{"id":144,"date":"2013-03-20T16:42:18","date_gmt":"2013-03-20T23:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/?p=144"},"modified":"2013-03-20T22:17:24","modified_gmt":"2013-03-21T05:17:24","slug":"make-up-article-2-creativity-ex-no-creativito","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/2013\/03\/20\/make-up-article-2-creativity-ex-no-creativito\/","title":{"rendered":"Make-up Article #2: Creativity Ex No Creativito"},"content":{"rendered":"

In her article Uncreative Writing: Redefining Language and Authorship in the Digital Age<\/a> author Maria Popova flips the traditional concept of creative writing on its head.\u00a0 Her article points out that “creativity” is such a trite and meaningless term nowadays.\u00a0 Popova teaches creative writing classes at Penn, and instead of encouraging her students to “be creative” she down-grades them for any attempt at originality and wants them to plagiarize and steal the works of other writers.\u00a0 Popova argues that there is no shortage of content in the world.\u00a0 We have so many books and written works both in print and electronic form that the old, romanticized version of a literary genius has become outdated.\u00a0 Popova’s new idea of genius is one that has a mastery over information and its dissemination.\u00a0 The face of this new genius is more like a programmer than the stoic faces of old such as the likes of Steinbeck and Hemingway.<\/p>\n

“Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” – Picasso<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"turnitin<\/a>

Turnitin logo. Google Images<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

To me, much of what Popva is saying about writing is that it is like assembling a patchwork where the material that makes up the quilt are bits of text and other publications gleaned from outside sources and the creative aspect is how those pieces are stitched together to make the final product.\u00a0 To many, this may deflate their passion for writing and prove to be outright blasphemous in the face of human originality and creativity.\u00a0 After all it’s stealing.\u00a0 Popva questions if there really is such a thing as originality in the first place.\u00a0 Everything that we’ve ever conceived of imaginary or otherwise had to stem from somewhere.\u00a0 Much like Thomas Hobbes’ philosophy that physical stimuli enters the body through our senses and is stored in the brain – we draw on this historical, stimulation database when we imagine something or think.\u00a0 Our waking experience is the source of all that will ever be in our heads, and our subconscious mixes and disseminates these stimuli experiences to create entirely “new” thoughts and ideas.<\/p>\n

This makes me critical of our school’s use of sites like Turnitin.com and the war against plagiarism.\u00a0 I do my best to write my own essays and give credit where credit is due.\u00a0 However, there are instances where I am at a loss of what to say and anything that I come up with – usually something for the (headache inducing) introductions and conclusions to papers – will sound nearly identical to the articles I’ve researched.\u00a0 Every writing and English class I’ve taken in middle school and high school drilled the formulaic five paragraph essay into our brains.\u00a0 I end up wasting so much time coming up with these banal sounding intros just so that I have some words on the page.\u00a0 I believe this only detracts from my personal thoughts and analysis.\u00a0 Why can’t I just copy and paste the wikipedia page on the subject to serve as my intro?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In her article Uncreative Writing: Redefining Language and Authorship in the Digital Age author Maria Popova flips the traditional concept of creative writing on its head.\u00a0 Her article points out that “creativity” is such a trite and meaningless term nowadays.\u00a0 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":401,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","kk_blocks_editor_width":"","_kiokenblocks_attr":"","_kiokenblocks_dimensions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"gutentor_comment":2,"qubely_featured_image_url":null,"qubely_author":{"display_name":"anouaux","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/author\/anouaux\/"},"qubely_comment":2,"qubely_category":"Engl 16 - Blog Posts<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"In her article Uncreative Writing: Redefining Language and Authorship in the Digital Age author Maria Popova flips the traditional concept of creative writing on its head.\u00a0 Her article points out that “creativity” is such a trite and meaningless term nowadays.\u00a0 … Continue reading →","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/401"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions\/148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}