Studying Creative Writing
Edited by Sharon Norris, contributing author Shawn Shiflett
Studying Creative Writing is the fourth title to be published in the international series, Creative Writing Studies. The series comprises titles on creative writing designed for use -- by scholars, students, and teachers -- in higher education settings.
"Each contributing writer has an engaging, accessible voice . . . a marvellous tool for all students of writing."
Professor Jen Webb, University of Canberra, UK
Excerpt from Chapter Three:"The importance of reading to your writing,"
by Shawn Shiflett
"We have all felt so physically transported from the words on a page to the world they bring to three-dimensional life in the theatre of our minds, that hours, days, weeks or even years after we've put the piece of writing back onto our bookshelf we will find ourselves once again mentally revisiting images from it. For example, if I hear someone mention Leo Tolstoy's epic novel War and peace, I immediately think of Prince Andre lying mortally wounded on the battlefield as he stares up at the 'immeasurably lofty' sky (Tolstoy, War and peace, p. 326). And once while seated on a commuter train, I suddenly felt as if I were in a small boat that was rocking to the dip and roll of swells on the open Atlantic. Stranger still, the train was at a complete stop at a station. I realised that my visceral sensation of sailing was coming from none other than Virginia Woolf's To the lighthouse, a novel I had finished reading a few hours earlier.
As it is such a common experience, perhaps we could agree henceforth to classify such occurrences as 'post-dramatic flashbacks'."