"Creativity and Collaboration: The Relationship of Fact and Fiction in Personal Writing"

Download PDF

About the Author

Rachel Casey is an undergraduate student pursuing a degree in Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Central Florida. Her academic interests include the analyses of rhetorics involved in critical thinking, civic engagement, and feminist theory.

Contents

Introduction

Review of Literature on Creativity

Method and Approach

The Story

The Magazine

The Allegory

Conclusion

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Appendix D

Appendix E

References

Method and Approach

I gathered personal writing samples produced between the ten-year span of 2007-2017, analyzing these works on the bases of situated intention and sources present in collaboration through the examination of the works’ overall themes as well as their visual elements. I knew with my more recent writing that I had indeed been motivated by authors read, but I was interested to see how far back (if at all) this relationship of fact, the experienced, and fiction, the imagined, carried in my own composition. I determined that if this sought-after social process extended beyond my current work and into different genres of personal writing, then it could serve as relevant evidence by which to support the existent claims of accessible creativity and sociocultural influence as well as introduce fiction writing to collaborative pedagogy.

Further, in order to analyze collaboration at work in these sample pieces, I referenced the Association for Intelligent Information Management (AIIM), a resource for corporate information organization. AIIM describes eight components present in “collaboration at the conceptual level”: awareness, mediation, motivation, self-synchronization, participation, reciprocity, reflection, and engagement. Further, AIIM promotes the existence of collaboration in two forms: synchronous and asynchronous. The former involves interaction in real time; the latter is used to describe collaborative efforts which are “time-shifted.” AIIM’s components of collaboration served to provide a tangible means through which I could determine collaborative activity.

Although at the time of writing I viewed my creative ideas and works of writing as wholly unique, after analysis, I can now recognize the collective identity and social elements which were, and still are, continually present. It may appear that I write alone; however, I consistently use the outside world, my feelings, my friends, and my experiences, all coming together to create what I view as original work. Extending from the previous research conducted and conclusions drawn on creativity as “everyday” and socially situated, this study aims to identify personal fiction writing as an innately collaborative process, exploring the connection between my lived experiences and the works of others, a combination of fact and fiction.