What is a Writing Practice?
I’m preparing to teach a course at DMU which will be focused on the creative writing practice of the students. But what does that phrase mean: creative writing practice?In the last couple of years my own conception of it has expanded to include activities that do not at first seem related to writing. Walking, for example. And photography.
Wanting to understand what other people’s conceptions were, I put out the following on Twitter: “A question for all writers out there: what activities/elements are included in your creative practice?”
The question spread. The post was re-tweeted 65 times and ended up on over fifteen thousand screens. I received 53 replies, which included several hundred suggested elements of the creative writing practice. Many of those elements were common to different writers. And, more than that, there were a small number of clearly identifiable types of response. For example, many writers mentioned music, though with different specifications. Walking, and other activities involving rhythmic movement were another common theme.
The phrasing of my question was deliberately vague. This gave room for people to respond in different ways. Some took a narrow interpretation, focusing on the act of writing itself. Others saw their practice in broader terms, including activities such as dancing, sketching and even shovelling horse manure.
Below, I have laid out the responses in those broad categories, as best I can. A couple of the elements, such as dancing, occur in more than one category. Some elements were hard to categorise. For example, I wasn’t sure where to put “listening to voices in my head”, but ended up adding it to the meditative activities section.
I was thinking of having a section on ritualistic activities, such as the practice of only starting writing on the hour or the half-hour. These are a distinct theme, since we seem to have found many strange and different ways to trigger ourselves into that creative balance of mind that allows the magic to happen. But in order to arrange them in such a category, I would have had to interpret the reasons for the things people report doing. This is something I didn’t think I could do. As a result, ritualistic elements have ended up scattered through the other categories.
This is not an exact science. Some of the categorisation may seem arbitrary. It is also possible that I have missed out one or two suggested elements. Responses came so quickly at one stage, that I found it hard to keep up with transcribing them. But I think the list below does represent a reasonable impression of the range of responses. Many thanks to all the people who took the time to help me with this.
The full article can be found here:
https://www.facebook.com/gaslitempire...
Wanting to understand what other people’s conceptions were, I put out the following on Twitter: “A question for all writers out there: what activities/elements are included in your creative practice?”
The question spread. The post was re-tweeted 65 times and ended up on over fifteen thousand screens. I received 53 replies, which included several hundred suggested elements of the creative writing practice. Many of those elements were common to different writers. And, more than that, there were a small number of clearly identifiable types of response. For example, many writers mentioned music, though with different specifications. Walking, and other activities involving rhythmic movement were another common theme.
The phrasing of my question was deliberately vague. This gave room for people to respond in different ways. Some took a narrow interpretation, focusing on the act of writing itself. Others saw their practice in broader terms, including activities such as dancing, sketching and even shovelling horse manure.
Below, I have laid out the responses in those broad categories, as best I can. A couple of the elements, such as dancing, occur in more than one category. Some elements were hard to categorise. For example, I wasn’t sure where to put “listening to voices in my head”, but ended up adding it to the meditative activities section.
I was thinking of having a section on ritualistic activities, such as the practice of only starting writing on the hour or the half-hour. These are a distinct theme, since we seem to have found many strange and different ways to trigger ourselves into that creative balance of mind that allows the magic to happen. But in order to arrange them in such a category, I would have had to interpret the reasons for the things people report doing. This is something I didn’t think I could do. As a result, ritualistic elements have ended up scattered through the other categories.
This is not an exact science. Some of the categorisation may seem arbitrary. It is also possible that I have missed out one or two suggested elements. Responses came so quickly at one stage, that I found it hard to keep up with transcribing them. But I think the list below does represent a reasonable impression of the range of responses. Many thanks to all the people who took the time to help me with this.
The full article can be found here:
https://www.facebook.com/gaslitempire...
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