The Cambridge introduction to creative writing

Creative writing in the world
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and share your work with them. How did they view it Your second task is to take your poem and, without changing a word, place it into the mouth of a character in anew story. That character could be modelled on the scientist you met. Write this story in such away that the speech is a natural progression of the narrative.
A
I M Using nonliterary language accurately is exacting but essential, and can be fun. To write about an idea or concept using a poem teaches you to reframe that language in a genre not easily given to the transmission of information. Placing this piece in the mouth of a character will help you write in away which is both expected (you know the poem must be deployed) and unexpected (the context must be played with to make it seem natural).
Publishing and editing
Many writers avow that the process of creation is intrinsically more personal and satisfying than publishing its production routines, marketing and tours. They are right. Many writers, once they finish a project, undergo a psychological,
even a physical, leave-taking. Their focus then swivels ruthlessly to the next project. The time lag between finishing a book and the book’s publication is usually protracted. By the time of publication, the most important matter for its writer is the work on which they are now concentrating. Nevertheless, the demands of publication are themselves fascinating, and writers – like tulip farmers – must sell their products, however engrossing they are to plant and tend. Publishing is another open space, and an art form in itself, sometimes an art of politics.
A creative writing student and a creative writing department neglect the art and the business of publishing at their peril, for this is where we meet the world head-on. Most writers wish to publish for all sorts of reasons, not least recognition. Publishing is itself a literary purpose, a business that is also half art. Books about creative writing rightly investigate the process of writing but often ignore the fact that, although writing can bean end in itself, for most people the purpose of writing is to communicate to as many people as possible,
while they can.
There are, of coursebooks that deal entirely with publishing (see Recommended reading. However, they are always and necessarily of their time. The publishing industry, from the small presses to the international conglomerates, is a dynamic business. Publishers come and go there is no stasis. Not only that, but the favoured tastes for one generation are the oblivion of the next as societies change and literary expectations and fashions mutate and this varies

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Creative writing
from country to country. Any advice, any list of presses, especially in an age of globalism, will date fast. Therefore, what we offer here can be no more than generic points, which are nonspecific to their time and nation, but which may hold some resilient information.
Circles for survival
Before you submit your writing to a literary magazine, or a book to a publisher,
be sure you are completely satisfied that your writing has reached a steady, if not a final, state. This brings us to the importance of developing an association of honest friends who are writers they will be your first real readers. In Chapter
Four
, we examine how such networks develop through workshops how they mesh under the pressure of shared learning, shared experience, or even a shared literary prejudice or agenda.
This is what I term a circle for survival, a half-visible network that nudges the writing industry in one of its directions occasionally. Such circles areas old as writing. This circle is your cadre, your side. It sounds surreal, but all these writers eventually become aspects of each other’s writing selves. You should show your finished work to these writer-allies before you submit it for possible publication. They know your mind and your working practices. They also know what you can take, in terms of criticism, and how to communicate that criticism without misreading you, or upsetting you.

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