The Creative Process

by Carol Burke, Molly Best Tinsley

A process approach to creative writing, emphasizing open-ended exploratory writing through carefully focused exercises and journal-writing activities. Focuses on writing poems, stories, and essays, with samples by professionals and students that illustrate techniques.

Genres: Nonfiction, Writing

186 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1992

Reviews

[josie · Rating 1 out of 5]

in a book about writing you wouldn’t expect any spelling errors, right?

in the whole chapter dedicated to making connections she only went over metaphors, personification, paradoxes, analogies and similes. it’s not bad it’s just i thought there would be much more than the five most common ways, plus there was only about half a page for each of those.

at page 108 (out of 186) she says that “so far this book has suggested two stages of the writing process.” then she lists them. but guess what everything she said was brand new to me!! she didn’t mention anything before she did at that time. like i was so confused. then i looked back and yeah, she said it no where. like what??

in the third and final section of the book, i learned about different types of poems. i love poetry so this should have been helpful, right? IT WASN’T!!! the poetry section consisted of probably if i had to guess about 70% examples. multiple consecutive pages were examples and one sentence lines in between. i ain’t reading allat. how about explain the poems?? they were barely explained if they were even explained at all. it seems like the further the book went on the lazier they got.

they (there were two authors of this) had the audacity to use the phrase ‘more writerly’ (???!!) it’s a word, but what does that even mean? how can something be writerly if it’s already written? what??

there were many grammatical errors and one spelling error that i counted, in a book about writing that had two authors!! like u guys rly didn’t catch any of them? the funny thing is that the spelling error was when they were repeating/explaining something that they quoted.

the only reason i didn’t dnf is because i decided to read this for a writing class.

some helpful bits but they were gems in the mess of this book.

1/5 ⭐️

[Kerry Fine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was assigned this book in college, and it's still, all these years later, my go-to reference for writing technique. Sometimes it helps to pull it out and do some of the exercises, just to get my mind going in the right direction.

[Joan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Valuable reference for writing.