How creative writers write : interviews with successful publishing writers

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis describes a qualitative investigation of the creative writing processes ofsuccessful publishing authors in the South African context. Four successful SouthAfrican authors of fiction were interviewed with the intention of garnering current,local insights into the creative writing process in order to nuance this field ofknowledge and to challenge reductive, undynamic ways of thinking about it. Whatthese creative writers say about their writing processes is discussed in the context ofprevious empirical research on the writing process and the creative process in therelated fields of composition studies and psychology. The resulting theoreticalparadigm for the study was a flexible, recursive cognitive process model of thewriting process within the context of a particular domain and field, in opposition to astage model of writing or models of writing that are devoid of social and affectivecontext.Interviews with Margie Orford, Imraan Coovadia, Lesley Beake and John van de Ruitinvestigated how expert creative writers work in the South African context andexplored contributing factors to the writing process, from initial inspiration ororigination of ideas through to submission of completed manuscripts for publication.The creative writers in question are experienced authors who have published morethan once as the intention was to discover what successful or established authors ofliterary fiction do, with an eye to making a contribution to current internationalattempts at theorising the field of creative writing. The results of this researchindicated clear support for most of the combined underlying theories and hypothesesdiscussed in the literature study, with an indication of some areas that required furtherrefining and research, such as the impact of situational variables on the writingprocess. Finally some suggestions are made as to how the theoretical models might beimproved through combination and comparison with one another and with moreextensive empirical research, and some of the implications of this research forcreative writing pedagogy and the development of novice writers are explored.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University