Making Up: Research in Creative Writing

What we value in works of creative writing has long been the subject of discussion. We might value the diversion a work provides. We might feel personally engaged with a work of creative writing because it relates to an emotional state with which we are familiar or one about which we are newly curious. We might value the insights a work of creative writing provides – whether it is knowledge of our own emotional state, or knowledge about medicine, dancing or mechanical engineering, or whatever else.

But research through and in creative writing is not only about the works this research produces, it is also, and often primarily, about the explorations a creative writer undertakes. To explore, through creative writing, ideas, a state of mind, concepts, personal or public ideals – research in and through creative writing, such as that seen here in Making Up: Research in Creative Writing, does this and more.