The Purpose of Creative Writing in the World: Beyond Money

Notes and Ideas on the Craft

Jacob Malewitz
Creative writing is defined as a form of writing, writing that makes sense of the world. It's also writing that makes sense of the world. After all, where would we be without journalists reporting on wars? On a lesser angle, there is a writer behind everything on almost everything on TV. Writers are idea gals and girls. They create. We couldn't read, and maybe we couldn't see, without them.

Creative writing is needed in this modern world. Its purpose is to explore something within the soul a million pictures cannot.

But, maybe I am getting ahead of myself here. Still, Creative writing begins and ends as a writer driving along a series of narrow roads with countless turns. Few writers follow in others' paths. Many writers try to.

Julia Cameron, the seminal author of "The Artist's Way," explores what it means to be an artist in her books. Julia Cameron struggled with many things, but she struggled most as a writer, and also succeeded most.

Cameron did these things called "morning pages," and taking one's artist child out on dates. She developed her own voice through creative writing, that goal so many have and some fail at achieving. You may fail at creative writing in the beginning, middle, and end. The best part is you can always keep trying.

Creative writing is obviously about more than any one writer. It's a movement. It can define itself in the millions of pages found in the NANO writing competition every year-writers setting goals and doing their best to follow through on them.

And creative writing can be a perfect addiction for the artistic. Whether you are a freelance non-fiction writer or a screenwriter struggling on that 20th draft, creative writing is there to fall back on. When in doubt, go to the pages with glee, looking for ideas and hopes.

Really, you must continue as a creative writer, in the face of fear and rejection, you still continue.

For one, there is always something else to explore, while others love to delve into the same thing over and over. Some writers pen dozens of novels. Others just write one, filling notebooks with other kinds of prose. Success doesn't always come; that's not the purpose of creative writing.

There are millions of pictures ahead for you. But your only hope to capture them on the page is with a pen, at the computer, or in front of the type writer. The purpose is just to have fun doing so, creating worlds and ideas with simple words.

Published by Jacob Malewitz

I have written over 600 articles for newspapers and online publications. I am the author of the ebook The Writer Who Smiles, available here: booklocker.com/books/3288.html My new blog can be found at Cof...  View profile

  • Really, you can't define creative writing, but you can say it's about more than money
  • Where would we be without writing? Without journalists, screenwriters, novelists?

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  • Stephanie A. Smith3/2/2009

    great article jake!

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