Writing studies must conduct replicable, aggregable, and data-supported (RAD) research to understand the relationship between creativity and writing, including how writers use creative thinking to generate texts and how environmental factors mediate writers' engagement with creative thinking. This article traces research on creativity from…

From the invention of the alphabet to the explosion of the internet, Dominic Wyse takes us on a unique journey into the process of writing. Starting with seven extraordinary examples that serve as a backdrop to the themes explored, it pays particular attention to key developments in the history of language, including Aristotle's grammar through…

Surveys of employers continually highlight the need for better communication skills among recent college graduates. Yet, writing instruction in higher education serves far more than a transactional purpose. Writing facilitates learning, helps students gain skills in analysis and synthesis, and supports a range of other personal and intellectual…

Examines how art and design students' approaches to writing are potentially enriched by their creative approach to design. Suggests ways in which the art and design training could be exploited and used as a resource to produce strategies that work with all students. Concludes the key is to ask students about their creative preferences and build on…

Tests were given to a nine-year-old boy to establish the constraints operating when he was writing poetry. The tests involved writing cloze tests on poems by poet Ted Hughes and on a poem the boy had written a year earlier. The boy was also asked to write a poem and then to discuss what he was thinking as he wrote. The following constraints were…

Presents results of an informal study indicating that (1) external contingencies that force writing productivity regardless of mood seem to facilitate rather than impede the appearance of creative ideas for writing, and (2) productivity precedes creativity. (HTH)

Explains how a year of observing two successful novelists write and revise on the computer provided a number of ideas that are encapsulated in the concept of a fluid text or the writer's conscious avoidance of a text that becomes static or fixed. (HOD)

Using data collected from 44 college faculty members, a study investigated the personality characteristics of writers, the ways in which highly productive writers differ from less productive ones, differences in writing strategies, and underlying motivations to write. The subjects were all male, tenured faculty members of a midwestern university…

Observing writers in isolation, pulling them into research settings in neatly designed studies will reveal nothing about the circumstances that enable people to write. Context, or the setting in which writing actually takes place, may be the most enabling circumstance. Many first grade teachers believe their students cannot write or even spell.…

Intended for teachers at all levels involved in composition instruction, this revised edition reflects the dynamic growth occurring in the discipline of writing, and consolidates advances made in teaching methodology. The 38 articles, written by such researchers and theorists in the field as James Moffett, Maxine Hairston, Janet Emig, Donald…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 17 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) reasoning strategies used by gifted and average fifth grade children in written discourse; (2) the effect of mode of discourse on the syntactic complexity of…