester, students met each week to discuss topics like discipline, rest, community, ritual, and play, coming together on Zoom and in person to accompany each other on this journey of self-discovery. We built altars, we visited bookstores, we compiled toolboxes of quick pivots to get ourselves unstuck, we planned dates with our inner artists to the museum or the bakery or the park. Here’s a bit of what students had to share at the end of the semester!
“With all the stresses of college and early adulthood, I’ve found it increasingly difficult to connect with the creativity that I felt when I was much younger. Nadine taught me ways that I could foster that creativity even within the structure of my busy day-to-day life, and the cohort was such a wonderful community for exploring those lessons.”
“It’s always been so difficult to find or make time to write creatively and I can be very hard on myself. The tools and practices we learned this semester were a gentler way in to staying committed to my writing! I hope to keep my commitment to these practices going into the future.”
“Thank you for such a fulfilling, creative experience. I feel like I've been taking my creative practice a lot more seriously and referencing the class materials so often. Your advice has been SO! HELPFUL! Especially since I'm in the midst of applying for jobs right now. All the work definitely paid off! I will cherish our shared time!”
“I think the best part of this experience was meeting and talking to other people who shared my interests and fears about the future. It put my struggles with creativity and writing into perspective. Thank you, Nadine, for putting so much time, energy, and care into this group!”
We closed out our time together with a ritual: on two small pieces of paper, everyone wrote one dream they had for the future, and one fear they wanted to let go of. We mixed the papers up and read them aloud anonymously, and then released our fears by setting them on fire and watching them burn. Everyone took a dream home in their pocket. I hope you do, too.
I’m excited to offer more one-off workshops and extended cohorts like this one on creative practice in the near future. To stay up to date on future opportunities, or if you’re interested in this topic more generally, subscribe to my newsletter, The Doorway, on Substack.
I’d like to offer my endless gratitude to the teachers and mentors who have shaped my perspective on creative practice and the power of community, especially Sarah Gambito, and my endless gratitude to my students who shared vulnerably and passionately, and showed up in steadfast commitment to the group and to themselves week after week!
Nadine Santoro is a multi-disciplinary artist, writer, and facilitator. She is a graduate of Fordham University, where she studied creative writing and theology. Nadine is the Publicity & Events Coordinator at the Feminist Press, leads spiritual and creative retreats at The Center at Mariandale, and teaches on creative attention. She has formerly worked with Kundiman, The LIC Reading Series, and The Resort writers’ space. Nadine co-hosts the podcast Thinking Straight, a lesbian anthropological dig into the world of heterosexual romance novels, and writes the snail-mail newsletter The Doorway. She lives in Brooklyn with her girlfriend and their two senior dogs, Knives and Young Neil.