Imagination’s afterlife: influences on and transformations of literary creative process within a Creative Practice PhD

ABSTRACT

Professional authors of imaginative literature, whether fiction or non-fiction, follow creative processes that have been built from a mix of experience and instinct. These are specific and individual to each author, but have been established by them over time, and frequently in an informal, non-analytical, but nevertheless successful way. What happens when a professional author, used to such a process, undertakes the writing of a creative work within the framework of a PhD? What influences come to bear on the creative work from the analytical, academic part of the PhD project? Does creative process change? If so, how? And what impact might it be expected to have on the final work, and the author’s continuing creative practice, even beyond the period of study? Drawing on interviews with writers who are undertaking or have recently completed a creative writing PhD, and with creative writing academics, the author of this paper, an established novelist and PhD student, examines the synergies between imagination and analysis within a higher degree research project, and how this affects the creative process itself.

KEYWORDS:

• Creative process
• writers
• creative PhDs
• creative writing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Sophie Masson is the award-winning author of over sixty books for children, young adults and adults, published in Australia and internationally. At present she is undertaking a PhD in Creative Practice at the University of New England, Australia.

ORCID

Sophie Masson http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7720-4448

Notes

1 All interviews for this paper were conducted by email, in October and December 2016 and January 2017. All the interviewees have given their permission to be quoted in full.

2 All quotes used in this section are from ‘Breaking the pattern: Established writers undertaking creative writing doctorates in Australia’.

3 Quote by James Elkins, in email correspondence, November 2016. Permission granted for full reproduction.