For some creative writers, the concept of autonomy is obtained early in the beginning of their learning process – through playing with words and imageries in their own mind. Some others, however, requires the support or even explicit instructions to facilitate their learning. Unfortunately, the general paradigm of creative writing in education is still dominated by the first perspective, rendering the subject as ‘unteachable’. Instructed creative writing thus suffers from a stigma of ‘dry, template-based writing’. Drawing upon the author’s autoethnographic research of becoming a creative writer through a cross-cultural community of practice in creative writing, this presentation aims to prove that instructed creative writing can be effective in achieving the autonomy. The old Javanese learning concept within arts, nyantrik, is used and modified alongside Lave & Wenger’s community of practice in this research. Through the use of reflective approach on the said immersion process, elements that lead and mark the progression to become autonomous writers are identified. These elements, such as deautomatization through translation, metaphors, style, and voices, are presented as potential seeds for further developing teaching methods for creative writing in a classroom / institutional context.