A Map of the Writer's Mind
Creative ways into scholarly and professional writing
Dear fellow writer,
I’m in Australia all this week, where I’ve been running workshops for academic and professional writers from a wide range of disciplines: for example scientists, humanists, sociologists, engineers, legal scholars, organizational management experts, accounting and finance researchers, and even courtroom judges.
Sometimes I have to pinch myself! As a literary scholar by temperament and training — I earned my PhD in Comparative Literature in the early 1990s, specializing in Modernist poetry — I’ve always felt reasonably confident in my ability to write and teach about challenging poetic texts. But I never imagined back then that experts in fields about which I know very little would one day look to me as an expert on wordcraft and style in their home disciplines.
How did I get from there to here? Paradoxically, I credit my arts and humanities background for launching me far beyond the arts and humanities and into the pan-disciplinary world I inhabit now. For me, “creativity” has never just meant “creative writing” or even “writing creatively.” It also means thinking and acting creatively, drawing on all the techniques at my disposal to expand the limits of knowledge and push against conventional boundaries of language and thought — an undertaking also known as research.
These days, I love helping other writers find creative paths into their own research and writing. In my upcoming Creativity Catalyst, for example, we’ll explore playful, pleasurable strategies for integrating story, poetry, drama, moving, making, and metaphor into your daily life, your writing life, and your writing style. Participants get access to twice-weekly Live Writing Studio sessions (or you can purchase a separate 6-week Studio pass here), a safe space to share your creative experiments with other writers.
My own trust in the creative process explains why I found myself sitting on the floor of my Melbourne hotel room yesterday, tearing photos out of a glossy magazine and piecing them together to form this week’s paper collage (an exercise adapted from Week 5 of the Creativity Catalyst curriculum, when we’ll look at how “making stuff” with our hands can set our minds in motion). As I played around with various layerings of color, form, and meaning — a map of colonial Melbourne, a modern abstract painting, fragmentary images of expensive luxury items and textures — I started drafting this week’s newsletter in my head. By the time I’d finished shaping the collage, my preliminary ideas, too, had taken shape.
Intrigued? Inspired? There’s still time to join the Creativity Catalyst! Why not treat yourself and your writing to an eye-opening, intellect-sharpening, soul-expanding elixir of creative joy?!
For examples of creative experiments by past participants, check out our Creativity Catalyst Showcase.
I’d love to see you there!
Feeling creative, collage-y, cheerful, or just kind? Please take a moment to drop me a heart, leave a comment, and/or click Restack at the bottom of this message. Your enthusiasm and support mean so much to me.
Kia pai tō koutou rā (have a great day) – and keep on writing!
Helen
Write more, right now! Join me and fellow writers from 30+ countries in the WriteSPACE, the ultimate membership site for scholarly and professional writers who aim to lift their writing game. To try free for 30 days, click here and enter the discount code SNEAKPEEK.
Books on writing by Helen Sword
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