Representations of Creativity by Posters in Freelance Writing Internet Forums

ABSTRACT

Technical and professional communication (TPC) scholars have called for increased attention to creative thinking in the field’s writing practices. This article examines posts about creativity on two social networking websites and generates challenges, skills, and practices relevant to posters’ creative work.

KEYWORDS:

• Freelance writers
• freelance writing
• creativity
• business
• professionalization
• thematic analysis
• internet forums
• social networking

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Notes

1. Upwork and Freelance Union’s (2019) annual study of U.S. freelancers determined that 57 million Americans freelanced in 2019, making up 35% of the U.S. workforce, with writing and other skilled services making up the largest sector (para. 6, 16).

2. Reddit uses “r/” to denote groups within Reddit. In r/freelancewriters, the “r” denotes Reddit and the forward slash (/) proceeds the group name, as illustrated in the URL https://www.reddit.com/r/freelanceWriters. In other words, r/freelancewriters simply denotes the freelance writers’ group on Reddit.

3. Runco and Jaeger’s inclusion of effectiveness in their definition of creativity is based on their synthesis of creativity studies literature stemming from the 1980s. However, the “two-criteria” (originality/effectiveness) definition of creativity does not stand without contest. See, for instance, Diedrich, Benedek, Jauk, and Neubauer’s (2015) piece that argues that originality/novelty should be regarded as the first-order criteria of creativity.

4. The Alexa rank is an estimate of a website’s popularity relative to other websites, based on average daily visitors and pageviews.

5. It is important to recognize that novelty in creativity studies means novel to the peer group. Because these posters offered novel suggestions within the context of the discussion thread, they are considered novel for the purposes of this study.

6. Is important to note that this study did not examine or test the efficacy of pedagogical approaches to teaching creativity or to preparing TPC majors for freelance writing careers. Therefore, the pedagogical implications are derived from participants’ discussions of the challenges they say they face.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Krista Speicher Sarraf

Krista Speicher Sarraf is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the English department at West Virginia University, where she teaches first-year writing courses and courses in the Professional Writing and Editing program. Her research focuses on creativity, especially in workplace writing settings. She also researches professional and technical writing, writing across the curriculum, writing centers, and digital writing.