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Creative Writing in an Academic Setting

            Not everybody is a creative writer.  For some, it can be difficult to draw abstractions from the imagination and commit them to the written page.  However, by refining your skills and comfort level as a creative writer, you may find that you are better at expressing yourself in a wide variety of spoken and written settings.  Creative writing allows you to embrace those unique elements of your personality or identity which may not necessarily be definable in concrete terms. 

            This opportunity for individuality should be the launching point for you as you set out to fulfill a creative writing task in an academic setting.  If you are being asked to write a fictional piece in a literature or compositional class, you have the chance to regard this as something more than a chore.  Instead, you are being given the chance for personal expression in a setting where such is rare.  Therefore, you might begin the process by looking inward to determine what qualities set you apart.  Determine whether you would distinguish yourself for your sense of humor, your compassion, your unusual family history, some difficult personal experience you have endured or even your hobby interests.  Some element from within your life will serve as the perfect fodder for a creative writing endeavor. 

            That should enable you to have some fun with a creative writing assignment.  Even professional writers operate by the basic rule that you write what you know.  By selecting a subject that is familiar to you, you can use the creative writing process to express your interest, to share that interest with others and to create a new forum in which to discuss that interest.  This last quality of creative writing is what distinguishes it from other forms.  There are virtually no limitations to the ways in which you can use language to engage a reader.  Creative writing allows you to bend the rules of your world and to create your own universe.  Though this does not denote an entitlement to abuse or misuse the English language, you are given relative stylistic and narrative freedom to be as absurd or realistic as you choose. 

            More than any other mode of academic writing, creative writing is a way for you to become a better writer while simultaneously being given the chance for some fruitful self-investigation.  Because everybody is unique, everybody has the ability to be a creative writer.