Mr. Douglas plays the middle-aged creative-writing teacher Grady Tripp, a once-hot novelist unable to complete his latest work.

In the story "Differently," from the Everyman collection, a woman named Georgia is rebuked by a creative-writing teacher - her work has "too many things.

He took several creative-writing courses, and many of the magazines to which he made submissions were recommended to him by his creative-writing teachers.

She'd done well on her exams, and her creative-writing teacher had said over and over that she had promise.

And yet creative-writing teachers are always telling to you to write about what you know, so now we have countless novels that sound like unedited therapy sessions.

And she talked with warmth and enthusiasm about Stegner, the great chronicler of the West who was also her creative-writing teacher at Stanford.

Intending to become a writer, she attended Barnard College in 1937-38, but dropped out after a creative-writing teacher told her she had no talent.

In a field where creative-writing teachers are judged by the published authors they train, Ms. Hadley assured herself a measure of instant success.

The bright spot was a night-school creative-writing teacher who praised Ms. Buchanan's work.

In the months after the election, Democratic consultants and elected officials came to sound like creative-writing teachers, holding forth on the importance of metaphor and narrative.