Making Up Research in Creative Writing

Not so many years ago, Making Up: Research in Creative Writing could not have existed. It could not have existed because at the time of its conception in the countries most influencing its birth – that is, in Britain and in Australia – even the mere notion of research through and in creative writing did not formally exist. Since the early 1990s, such research has grown, and it has developed strongly, worldwide.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.