Transcript of CREATIVE WRITING. …is a LIVE ongoing experiment with LANGUAGE since antiquity!
- Slide 1
- CREATIVE WRITING
- Slide 2
- is a LIVE ongoing experiment with LANGUAGE since
antiquity!
- Slide 3
- (Creative) writers are people who well, this is a very
complicated matter, and tomorrow were going to explore some of the
diverse and even contradictory ways to understand what exactly
creative writers do. But, right off the bat, here are some ideas to
chew on
- Slide 4
- Creative Writers Are people who very self-consciously craft
language into art such as fiction and poetry; they are artists of
words; people who re-say the world afresh with every generation;
people who keep the language alive; people who save their own lives
through language; who dig playing with language for its own sake
(like hopelessly stunted children still learning to talk).
- Slide 5
- these professionals were basically self-trained and solitary.
Or, as with the Modernists in the early to mid-20 th century, they
found each other in enclaves such as the bistros and bars of Paris
to share their work with other writers in a ferment of ideas And
booze. Oops. Im probably not supposed to say that. And booze.
Creative Writing as a university discipline is a path many writers
take these days to become professional word artists. It used to
be
- Slide 6
- The novelist Ernest Hemingway famously learned to write by
hanging out with friends in Europe, but also by drawing on his
experience as a journalist. In the later mid-century, in America,
however, writers were increasingly supporting themselves by
teaching English in universities.
- Slide 7
- And a bunch of teachers at the University of Iowa, wanting to
find a space for sharing and discussing their own work, hatched the
writers workshop. They basically carved out a social space in
colleges where writers could find each other, interact, share their
work with each other, and yack about writing. Today, the university
creative writing workshop is one of THE places where writers
congregate.
- Slide 8
- Creative Writing has sometimes had a contested and rather
dubious place in English Studies, however. Its not always
considered as academic as other disciplines within English Studies,
or is considered a soft discipline. Creative writersthe people who
write literature have sometimes been in conflict with those who
STUDY literature or THEORIZE about literature or see writing as a
means to some end other than itself.
- Slide 9
- As youll probably learn before you get out this thing called
Governors School English Studies is a complex of discipline bound
by a variety of tensions, all exerting a pull on each other!
- Slide 10
- In any case, creative writing is now both a continually
evolving, mysterious engagement with language and a major
discipline or course of study. Students are flocking to creative
writing programs all across the country!
- Slide 11
- More soon.Stay tuned!