Creative writing

Creative writing Session 1

Creative writing as part of English • English communication skills • You need to be able to understand, describe and produce English language for different and specific purposes. • Academic writing – a genre you need to master at the university and can use elsewhere • Grammar – formal and functional understanding of the English language • Basics of translation – comparative language skills

Cntd. • Creative writing - will not teach you to be artists  • But you still have to study all four creative genres: fiction, poetry, drama and non-fiction. You will mainly produce creative non-fiction.

Writing game 1 • Write a poem in five minutes. • Reflect on the ’creativity’ of it. Is it creative? Why/why not? (Class discussion, but take notes for later use)

Writing game 2 • Consider the following instructions. Try it out. Will it work as a way of getting your creative writing going?

’Whatever you write is right. You can’t write the wrong thing! It doesn’t even have to be in proper English. Write when and where you feel like it; day or night, in bed, in a café (difficult on a bike). Write only two lines, or lots – in a notebook, on scraps of paper, perhaps in a folder. Scribble whatever comes into your head for 2 minutes – don’t stop to think! It might be a list, or odd words or phrases – spelling and proper sentences don’t matter! Instructions

And the source: • Gillie Bolton, ’Writing or Pills’ in The Self on the Page, ed. Celia Hunt and Fiona Sampson (Jessica Kingsley; 2002; first published 1998), p. 83 • FROM A PATIENT LEAFLET TO HELP ANXIOUS OR DEPRESSED PATIENTS!

4 perceptions of writing • Life-writing (me) • Cultural practice (us) • Dissemination (“Formidling”)(me and you) • Professionalism (them)

WRITING THE INVISIBLE • Something profound and invisible ‘comes out’ in writing. • ‘Whether the ‘source’ of the writing comes from ‘inspiration’ or from expressing ‘self’, that source cannot be seen. Writing does not involve any manipulation of pre-existing materials, beyond paper/screen, and pen/fingers. There is no musical instrument, no clay, no paint and canvas/paper, no marble. It is not structurally dependant on organised group activity: a choir or orchestra with a conductor, a drama group with a script and a director. It is stringently individuated, with its materials (source, as in the brain/mind; language as the means and mode) all invisible until words are put on paper. It is an imaginative mode of thought until organised in and through written language’ • BUT language is not magical and unteachable – it is cultural and acquired and applied through practical knowledge of its forms and written conventions.

WRITING AS READING • If you don’t read, you cannot write. Read literary history, criticism, theory, and aesthetics. • All writing does not come from personal experience, but from reading, analysing and thinking about the above.

WRITING AS WORK AND REWRITING • “All completed writing involves preparation, taking notes, writing rough, perhaps fragmented versions, rewriting, producing drafts, revising, editing, proof-reading” • The muse doesn’t hand down to writers complete and perfectly formed novels, poems or plays • Writing is (hard) work.

Myth 1 • Myth: you need inspiration to write – good writing begins spontaneously in an inspired moment • Reality: Inspiration emerges from writing.

Myth 2 • Myth: you have to think before you can write • Reality : you think when you write or after you have written

Myth 3 • Myth: you need a sense of control and coherence in your thinking before you can write. • Reality: control and coherence appear when you write

Myth 4 • Myth: it is important to begin well • Reality : the best beginning is often written as the last thing. It is more important to begin at all than to begin well! begynde!

Myth 5 • Myth: all texts must be original – you always have to write something new • Reality: very little is thought, written or said which is completely new.

Myth 6 • Myte: all texts must be flawless and perfect • Reality: There is no such thing as a perfect text.

Myth 7 • Myth; good writing progresses easily • Reality: writing is full of ’relapses’. You need to rewrite, delete and be patient!

Myth 8 • Myth: writing is most effective if you write in very long sessions, and writing demands long streches of uninterrupted time. • Reality: the above leads to long breaks and getting burnt out. Creativity is arises from continuously working with writing

Writing game 3 • Word Hoard (15 minutes) • Finish as home work • Post your writing on the blog

Word hoard

Word hoard 2

For next week • Post your writing on the blog (writing games 1 & 3) • Bring the ingredients on the list on the next slide for next session...

Data-ingredients for next week • 1 overheard conversation • 3 species of birds • 2 brand names for food • Text from 4 signs • The name of a planet or a star • The name of a lipstick • 1 time of day • The title of a book • The title of a painting • The name of a dead politician • 2 types of vegetables • 3 items from a hardware store • A make of gun

Creative writing