Creative Writing

The term creative writing means imaginative writing, or writing as an art. The primary concern of creative writing is not with factual information, or with the more routine forms of communication. It does, however, use many of the same skills. A novel, for example, may contain much sociological, political or psychological information. Scholars may study it for such information, just as Sigmund Freud studied literature for accounts of dreams and emotional states. No true novel, however, is written to communicate facts. Like other forms of creative writing, it attempts to produce in its reader the pleasure of an aesthetic experience. It tries to uncover form and meaning in the turmoil of love, hate, violence, tedium, habit, and the brutal facts which people must deal with from day to day. The novelist and short­story writer John Cheever, when asked why he wrote, said, “To try to make sense out of my life.” Whether it takes the form of poem, short story, novel, play, personal essay, or even biography or history, creative writing is certain to involve some search for meaning, a measure of wonder and discovery, and a degree of personal involvement in the result.