Creative writing is often thought to mean fiction or poetry writing, specifically the kind of creative writing taught in workshops at liberal arts colleges where people sit around and ask each other questions about character motivation, symbolism, and whether you’ve earned your cliche.
Actually, creative writing is so much more than that. You can approach any writing creatively, be it a research paper, an essay, a journalistic article, or even a blog entry. I like to think that I’m approaching this blog, even now, from my own creative angle. All ‘creative writing’ means is that you are infusing your writing with your personal creative spirit. That the creative energy of your writing comes from you and you alone. Not only is creative often confused with ‘fiction,’ but it’s also confused with the false idea that in order to be creative, what you are doing has to be a completely isolated work that lives on its own, outside of what anyone else has ever done. That’s simply not true. Writers are often influenced by other writers, and part of being creative is letting yourself be inspired by the work of others. There are many myths to being creative, and the purpose of this post is to encourage students to find their own routes to creativity. We are all endowed with the creative aspect; it’s just up to us to access it!
