The Writing Experiment Strategies for Innovative Creative Writing.pdf

THE

WRITING

EXPERIMENT

Strategies for innovative

creative writing

Hazel Smith

First published in 2005

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording

or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing

from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one

chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any

educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational

institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright

Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin

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Crows Nest NSW 2065

Australia

Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

Email: info@allenandunwin.com

Web: www.allenandunwin.com

National Library of Australia

Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Smith, Hazel, 1950- .

The Writing Experiment: strategies for innovative creative writing.

Bibliography.

Includes index.

ISBN 1 74114 015 3.

1. Creative writing. 2. Creative writing (Higher education).

3. Creative writing - Handbooks, manuals, etc. 4. English

language - Writing. I. Title.

808.06

Set in 11/13 pt Minion by Midland Typesetters, Maryborough

Printed by CMO Image Printing Enterprise, Singapore

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Preface

Introduction

vii

Part I: Introductory strategies

Chapter 1:

Playing with language, running with referents

Chapter 2:

Genre as a moveable feast

Chapter 3:

Working out with structures

Chapter 4:

Writing as recycling

Chapter 5:

Narrative, narratology, power

Chapter 6:

Dialoguing

110

Part II: Advanced strategies

131

Chapter 7:

Postmodern f(r)ictions

133

Chapter 8:

Postmodern poetry, avant-garde poetics

156

Chapter 9:

The invert, the cross-dresser, the fictocritic

192

Chapter 10: Tongues, talk and technologies

212

Chapter 11: New media travels

237

Chapter 12: Mapping worlds, moving cities

254

Conclusion: The ongoing editor

277

Acknowledgments

281

Index

283

Visit The Writing Experiment website at: www.allenandunwin.com/writingexp

Preface

The Writing Experiment is the culmination of my experience of teaching

creative writing in the School of English at the University of New South

Wales (UNSW) at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels from 1991

to 2001. It is dedicated with admiration and affection to the hundreds of

students I taught during that period, and the breathtakingly good work

they so often produced.

During my tenure at UNSW, I developed a method for teaching higher

education students which combined three objectives: it theorised the process

of writing; it was biased towards experimental approaches; and it was system-

atic and based on step-by-step strategies. As this method evolved, and as I

transformed my teaching strategies in response to student and peer feedback,

I felt that it would be valuable to document them in a book to make them

more generally available. I also became aware that despite the heady and con-

tinuing rise of creative writing courses in American, Canadian, Australian and

British universities during the last twenty years, there was a dearth of books in

the area designed for specific use by higher education students, especially ones

which also incorporated experimental and systematic strategies.

The book draws heavily on my own work as a writer, and my own interest

in technique, experimental writing and analytical approaches to the creative

process. I have engaged with nearly all the exercises in this book at one time

or another, and many of them are central to my own creative practice. But

the processes of writing and teaching have been symbiotic for me: my

writing informed my teaching at every point, but teaching in turn took

my writing into new areas. The book is also informed by my hybrid

and intermedia approach to writing. My previous career as a professional

Preface

musician, my collaborations with artists and musicians, and my love of film,

the visual arts and music mean that I have constantly extended my writing

beyond the purely literary, and have encouraged my students to do the same.

I would like to thank my previous colleagues in the School of English at

the University of New South Wales, many of whom have contributed

directly or indirectly to this book. In particular I would like to thank Anne

Brewster, with whom I had the privilege to work closely and harmoniously

for three years in the creative writing area. Her stimulation, advice and

erudition have been immensely important, and she has given invaluable

advice on drafts of this book. I am also indebted to Suzanne Eggins with

whom for several years I jointly taught the first-year course ‘Factual and

Creative Writing’: her precise and penetrating lectures on professional

writing encouraged me to think through the importance of systematic

approaches to creative writing. My warm thanks also to my current col-

leagues in the School of Creative Communication, University of Canberra,

for providing a friendly, stimulating and innovative environment in which

to complete this book, and particularly to Maureen Bettle for reading and

commenting painstakingly on a draft of the manuscript.

I would like to thank my publisher Elizabeth Weiss for her excellent advice

and enthusiastic support of this project; also my editor Karen Gee and the

rest of the team at Allen & Unwin for all their cheerful assistance. I would also

like to thank Laura Brown and Lisa McCarthy for helping me to contact ex-

students; Kate Fagan for giving information on Lyn Hejinian’s work; Joy

Wallace for her advice and encouragement; and Roger Dean for reading the

manuscript and making numerous suggestions. I also want to express my

gratitude to all those authors and students who generously gave me permis-

sion to quote from their work, and to the UNSW student union for allowing

me to reproduce work by students published in the magazine Unsweetened.

But most of all I would like to thank the huge numbers of students—both

those who are represented here and those who are not—who have stimulated

me, kept me on my toes and given me invaluable feedback. As I put this book

together I was increasingly frustrated by the fact that I had not kept a good

deal of the wonderful work which students had produced over the years, and

also that I would not have enough space to reproduce most of the examples

in my possession. But I remembered with the greatest pleasure the lectures

and tutorials in which I had laboured with students over the challenges and

joys of creative work. I am extremely thankful for this unique experience,

and know that it is the main dynamic of this book.

Hazel Smith

School of Creative Communication

Sonic Communications Research Group

University of Canberra

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