Creative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include most novels and epics, as well as many short stories and poems. Writing for the screen and stage, screenwriting and playwriting respectively, typically have their own programs of study, but fit under the creative writing category as well.

Overview

cquote: Somewhere in the educational scheme there must be encouragement for the dreams and imaginings of youth. The student must be permitted emotional expression in order that he may be taught to discipline his emotions. His shy fancies must be drawn out of him for the good of his soul. Johnson, Burges and Syracuse University. "Creative Writing"; Inferences Drawn from an Inquiry Now being Carried on at Syracuse University Under the Direction of Burges Johnson, Litt.D., and Helene Hartley, Ph.D., into the Effectiveness of the Teaching of Written Composition in American Colleges. (Syracuse: Syracuse university, 1934), 7.

Creative writing can technically be considered any writing of original composition that is in no way guilty of plagiarism. In this sense creative writing is a more contemporary and process-oriented name for what has been traditionally called literature, including the variety of its genres. The practice of "professional writing" is not excluded from creative writing — one can be doing both in the same action. In her work, Foundations of Creativity, Mary Lee Marksberry references Paul Witty and Lou LaBrant's Teaching the People's Language to define creative writing. Marksberry notes:

cquote: Witty and LaBrant…creative writing is a composition of any type of writing at any time primarily in the service of such needs as

1. the need for keeping records of significant experience,
2. the need for sharing experience with an interested group, and
3. the need for free individual expression which contributes to mental and physical health.Marksberry, Mary Lee. Foundation of Creativity. Harper's Series on Teaching. (New York ; London: Harper & Row, 1963), 39.

Creative writing in academia

Unlike its academic counterpart of writing classes that teach students to compose work based on the rules of the language, creative writing is believed to focus on students' self-expression. While creative writing as an educational subject is often available at some stages, if not throughout, K–12 education, perhaps the most refined form of creative writing as an educational focus is in universities. Following the reworking of university education occurring in most post-war eras, creative writing has progressively gained prominence in the university setting. With the beginning of formal creative writing program: cquote: For the first time in the sad and enchanting history of literature, for the first time in the glorious and dreadful history of the world, the writer was welcome in the academic place. If the mind could be honored there, why not the imagination?Engle, Paul. "The Writer and the Place." In A Community of Writers: Paul Engle and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, edited by Robert Dana, 2(Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1999).