最近在读一本书，书名是《Creative Writing》。很久以前，其实听过也看过“创造性写作”这个概念和相关文章，可以说当时是很不以为然的。从去年开始，由于深刻地认识到写作就跟英语计算机理财一样是一个人不可缺少的外挂不可或缺的基本工具。最近再看到这本书的时候，竟然很读得进去。下面是我边读边敲的书中有感触的地方及文字，再一次帮我理清和强调了写作的必要重要性，阅读和写作的关系，以及写作对个人思维的锻炼，最重要的是在写的过程中更是自我认知和自我重塑的机会和过程，这个意义就太重大了是不是！

我把已经读到的部分心有戚戚的地方手工摘录下来，跟小伙伴们分享。我们已经出发，在写作这条路上，还能更了解自我同时重塑一个自己更喜欢的自己。加油吧！

What to expect of a creative writing degree?

If you’ve recently applied to study creative writing at university, or if you’re already a creative writing student, this book aims to help you maximize the benefits of your degree course both by demonstrating how creative writing “works” within the higher education context and how to take the skills you gain, from editing and pre-writing to the wider “life-lessons” outlined below, on into life after university. After reading this book we trust that you will also be clearer as to why the things you’ll cover again and again on your degree course, such as redrafting, are so important.

The topics covered here are the ones that students either struggle with the most or ask the most questions about or the ones that experience has told the book’s contributors are the areas students most need to work on or learn more about. However, there are several chapters, including Shawn Shiflett’s on how reading improves creative writing skills, that offer an angle on certain aspects of studying creative writing which you may not have encountered before, as well as others, such as Nabila Jameel’s on performing your work, that cover topics rarely touched on in most existing books on studying creative writing.

The book is loosely chronological. It starts with Ally Chisholm’s perspective on the skills you’ll need to study creative writing and ends with Sally O’Reilly’s on life after graduation. In between, the contributors offer their suggestions as to how to approach the various elements that are common to most creative writing degree courses (assessment, the writing workshop and critical reflections). Other chapters, such as Spencer Jordan’s guide to effective editing and Lorna Fergusson’s on how to use pre-writing to develop work, have a more universal applicability to writers whether at university or not. We want this to be a book you use regularly not just one that sits unused on your bookshelf or computer.

Why study creative writing in a time of uncertainty?

After a period of major expansion during which increasing numbers of “hands-on” subjects, from dance to photography, and ceramics to creative writing, became part of the university syllabus, there are signs that the higher education sector in many countries is set to contract. In an age of uncertainty, why study creative writing of all subjects?

The benefits of a creative writing degree

The contributors to this book, who (as you’ll see from the section ‘About the contributors’) collectively have a wealth of experience as creative writers in higher education, offer a variety of answers. Sally O’Reilly, who wrote the final chapter, recognizes not only the challenges facing soon-to-be-graduating creative writing students but also the potential advantages they possess. The ability to organize material, excellent and accurate writing skills and attention to detail in editing and presenting are all highly marketable in an increasingly competitive job market. So too is the ability to follow through with ideas, a central focus of Lorna Fergusson’s chapter on pre-writing.

In one sense, aside from the specific skills taught and developed on a creative writing degree, it fulfils the same role that a degree in any arts or humanities（人文学科）subject did in the past: a way of training and disciplining the mind, a forum for developing a range of transferable skills and a useful introduction to academia for anyone who wishes to continue their studies at a higher level.

Creative writing degrees, however, also offer something more: a unique opportunity for self-discovery and development. In my own chapter on critical reflections, I made the point that writing is, by its very nature, a reflective activity. Finding out who you are, what you think and what matters to you is a fundamental part of life, and creative writing students have the freedom to explore these issues through their writing over an extended period. I don’t know if any research has been done on whether creative writing graduates are “better adjusted” on leaving university than students who take any other degree course, but it remains one of the few subjects in higher education where there is still(considerable) room for self-exploration, not just ‘training for employment’. Furthermore, virtually every chapter here, implicitly or explicitly, highlights the unique role of creative writing degrees in helping to develop the imagination.

All of which is not to say that creative writing graduates don’t leave university with an array of practical skills that would be attractive to potential employers. In addition to those mentioned above, Elizabeth Reeder’s chapter demonstrates not only that the online environment can aid in the development of writing skills but also that writing skills can help to develop our effectiveness in the range of online environments that we now inhabit or participate in. Nabila Jameel, in her chapter on reading and presenting work aloud, also points to the potential benefits and applications of the skills gained from learning to read and perform creative work to a live audience.

Both Shawn Shiflett and Ally Chisholm in their chapters point to an additional and crucial skill that creative writing degrees help to develop: the ability to use a range of ‘outside’ sources and stimuli, to distil these in the imagination and to apply them to the process of making something new. In cognitive psychology, this is the hallmark of the creative mind. It’s also an essential quality in business and entrepreneurship.

Ally Chisholm’s chapter, however, suggests that studying creative writing also has deeper benefits. In arguing that good research skills are essential for writers, his chapter shows how, through developing our ‘hearing’ and our awareness of the world around us, we learn to recognize the inauthentic and the superficial.

Reading takes us out of ourselves and, paradoxically, into ourselves as well.