The Balance Between Academic and Creative Writing

Apologise for not posting these past two weeks, I have been up to my eyeballs in uni deadlines and entertaining multiple groups out of town guests. The next four weeks will look much the same as I complete my Honours thesis and my final assessment items which is why this week’s blog will be a little shorter than usual!

These past two weeks have been endless paperwork as I applied for scholarships and further study (a doctorate). My editing cap has also been firmly in place with the proofreading of my thesis and final assignments while also preparing for an upcoming research presentation. As a result, most of my writing has been either academic or administrative (hello, Personal Statements!). There are many seasons in life and right now, the priority has had to be the progression and completion of the above projects, but I am so looking forward to returning to my creative work.

Recently, I read an article that focussed on the balance between academic and creative work as experienced by Australian Creative Writing lecturers. Some academics felt that their craft benefited from the interactions with students while others found that teaching and an increasing administration workload left little time or energy for their creative work. Many spoke about the pressure to publish academic articles and the fact that scholarly publications continue to be seen as more valuable than creative works. Fortunately, a few outliers stated that their creative and academic publications were equally valued.

I hope that this attitude towards creative practice and publications continues because the crafting of a compelling and thoughtful narrative requires a writer to dig deeper, to think critically, to ask hard questions, to reflect upon themselves and the world and to then respond to this internal and external stimuli.

Writing an innovation and original academic essay is not easy, but neither is creative writing.

I know which one fills me with a buzz greater than the strongest of coffees. The one that tugs my ear in the night. The one that steals away hours of time without my noticing it. The one that takes my hand and leads me to my desk each morning, and I can’t wait until I can get back into that chair.