1 - Introduction

Summary

In recent years, the development of creative writing as a discipline in higher education has changed the shape of literature departments in universities across the globe. It has also changed the development of literary studies through creative reading (‘reading as a writer’) and through practice-led teaching. As Jonathan Bate explains, many of our best critics were creative writers. Creative writing is a rearrival at a balance in which the practice of writing is placed on an equal platform to its study. An act of criticism can also be an act of creativity, and vice versa. It is a falsification of how our minds work to suggest it could be otherwise.

Creative writing as a discipline has also begun to find its way beyond literature and humanities departments. Creative writing is not some add-on to literary studies, nor are its students schooled solely in the study of novels, plays and poems. Creative writing can be an education in the craft of writing in a larger sense. Writers, at their best, are creative writers whether they are writing journalism, plays, philosophy, novels, history, poetry or scientific nonfiction. These creative writers are found not only among the teachers of these subjects but also among their students; and not only in the academy but in the world at large. Whatever its setting, the act of writing is almost always an uncertain process. As one cultural commentator has argued, creative writing is best suited to people who have a high toleration of uncertainty.