Full Description
Simultaneously a handbook and a critique of one, Beyond Craft combines an orientation to the field of creative writing with an insight into current scholarship surrounding creative writing pedagogy. A much-needed alternative to the traditional craft guide, this text pairs advice and exercises on composition with an illuminating commentary on the issues surrounding these very techniques. Teaching the craft whilst apprising students of the issues of craft pedagogy, this book allows them to gain an awareness of how current pedagogy comes at the expense of larger and increasingly relevant cultural concerns. Westbrook and Ryan bring emerging writers into the larger conversations that define the field, inviting them to:
- Contextualize their own writing practices and educational experiences in relation to the history of creative writing as an academic discipline.
- Determine how New Critical lore and Romantic mythology may affect—even distort—their understanding of literary
production.
- Critically examine their notions of authorship, collaboration, and invention in relation to contemporary literary and
rhetorical theory.
- Understand and evaluate the economic, social, political, and professional challenges facing creative writers today.
- Analyze the contemporary literary marketplace not only to identify potential publication contexts but also to understand how issues of diversity and bias affect writing communities.
- Reflect on how increasingly rapid technological developments may affect their own writing and the future of literature.
Earnestly self-aware throughout, Beyond Craft both inducts new writers into the field of creative writing and infuses them with an understanding of the wider dialogue surrounding their craft.
Contents
Acknowledgments
An Introduction: By Way of Boxes and Paradoxes (and Too Many Lines About Felines)
Section 1: Where Creative Writing Comes From
Chapter 1: Art for Art's Sake & Craft for Craft's Sake: Our Love-Hate Relationship with the Academic History of Creative Writing
Chapter 2: Smoked Dispersed in the Ether: Authors' Creation Myths and the Problem with Genius
Chapter 3: Repurposing Spontaneity: From Inspiration to Invention
Section 2: Who Creative Writers Are (in Relation to Others)
Chapter 4: Beyond A Room of One's Own: Toward Collaborative Understandings of Authorship
Chapter 5: Making Collaboration Explicit: Co-Creating With Actual Others
Section 3: Where Writers Find Their Audiences, or How Publishing Works
Chapter 6: What Your Creative Writing Teacher May Not Have Told You: On The Problem of "Greatness" in the Literary Marketplace
Chapter 7: Commercial Publishing: Cumulative Advantage and Marketing Magic
Chapter 8: Small Literary Publishing: Understanding the Pitfalls of Prestige at
Independent and University Presses 193
Chapter 9: Self-Publishing in the Internet Age, or the eBook that (Nearly) Ate the World
Section 4: What the Future of Creative Writing Might Look Like
Chapter 10: Misbehaving On and Off of the Page: Toward the Literature of Tomorrow
Works Cited
