ACADEMIA Letters

CREATIVITY AND WRITING: CONCEPTUAL MAPPING

Katya Stoycheva, Department of Psychology, Institute for Population and Human
Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences

Recent exploration of psychological studies of the creative person, process and product in
the domain of literature required considerable discrimination and clarification of related con-
cepts and phenomena (Stoycheva 2020). This paper continues the work of differentiation and
integration of perspectives within the conceptual space that creativity and writing share.
Creative writing commonly refers to two different realities, such as the work of the cre-
ative writers who write fiction and the development of one’s capacity to write creatively. The
journal New Writing. The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writ-
ing addresses explorations of both the teachings of creative writing in different educational
contexts and the literary creativity through the persons, processes and works. Separating fic-
tion writers from non-fiction writers further outlines the role of professional writing across
occupations. How does creativity relate to writing as an individual competence, a profes-
sional activity, and literature? What relationships between aspects of creativity and instances
of writing can be identified?

Writing as an individual competence

Gardner (2011) defines linguistic intelligence through individual abilities to master language
phonology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and skillfulness to exercise them. In spoken com-
munication, one relies on nonlinguistic input from gestures, tone of voice, and the surrounding
situation. In contrast, in written communication, one has words alone to express oneself ap-
propriately. Mastery in writing is manifested within the context of a particular writing practice
where one’s writing produces a work that can be observed, read, and compared to other writ-
ings. Different levels of writing expertise are best appreciated in these roles and situations

Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Katya Stoycheva, katya.g.stoycheva@gmail.com

Citation: Stoycheva, K. (2021). CREATIVITY AND WRITING: CONCEPTUAL MAPPING. Academia
Letters, Article 3344. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3344.

1
where writing skills are central. Furthermore, the novelty and appropriateness of a particular
written work can be identified there.
Verbal creative activities do not necessarily measure one’s creativity in writing. For in-
stance, the verbal creative tasks developed by Torrance (1988) ask respondents to put their
ideas, hypotheses, guesses, predictions into words. However, it is not the writing as a verbal
expression that counts, but the ideas that it contains. It is not the creative writing ability that
is assessed, but creative thinking abilities such as fluency, flexibility and originality in gener-
ating ideas. Words are the tool of expressing one’s ideas, as are the pictures that respondents
make up in the figural creative tasks that are part of Torrance’s tests battery.
Other creativity measures ask individuals to create written work. In Amabile’s (1983)
experiments on the consensual assessment of creativity, participants write short poems inde-
pendently judged for creativity by published poets, publishing graduate students and teachers
from English departments. This approach produces more domain-oriented creativity mea-
sures, but are written works judged to be creative because of their authors’ creativity or writ-
ing? Poems deemed to be more creative demonstrated novelty of word choice, originality of
the idea, the sophistication of expression, and effective use of rhythm. Other features as clar-
ity of expression, appropriateness of word choice, consistency of theme, as well as the correct
use of grammar and the poetic form emerged as different factors in judges’ evaluation of the
poems (Amabile 1983).
Besides, can such measures of creativity predict real-life creative performance in writing?
Language is one of the most important systems of symbolic representation and communica-
tion of knowledge across the human species (Gardner 2011). Therefore, writing should be
contributing to the development of expertise and creative achievements in many and varied
human endeavours.

Writing as a professional activity

There are occupations where writing is leading professional activity. Journalism is a prime
example of the so-called expository writing. A magazine article is regarded as creative if it
presents information in a new and valuable way that meets its audience’s needs and the con-
straints of its purpose. Being an effective and original writer who produces creative responses
to given rhetorical problems speaks about the vocational creativity of professional journalists
and the avocational creativity of the high school teacher who writes for the newspapers in
his/her free time.
Writing can also be part of one’s professional activities. University professors, in addition
to teaching and research, write textbooks and popularization books. Psychotherapists meet

Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Katya Stoycheva, katya.g.stoycheva@gmail.com

Citation: Stoycheva, K. (2021). CREATIVITY AND WRITING: CONCEPTUAL MAPPING. Academia
Letters, Article 3344. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3344.

