The Psychology of Creative Writing

Approximately 3 billion books are sold each year in the United States, and more than a quarter of the population reports reading more than 15 books per year (Ipsos 1). The work of creative writers – including novelists, poets, playwrights, screenwriters, and sitcom writers – has a significant impact on our lives. Not surprisingly, creative writers elicit much curiosity from their audience. Freud had already noted that “We laymen have always been intensely curious to know . . . from what source that strange being, the creative writer, draws his material, and how he manages to make such an impression on us with it, and to arouse in us emotions of which, perhaps, we had not even thought ourselves capable” (Freud 36). To further stimulate our curiosity, Freud noted that when asked, writers often give no explanation, or no good explanation, for their creative behavior – shrouding the creative writing process in an intriguing veil of mystery. The seemingly mysterious nature of creative writing may at least partially explain the relative lack of scientific attention this central human activity has garnered from psychologists. As noted by Sternberg, “creativity has been relatively little studied in psychology, creative writing even less so” (xv). Given the importance of writing in our daily lives, why haven’t psychologists attempted to pierce the mystery and to understand the processes underlying creative writing? Creative writing is a complex, multifaceted endeavor that can only be adequately apprehended using an interdisciplinary perspective. Researchers may have therefore been discouraged by the necessity of taking into account insights from other fields, and by the fact that creative writing may be harder to study (because