West High Writers is a new creative writing club at Bellevue West, started by English teacher Caleb Narva. The club meets every other Thursday from 3:30-5 p.m. in Narva’s classroom.
Narva said that because this was his first year teaching at Bellevue West, he faced a few more challenges in the process of getting the club up and going. He first contacted West’s creative writing teacher Aaron Stueve, checking to ensure that no similar clubs already existed at the school. He said that then he had to figure out how he could put the school’s facilities to use.
“It took me months to figure out how to print out all the flyers that I put around the school,” Narva said. “And it was very time consuming to go around and hang all of those because I didn’t have any kids yet. So I just did it all.”
Narva said that creative writing has been a passion of his for as long as he can remember, and that, in addition to providing a space for students to write, he aims to utilize this space as a creative outlet in his own life.
“I love writing,” Narva said. “It’s my favorite thing in the whole world. And I have a novel that I’m almost done with, and I’m getting my MFA through UNO in creative writing.”
Sophomore Emma Mattix joined the club to expand on her interest, which more specifically ties into poetry. She said that her favorite part has been seeing the creativity on display in everyone’s writing when they share their work with the group.
“You’re given prompts, [and] you can choose to follow them or not,” Mattix said. “ And it’s really interesting to see what other people wrote, and it’s nice to hear other people’s opinions on what you wrote.”
Narva said that they start each meeting by checking on how each person is doing, ensuring that they’re emotionally prepared to deal with whatever topics might come up.
“Writing can be a really emotional thing and taxing thing,” Narva said. “So we want to make sure that we’re all okay before we try and maybe tackle something that could be too heavy for that day.”
Freshman Derek Buchholz said that students’ experiences with writing in English classes and West High Writers is vastly different. He said that while in English students spend time sitting in silence writing essays, creative writing varies from that idea.
“In the writer’s club, you can sit down, it’s not just like mutable silence,” Buchholz said. “You can talk because every individual has their own writing process. Like you can kind of talk to yourself, you can listen to music in your headphones or whatever. And writing club is very open ended whereas in English you’ve got a rubric. If you don’t meet it, you fail the class.”
Mattix said that another difference is the atmosphere created by the group. She said she appreciates being around like-minded people, able to trade tips and share experiences.
“It is a very welcoming space,” Mattix said. “I know personally, I loved to write as a kid, but I never told anyone about it or shared it out because I was like, oh, people don’t want to be bothered by my writing. This club is very welcoming.”
Narva said that another upcoming opportunity for writers in the school will be the Escape Key, a school wide literary journal. Narva said he hopes for these platforms to create ways for students to express themselves
“We just kind of want to get out the love of the written rhetoric to everyone who wants to hear it, and to celebrate the diversity and the differences in the voices of all the writers across the school so we can see that Bellevue West isn’t just one thing,” Narva said. “It’s a whole plethora of voices that come together. And that’s what makes the school so great.”
