Maria Krissia Rocel A.

Chavez
Objectives:
“The beautiful part of writing
is that you don’t have to get
it right the first time, unlike
a brain surgeon.”
Processes of Creative Writing
01 02 03

04 05 06

07
PREPARING
Preparing
● includes active reading, imitation,
research, play, and reflection

● settling project, deciding what to

do, and researching ways to
achieve it
 Preparing
1. What am I preparing for?
2. How shall I do this?
3. Which genres do I want to
adopt for your project?
 Advantages of Preparing
1. Alters character
2. Improves capacity for endurance as a
writer
3. Open doors for artistic breakthroughs
and evolution of talent
PLANNING
Planning
● includes research and premeditation
● usually begins with subject, then the
research it, carry out interviews, and
have internet searches
● some forge ahead with their work
with little planning
03
INCUBATION
Incubation

● writer is always at work

● time for listening to the project

and growing it
BEGINNING
Beginning
● most difficult of all the writing process
● freewriting and free-associating
sentences
● true beginning for any artistic process
occurs some way into its composition
FLOWING
Flowing
● where writing is the most fun you can
have
● feels like conducting an orchestra
made of senses
 The Silence Reservoir
● writing is not unidirectional
● leave the field, stop writing,
finish for the day, and go for a walk
● allow the reservoir of language and
ideas within your unconscious mind to
replenish
Breakthroughs AND FINISH lines
● a feeling of completion when form and
structure click together sweetly in your
mind
● given sufficient fluency through
practice, writers make artistic
breakthroughs while writing
 On titles
● title offers a first impression to readers
● it may tip the balance between your
work being read or not
● make the title work as hard as all the
words in a piece
 On titles
● title is a door for the reader
to open or a little window
through which they peep at the
interior making them questions
whether they should enter or
take part
 On titles
● you might borrow a phrase from a well-
known literary work but make sure there’s
precise resonance between the phrase and
your work
● go through your piece and locate a phrase
that either summarizes it or captures its spirit
 On titles
● character’s name
● setting
● time
● theme
● some overriding idea
REWRITING
Rewriting
● all of what is written needs planning and
pruning
● writers become self-editors
● adjectives and adverbs are the first to
feel the spotlight of redrafting
Rewriting
● any word or phrase that distracts the
attention of the reader from the book is
redundant
● remove words/phrases that divert the
reader by literariness, clichés, archaisms,
and inversions
Procedures in Rewriting
1. Reading work aloud – exposes errors or
niggles of sound and sense
2. Asking someone else to read your work
aloud to you – listen to where the reader
stumbles over words and make note to
rewrite them
Procedures in Rewriting
3. Cut one of your narrative exercises by
half – intensifies style; cut every adjective
then adverbs
4. Watch out for where a piece of work
begins– mutate your work through various
versions
Failing, and failing better
● put the work away for weeks,
then revise it, or give it to a
trusted member of your circle
● cut and compress, rearrange
and rewrite, add and subtract
 Deadlines as lifelines
● forces savage action
● offers a promised release
from the self-created prison of
indolence of not writing
● like a supervisor who tells you to get on
with it
 Your challenger
● disembody yourself, become
impersonal, or play somebody
else
● having a real deadline
imposed by somebody else is
useful
 Precision of process
● writing gives you time for
rehearsal and time to get your
words as right as possible

● clarity is crucial as it is a
desirable quality in writing
 Precision of process
● when we use words, we
have to use the right words
and the right words in the
best order
 Raiding the languages of
elsewhere
● enter into an engagement
with traditionally non-literary
fields of knowledge to open their languages for
the use as writers- release fresh themes and
subjects for imagination to scrutinize, turn
over, and play with
Example:

William Moore poem-

language and subject of
her poetry almost seemed
to spring from clear
scientific paper
Example:
 Precision and voice
● hardest skill for a writer to
master- clarity and simplicity
● other property of writing
that comes out is a nature of
natural ‘sound’
 Confidence and practice
● it is imperative to practice
confidence
● possession of confidence says
much about how a person was
raised and educated
● ‘The act of writing is an act of optimism’
(Albee)
The invisible audience
● Writer’s audience
consists of individuals
whom he may never see or
know – Margaret Atwood
● the only visible thing is
the book
The invisible audience
● one of the benefits of a
creative writing course is
that a writer have a better
idea of who the audience
might be
 Suspensions of belief
● enlarge the positive image
and shrink the negative one

● teach yourself to think and

feel positively and every time
you sit down to write
 Suspensions of belief
● begin to believe in your
own possibility and that
creates confidence
● confidence affects the
quality and style of your
writing
 Self’s voices

● resilience of the personality

has a great say whether
artistic progress is made or
not
 Voice
● finding your voice might be
only one stage on the way to
finding your voices or finding
your style
● your style is your aim
● writing voice must be distinctive
 Voice
● voice is a three-way metaphor:
1. for writing as you speak
2. for writing as you speak at
your best
3. For writing with rigor
 Voice
● say what you mean and say
it without pose and you will find
your voice

● voice makes the writing

honest and authentic
 Placebo selves
● placebo writing often produces
interesting work by people who
have struggled to write anything
with ease, energy or imagination
● placebo voice takes them outside
themselves
 The other
● the notion of the ‘Other’
has been theorized to death
as the author, leaving not
only the author dead, but
their famous ‘Others’
stalking the earth like
zombies
 Playing dead
● you do not write as a “the
other’, you write as though you
were entirely absent, as
though you were dead, and no
audience to please or pander
to
 Playing others
● Borges claims that he lets the
‘first self’ go on living, so that the
other self can create literature,
and that this writing justifies the
existence of the first self.
 “Many creative writers
experience the sensation that
somebody other in them is at
work.”
 Being others
● one can use versions of
oneself to create writers, each of
which is a persona
● you write in characters, another
self so far away from your nature
psychologically
 Why become others?
1. Allows writer some distance
on their own practice as a writer
2. Gives complete freedom to
write as you wish
3. Encourages writer to explore
different styles and voices
 Why become others?
Example:
Fernando Pessoa invented 4
writing selves, each of whom
published under their own name and
had their own style of writing.
 Why become others?
Practical and Political Considerations
✓ Survival – women have published
under male names in order to
conceal their gender at a time when
publication for women was near
impossible
 Why become others?
Example:
George Eliot’s real name is Mary
Ann Evans
 Why become others?
✓ Some writers have published
anonymously or under assumed names
in order to conceal their identity from
society or create curiosity about their
work.
 Why become others?
Example:
Walter Scott published all his novels
anonymously
Effacement
 Effacement
● “One can write nothing readable
unless one constantly struggles to
efface one’s personality” – George
Orwell
● what is said is what is held out to the
reader: the message, not the messenger
 Using depression
● depression can be a useful
tool for a writer if they know how
to play with it

● use depressive phase

constructively
 Change your life
● begin over as a writer,
reinventing a self that will be
as unfamiliar to their friends
● requires writers to abandon
familiar surroundings and
people and begin over
“What is written without
effort is, in general,
read without pleasure.”
THANK YOU!

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