Talk:Creative writing

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The article states:

"The lack of specificity of the term is partly intentional, designed to make the process of writing accessible to everyone (of all ages) and to ensure that non-traditional, or traditionally low-status writing (for example, writing by marginalized social groups, experimental writing, genre fiction) is not excluded from academic consideration or dismissed as trivial or insignificant."

The phrase, "partly intentional, designed to make the process accesible . . ." leads the reader to think that some individual or team of thinkers invented the title "creative writing" with specific political intentions in mind, to ensure that forms x, y, and z would be included, and that forms a, b, and c would be excluded. No such spontaneous invention or creation occurred. The title "creative writing" developed and evolved gradually, like most distinctions. To claim that this title was "designed" so that the form would be accessible to all people, young and old and man and woman, etc., is simply bogus and demonstrates an author's point-of-view.

The paragraph following the above passage, beginning with "Despite this inclusively" and ending with "a close friend said to you" should be deleted. First, "inclusively" is not a word. I think the author might be looking for something along the lines of "inclusivity," but as far as I can tell, "inclusivity" is not a word either. We have "exclusivity" for some reason. I don't know why it doesn't work the same for "inclusive."

Second, phrases such as "hard to figure out" and "most obvious" and "doesn't need to have" are POV. And the list of examples of when a shopping list goes too far and becomes creative is interesting, and nicely written, but simply out-of-place in an encyclopedia article, unnecessary and distracting.

I've been reading Wikipedia for a while, but I'm new to editing. I'm not going to directly edit the article at this point, but I wanted to make some comments for others to consider. I'm still learning how all this stuff works.

Read the part of Wikipedia that says be bold You're not destroying anything by editing, and everyone makes mistakes, so have at it. You're right about the article's phrasing, it's in need of a good cleanup. - IstvanWolf 06:56, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Removal of second paragraph

I've commented out the second paragraph of this article. These are my reasons:

  1. It seems based on POV assumptions that something is "hard to figure out" and that something else is "most obvious". Both assertions are debatable and don't appear to be necessary to explaining what creative writing is.
  2. It uses the creation of a shopping list as an example of creative writing. Prove me wrong, but I believe this to be a very distracting and unclear way to illustrate creative writing to someone new to the concept. Writing a shopping list is an edge case of what creative writing may be and it's not helpful to include a controversial example so early in such a simple encyclopedia article. But then, I suppose that's my own POV... ;-)

I'm suggesting the shopping list exercise might be better suited to an advanced discussion of what creative writing is or isn't, to those already familiar with the general scope of what "creative writing" covers. Thus, I haven't completely deleted it, so if anyone can make use of it with more clarity or an introductory quality (and without POV), the material is there. --Ds13 00:15, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Creative writing graduates

There are more examples than just Michael Chabon of authors that became well-known after graduating from creative writing programs. I'll update as soon as I can get a list, but if anyone else wants to in the meantime ... :o) - IstvanWolf 06:53, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Too many links don't meet the External Links Guideline

Wikipedia's External Links Guideline rules out many useful but unencyclopedic links such as to blogs, forums or self-published pages (see Reliable Sources Guideline for more about citing or linking to self-published sources). Also, promotional links to collegiate writing programs would be inappropriate here.

The overall number of external links that aren't direct footnotes or article references is also supposed to be low, accoding to both the External Links Guideline and the "Wikipedia is Not ..." Policy ("Wikipedia is not a mirror or a repository of links, images, or media files").

This article's got a ton of links, many of them inappropriate per the guidelines. The guidelines encourage editors to stick in one link to the appropriate section of the Open Directory Project ("Dmoz") referring readers to an off-Wikipedia listing of many links. This reduces clutter, avoids reliable sources issues, and heads off fights over which links should go in and which shouldn't.

Normally, I'd just stick a {cleanup-spam} tag on the article but since most of these links were added with good intentions and they're not to blatantly spammy sites, I thought that was a bit harsh so I used a more generic cleanup tag instead. --A. B. (talk) 18:53, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I've tried to clean up this section somewhat, but more work may be needed. Per WP:NOT and WP:EL, the article should include links to encyclopedic resources about creative writing by recognized authorities. The article should not provide links to forums where people can post their work, blogs authored by people who are not recognized authorities on creative writing, and non-notable zines. --Muchness 03:53, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I've removed the external links and provided a link to dmoz. One persistent link, I suspect, will have to be removed on a daily basis. Porthugh 00:58, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Not sure...

I'm sorry to day that I'm not sure where this article is heading. It seems confused and does not seem to be attempting an encyclopaedic approach to the concept and practice of "creative writing".

That said, can I suggest some immediate clean up of the phrasing? Then some expansion of the issues into more comprehensive overviews? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alexthurleyratcliff (talk • contribs) 21:18, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Alexthurleyratcliff. I made yet another change. Maybe it should say writers or academics instead of colleges. The article seems to focus on college classes. Erudecorp 17:57, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Concise Lead missing

In my opinion the main deficit of the article is the lack of a concise lead paragraph. The actual first part is written as an elaborate description (which is good). If anybody could write a concise lead, it would be much easier to restructure the article. I would do it myself, but I am very short of time at the moment. — Tirkfltalk 10:44, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

I made a quick translation from the German article, which has a lot of extra information too and looks like it is very well structured. Maybe we should adopt the structure of the German article? — Tirkfltalk 11:00, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
I watched this article improve in the past two months. Yay. It's much better. I removed tags. Erudecorp ? * 09:34, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Section "Controversy in Academia"

This section seems to be more of a defense and praise of creative writing programs than a discussion of the controversy of creative writing programs. Only the first paragraph actually addresses criticism, and even this as vague and "safe", the only real line refering to criticism being the one that states, "there remains disagreement about the relevance of creative writing programs". The remaining 3/4 of the article, including the quote, is a defense and praise of the worth of creative writing. Though both sides should be represented I think the actual criticism should be expanded. A number of universities for instance, such as Reid college publicly state the reasons they do not institute a creative writing program, and those reasons are largely due to the criticisms of such programs... I'm just saying it needs work I guess.

--milo —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.85.217.249 (talk) 19:17, 21 December 2007 (UTC)