2019 Student Speaker – Julia Murphy

Julia speaking at the 2019 Awards Ceremony

Storytelling creates a certain relationship between the teller and the audience. And, like in any relationship, the parties involved each have their own side of it, different things that they get out of this relationship. The audience, or the reader’s side of the relationship is simple. They expect the authour to take them on a journey. Any journey, it doesn’t have to be a long one. If the authour tells a good story, the reader’s expectations are fulfilled and the reader is happy. But what does the storyteller, the writer, get out of it? Is the process of telling a story creating a purely parasitic relationship? Does the text exist only for the reader? Clearly, no. If writing stories didn’t create a mutually beneficial dynamic, people would have stopped doing it long ago. So, the question I want to answer this afternoon is: why is creative writing important, and what does the writer get out of it?

To begin, creative writing is a safe and productive means of self-expression. Creative writing provides a secure and endlessly expressive space for the authour to explore and put into words their observations about themselves and the world around them, be it through the protagonist, the setting, the themes or the plot. A writer is free to feel when they write, knowing that a computer screen or piece of paper cannot judge them. To this end, the process of telling a story can be completely one-sided. The authour doesn’t necessarily need to share their story with an audience. But if they do choose to do so, an all-new sort of beauty is created.

When shared, creative writing becomes an essential form of communication. It gives the ability to connect with a stranger through sharing an experience; to communicate meaningfully and feel connected with others without having ever met them. Creative writing is the establishment of a strong, if brief, connection between the authour and the reader and it’s a connection that is fundamental to human well-being. Creative writing allows the writer to manipulate language exactly as they wish to express their message exactly as they want it to be heard.

This feeling of complete freedom is another facet of the importance of creative writing worth exploration. Writing gives a storyteller absolute freedom to do what they want with the characters and the situation as a whole, and it provides the writer with the sheer joy of creating something and being able to look back at it and know that it is theirs. That they made it. A writer has full and complete freedom in entire universes of their own design. Creative writing is the closest some ideas will ever get to manifesting in the real world. A writer carves the path; chooses every word and punctuation mark, every subtle detail. They create exactly the story, exactly the world, that they wish existed.