A different look at fan fiction and amateur creativity

As I was casting about for a topic for my PhD I found myself reading a fair amount about fan fiction and about the sociology of amateur writing and creativity. My research went in a different direction (or so I thought!) but as I had hoped nothing learned is ever entirely wasted as I am starting to get interested in the area again. But my reading in the area is rusty and doubtless incomplete and here I hope you can help.

From what I remember, academic framing of 'popular' creativity divides into three main strands:

• Writing as a means of entering the 'field' of (more or less) commercial writers (Bourdieu 1993, Bourdieu 1996) or as a means of entry to a fan community (Fiske 1991, Hills 2002, Jenkins 1991)
• Writing as a counter-hegemonic practice – even when not explicitly political (Fiske 1991 – and lots of others that don’t leap to mind immediately)
• Writing/creativity as part of the educational process (Papert 1990, Piaget 1954)

What I don’t remember seeing is:

• Anything quantitative on how many people either are writers (or other artists) or enjoy writing as amateurs (are there any statistics on how many people keep journals or diaries?) and
• Analysis of the social or psychological significance of being able to express the creative urge (or not being able to). Not as a means to an end (as in the above three framings) but as an end in itself.

The latter in particular seems to me to be such an important issue I would be amazed if there isn’t a literature about it somewhere. So where should I be looking?

References:
Bourdieu, P. (1993) The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature,  (trans. Johnson, R.) Polity Press, Cambridge.
Bourdieu, P. (1996) The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field, Polity Press, Cambridge.
Fiske, J. (1991) "The Cultural Economy of Fandom" in The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, (Lewis, L. A. ed.) Routledge, London; New York, pp. pp. 30-50.
Hills, M. (2002) Fan Cultures, Routledge, London.
Jenkins, H. (1991) "'Strangers No More We Sing': Filking and the Social Construction of the Science Fiction Fan Community" in The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, (Lewis, L. A. ed.) Routledge, London; New York.
Papert, S. (1990) Introduction: Constructionist Learning, MIT Media Laboratory, Cambridge, MA.
Piaget, J. (1954) The Construction of Reality in the Child, MIT Press, Cambridge MA.

Comments

[Sue Thomas]

David, I've been giving some thought to this question of 'the sociology of amateur writing and creativity'. I'm certain there must be a lot written about it somewhere but I can't bring any particular example to mind. That seems odd, doesn't it? There are lots of books written *for* 'amateur' writers (although the very term amateur is problematic in itself). There are also lots of books written for *teachers* of creative writing - I've edited one myself. But I don't think I've ever seen either a quantatitive study or an analysis of the socio/psychological significance of creative writing.

At trAce some years ago I conducted a couple of surveys of writers using technology which yielded some fascinating results, but they are specifically about that particular area. see http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/Process/index.cfm?article=62, http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/transition/survey_results.htm, http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/transition/hardware_query.cfm, http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/transition/software_query.cfm and an earlier survey http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/survey.htm

You might try the English Subject Centre http://www.english.ltsn.ac.uk/index.php and NAWE www.nawe.co.uk (both education based) or NALD http://www.nald.org/ or the Arts Council publications http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/publications/index.php

I often come across PhD studies of creative writing - google might turn up some of these

But none of the above are likely to take the approach of say Bourdieu. Could you have discovered a gap in knowledge? It seems unlikely - maybe someone else will come up with the reading list that seems to have passed me by.

[Sue Thomas]

I forgot to mention the famous study 'Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It's not specifically about writing but includes sections on it.

[David Brake]

I ended up reading (parts of) Csikszentmihalyi's "Flow" and finding it seems to apply surprisingly well to weblogging. Eg

"p.131 "Everyone can learn, with a little discipline and perseverance, to order personal experience in verse... There is no question that mastering this skill improves the quality of their lives. Not only do they enjoy the experience but in the process they considerably increase their self-esteem as well. Writing prose provides similar benefits, and although it lacks the obvious order imposed by meter and rhyme it is a more easily accessible skill."
"In the past, educated persons used journals and personal correspondence to put their experiences into words, which allowed them to reflect on what had happened during the day... The kind of material we write in diaries and letters does not exist before it is written down. It is the slow, organically growin process of thought involved in writing that lets the ideas emerge in the first place."
p. 174 "One can survive solitude but only if one finds ways of ordering attention that will prevent entropy from destructuring the mind.""

[Matt R]

If you are still interested in the topic, might I suggest a book? "Art Worlds" by Howard S. Becker gives a sociological perspective about art. It's rather interesting, and it inspired me to think about this same subject.