Stimulus, Intention and Process in Creative Writing: A Reader

Stimulus, Intention and Process in Creative Writing explores three exciting and key areas of creative writing practice and understanding. What stimulates a writer to write – or to write a particular piece? What do they intend to achieve when they do it? And is there a process we can study and perhaps even understand?

The authors in this book, who are both practitioners and researchers, explore these three areas in unique and thought-provoking ways. They bring to the discussion both expertise in relation to what we already know, and a sense of forward-thinking in discussing how we can find out more. This is a book for creative writing researchers and students who are seeking new knowledge about how creative writing is done, what informs and encourages those doing it, and what results from that knowledge and encouragement. It is also potentially a book for creative writing practitioners who wonder how the things that interest them have them writing certain things, and the ways they go about approaching, undertaking and completing these projects.

The chapters in this book were originally published in New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing.

Graeme Harper is the Editor of New Writing. He is former Chair of Higher Education at the UK’s National Association of Writers in Education and the Chair of the Creative Writing Studies Organization in the USA. He holds doctorates from the University of East Anglia and the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.