Most of my writing has been academic. Not to say that I am one. Far from. In fact I changed majors because of it. I didn’t find myself to be an academic in the sense that was required of me. My mind was much to creative and did not quite fit in the right box.
In the meantime I was forced to learn to write structurally. If I was motivated to do the essay it would generally be planned out. The classic five paragraph three point essay. Though it taught me, sometimes, to plan and organize it did kill my creative juices.
Lately I have been able to be much more creative but it takes more effort and a whole lot more time and organization than I could have imagined. I would have thought that being creative requires more free-lancing and less planning. But I found that it requires more organization, and making decisions in what flies what is left behind.
When doing academic writing I would do basic research and then form somewhat of an outline. This usually was not written down unless it was required for the assignment. It was done because of the excessive amounts of information that were necessary to organize into some logical sense. At least with this I had a topic that would be narrowed out from the research and decide on it.
When writing creatively it seems that the first thing you do is rarely research but brainstorm. The process is then to specify and see where you are going but it starts from what you think up.
They do both have very similar ways to do things but there are significant differences.
I think that even in creative writing it is often important to outline. I can't say that it is always necessary however, outlining can sometimes be part of or even help the brainstorming process. If it works better for you though, you can brainstorm and then simply organize these thoughts by creating a vague outline in order to make a coherent piece of work.
ReplyDelete