Senior Citizens Writing Class Leads to Laughter, Lessons

Three writing groups for seniors meet once a week at the Janet Goeske Senior Center in Riverside, Calif., with many participants getting published as a result, writes creative writing teacher CelenaDiana Bumpus in the Press-Enterprise . She says most of her students are not first-time writers, as "many have written poetry in the past, some have kept journals, some have written and published books of their own, while some have written magazine articles, scientific papers, dissertations, or even law enforcement and court reports." Bumpus notes that some students come with clear writing goals, while others "are exploring the many facets of creative writing and hoping to find a way to express their unique voices and multifaceted histories." Bumpus has a professional background in social work and individual and group counseling, which means she applies different teaching methods to her students. "First and foremost, I encourage my students to tap into imaginations by providing them with an appealing quote and asking them to write freely on the prompt for approximately 12 minutes," she says. Students can take those notes home and produce a piece of creative writing from them. "They have the complete freedom to craft whatever they want from their notes," Bumpus writes. "As a result, I have had poets create beautiful essays, short stories, short creative nonfiction, and short memoirs, and, conversely, I have had prose writers create beautiful poems."