2
their clients and often write to share their knowledge through individual case studies or reflect
on the lessons learned from their practice. Mastery in writing and skillful use of language are
of greater importance in some vocations. The ability to use language to convince others of a
particular course of action makes political, religious and social leaders more influential. In
education and training, much of the teaching occurs through language and reliance on written
words for explanations. Journal in Writing in Creative Practice is the other Scopus - listed
journal which combines writing and creativity in its title. The journal reaches to practitioners
in art, craft, design, performance, and discusses the purposes of writing, as a parallel to visual
discourse, in the development of their creative practices. Its contributions prove that writing
can be useful and even necessary addition to one’s main line of work.
In many occupations, language is a common tool of accomplishing one’s activities rather
than a particular focus of attention. For scientists, Gardner (2011: 82-83) notices, “despite the
evident importance of logical-mathematical reasoning and symbol systems, language remains
the optimal means for conveying the basic concepts in textbooks”. Scholars in humanities
and social sciences depend more on written and oral sources of information, and language to
communicate their findings. Nevertheless, even for them, language is still a means and not
the essence of their work.
What makes a person creative in their professional writings? Some researchers exam-
ine the development from an inexperienced novice to an expert writer. Both novice stu-
dents at a screenwriting school and experienced screenplay writers participated in the study
of Bourgeois- Bougrine and Glăveanu (2018) on the education’s role in scriptwriting’s cre-
ative processes. Others compare creative fiction writers and professional non-fiction writers
to understand better the factors behind creativity in writing. Thus, in her study of mood and
creativity, Kohanyi (2009) compared groups of college students: writing prose and poetry,
writing non-fiction as journalists, and not writing. A third perspective is the study of eminent
writers who exemplify the highest level of creative writing. The life path, work and writ-
ing experiences of award-winning screenwriters from 1927 to 2007 were described through
quantitative analyses of demographic data and qualitative analysis of interviews with Oscar
recipients (Pritzker & McGarva 2009).

Literature as a creative domain

Systems’ theory of creativity (Gardner 2011; Csikszentmihalyi 2014) provides a useful frame-
work for linking writing as an individual competence to literature as a domain of symbolic
expression. Creativity occurs when an individual writer uses the literary domain’s symbols
and procedures to convey a new idea, propose a new form of expression, and describe a new

Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Katya Stoycheva, katya.g.stoycheva@gmail.com

Citation: Stoycheva, K. (2021). CREATIVITY AND WRITING: CONCEPTUAL MAPPING. Academia
Letters, Article 3344. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3344.

3
pattern in human experience. Then these novel literary creations are recognized as deserving
to be preserved by the appropriate field of people and institutions making judgments about
the qualities of an individual’s performances (Stoycheva 2020).
There is a correspondence between human intelligences and cultural domains, but they
are not equivalent (Gardner 2011). A person with linguistic intelligence is likely to be at-
tracted to and being successful in the domain of literature. However, literary success requires
skills beyond just writing, as Gardner (1997) demonstrated in his investigation of Virginia
Woolf’s creative contribution. Creativity depends not only on individual’s intelligences but
also on personality, experiential factors and domain and field – related factors at work in
society (Gardner 1993; Kaufmann & Kaufmann 2009). An interesting proposal concerning
literature is the evolutionary perspective to the emergence of creative writing and reading
as cultural practices (Nettle 2009). Besides, writing can be effectively mobilized and can
contribute to successful performance in domains beyond literature. The expressive writing
paradigm, which asks the person to reflect upon and write their deepest thoughts and feel-
ings about a traumatic event, has shown that writing can improve one’s health (Sexton &
Pennebaker 2009).
Whether writing is considered an individual competence, a professional activity, or a cre-
ative performance in the literary domain, there is always a focus on the writing process’s
outcome. As a condensation of the creative process, the written product is approached from
different perspectives. Writer’s creative achievements can be measured by evaluation of the
quantity and quality of their written works. Alternatively, work may be a source of informa-
tion about the writer’s creative processes and personality. These usages are different from the
investigation of the literary works in their own right. What makes the literary work or the
written text creative? Simonton’s analysis of the word usage in Shakespeare’s sonnets and
dramas (2009), or Lindauer’s (2009) study of the literary text’s affective expressiveness are
but two examples of such a focus on the literary creations. The analysis of Salinger’s short
story “De Daumier - Smith’s blue period” follows this line of work. The author has systemat-
ically identified the creative thinking skills embodied in the story and illustrated their various
manifestations in the text (Stoycheva 2018).
While the person and process studies of literary creativity have found their application
in developing creative writing programs (see Kaufman & Kaufman 2009), it is yet to be dis-
covered how the studies of creative literary products can be implemented to encourage one’s
creativity and one’s writing.

Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Katya Stoycheva, katya.g.stoycheva@gmail.com

Citation: Stoycheva, K. (2021). CREATIVITY AND WRITING: CONCEPTUAL MAPPING. Academia
Letters, Article 3344. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3344.

4
References
Amabile, T. M. (1983). The Social Psychology of Creativity. NY: Springer-Verlag.

Bourgeois-Bougrine, S. & Glăveanu, V. P (2018). Collaborative Scriptwriting: Social and

Psychological Factors. In T. Lubart (ed.), The Creative Process Perspectives from Multiple
Domains (pp. 89-121). London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). The Systems Model of Creativity. Dordrecht: Springer.

Gardner, H. (1993) Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity Seen through the Lives of
Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi. NY: Basic Books.

Gardner, H. (1997). Extraordinary Minds: Portraits of Four Exceptional Individuals and an

Examination of Our Own Extraordinariness. NY: Basic Books.

Gardner, H. (2011). Frames of Mind: Theory of Multiple intelligences. NY: Basic Books.

Kohanyi, A. (2009). “The more I write, the better I write, and the better I feel about my-
self”:Mood Variability and Mood Regulation in Student Journalists and Creative Writers.
In S. B. Kaufman & J. C. Kaufman (eds.), The Psychology of Creative Writing (pp. 131-
145). NY: Cambridge University Press.

Kaufman, S. B. & Kaufman, J. C. (eds.) (2009). The Psychology of Creative Writing. NY:
Cambridge University Press.

Lindauer, M.S. (2009). Literary Creativity and Physiognomy: Expressiveness in Writers,

Readers, and Literature. In S. B. Kaufman & J. C. Kaufman (eds.), The Psychology of
Creative Writing (pp. 131-145). NY: Cambridge University Press.

Nettle, D. (2009). The Evolution of Creative Writing. In S. B. Kaufman & J. C. Kaufman

(eds.), The Psychology of Creative Writing (pp. 101-116). NY: Cambridge University
Press.

Pritzker, S.R. & McGarva, D.J. (2009). Characteristics of Eminent Screenwriters: Who Are
Those Guys? In S. B. Kaufman & J. C. Kaufman (eds.), The Psychology of Creative
Writing (pp. 57-79). NY: Cambridge University Press.

Sexton, J.D. & Pennebaker, J.W. (2009). The Healing Powers of Expressive Writing. In S.
B. Kaufman & J. C. Kaufman (eds.), The Psychology of Creative Writing (pp. 264-273).
NY: Cambridge University Press.

Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Katya Stoycheva, katya.g.stoycheva@gmail.com

Citation: Stoycheva, K. (2021). CREATIVITY AND WRITING: CONCEPTUAL MAPPING. Academia
Letters, Article 3344. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3344.

5
Stoycheva, K. (2018). De Daumier-Smith and Creative Thinking. Sofia: Paradigma Publish-
ing House (in Bulgarian).

Stoycheva, ฀. (2020). Psychological studies of creativity in the literary domain. Papers of

BAS, Humanities and Social Sciences, 7(1), 36-48.

Torrance, E.P. (1988). The nature of creativity as manifest in its testing. In Sternberg, R.J.
(Ed.),

The Nature of Creativity (pp. 43-75). NY: Cambridge University Press.

Internet Sources

1. Intellect Books | Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, consulted on 26 January 2021.

2. New Writing: Vol 18, No 1 (tandfonline.com), consulted on 28 January 2021.

Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Katya Stoycheva, katya.g.stoycheva@gmail.com

Citation: Stoycheva, K. (2021). CREATIVITY AND WRITING: CONCEPTUAL MAPPING. Academia
Letters, Article 3344. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3344.