Words on a Page

I’ve recently been contacted by a former student, asking if I’d like to read the novel he was getting ready to submit to an agent. As I’ve been going through the process of finding an agent myself and frequently call upon the support and advice of my own writing community I wanted to offer him a bit of encouragement. And so I said yes. This situation has happened plenty of times before so I have no excuse. I should have known better. Normally, things pan out like this: The budding novelist (either student, former student, or friend who has a story to tell) will ask me to ‘glance over’ their project. They’re excited that they’ve completed their short story or novel and they want to share it with someone who can appreciate it for what it is – a soon to be discovered masterpiece. Then, the moment I open their document or turn to the first page my editing instincts kick in.  Things generally go downhill from there. Ten or twelve years ago, a neighbour gave me the man

I've been going through some of my old writing journals, lately, and I came upon this entry, written in 2008 while teaching a class on Autobiography to first year Creative Writing students.  ******************************** What is creativity and where does it come from?  How do we recognise it?  How do we nurture it and how does it grow?  Ghiselin describes the creative process as a process of evolution, of taking something that already exists and turning it into something new or something better.  It is a cause and effect relationship, where the effect may not necessarily be recognised or valued at first instance: 'Because every creative act overpasses the established order in some way and in some degree, it is likely at first to appear eccentric to most men' (1997:3).  We are reminded that in his lifetime, Van Gogh never sold a painting (a claim which is disputed by the experts), yet today we know he was a visionary, experimenting with colour and form, taking what h