The Writer’s Handbook is exhilarating, daunting – and a glowing testament to the richness of publishing and publications in this country. Who ever really believed that film, television and now the internet, would ever halt our appetites for reading and writing? These days, it seems, more people than ever engage in the challenges of writing poetry, stories and novels, and drama for all media. Certainly the proliferation of creative writing courses has helped. Community and adult education classes have been joined by under-and postgraduate degree courses, where imaginative writing has become the newest art form to enter the academy. While professional success can never be guaranteed, it can be enormously rewarding to discover the excitements and complexities of producing literature (ie, writing), as well as reading. I would even go so far as to say that the study of imaginative writing must and should be accompanied by the experience of studying literature, its traditions and history.
Creative writing’s history and its pedagogy (ways of teaching and learning) are absolutely bound up with literature, its traditions and alternatives and ways of reading. Studying a subject involves understanding its own history and the principles which inform its pedagogy. As a teacher of creative writing, I was impelled to write about how creative writing has developed as an academic subject, and what principles underpin its approaches in the classroom. My book, The Author is not Dead, Merely Somewhere Else: Reconceiving Creative Writing, was a challenge to research and write, and I hope will prove a rewarding challenge for its readers.
Michelene Wandor, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at London Metropolitan University, UK, and author, playwright, poet and broadcaster.
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