Creative Writing

Introduction

Creative writing is generally understood to be writing that comes from the imagination, or writing that isn’t factual. It’s the very fine art of making things up, in the most attractive, apt, and convincing way possible. It’s the telling of lies in order to reveal illuminating and dark truths about the world and our place in it.

Some creative writing is partly inspired by real events or based on biographies or autobiographies, such as Jack Kerouac’s On the Road or Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, and the extent to which real life and real people can sometimes directly or indirectly inform creative work. “Write about what you know” is the writer’s maxim that has long since fallen into a crashing cliché—but it’s a cliché for a good reason. ...