Creative Writing

In the Creative Writing minor, students practice the craft of writing in a workshop setting. Creative writing is distinguished from academic writing in its focus on emotional experience as the foundation for expression. In the areas of fiction, poetry, personal narrative, screenwriting and autobiography, classes are conducted as Writing Workshops where students share and critique each other’s work. Writing well empowers the writer and the reader. The Creative Writing Minor helps students find their unique voices and shape their experiences through original work. 

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• Refine your own writing voice through reading, peer critique, and the habit of writing and revising
• Develop an awareness of audience by presenting your original work in a public context, the workshop format
• Recognize by working through a series of drafts that revision is essential work in the creative process
• Make informed structural and stylistic choices in your own writing in poetry, fiction and non-fiction

Any career that requires originality and innovation (which is most careers) values creativity. A Creative Writing minor teaches you to push your writing, deepen your analytical skills, and express yourself in original ways. This is a minor, not a major, and a CW minor on your resume is always a plus, no matter your academic or professional goals.

• Teacher/Professor—The powers-that-be understand that creative writers write with originality, avoid cliché, and can identify (and teach) how best to convey meaning. Many of our faculty members, who were hired to teach creative writing as well as composition, have CW backgrounds.
• Publishing—Editor, Assistant Editor, Publicist. Many creative writers work on the business end of publishing.
• Social Media—Creative content gets attention.
• Advertising and Marketing—These fields value vision, imagination, and originality.
• Entertainment (a longshot)— Stories and novels get converted to movie scripts. Screenwriters secure Hollywood contracts. Memoirs and autobiographies are adapted for television and film. Longshots can happen for creative writers.