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Critical Distance: Creative Writing as a Critic-Fan

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Abstract

Writing reviews of other people’s work is a highly engaging, but often challenging, form of creative writing. The critic needs to be aware of a variety of styles and comfortable working with constraints, balancing their own voice with that of the artist whose work they are reviewing. This chapter explores the importance of the “critic-fan” as a creative writing position, arguing that the writer’s own fandom should provide inspiration for their work. Here there are examples of how to write different review types showing the process of creative engagement as a critic-fan. The creative writing process in relationship to deadlines, form and expectation of genre and audience is also explored, with specific outcomes to demonstrate.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This source has also been cited by Goodwin (1993, p. 1) and Brackett (2000, p. 157), and I have been able to obtain a copy of the article according to their specifications which I will reference during this article.

  2. 2.

    This refers to an incident a few years previous to the interview where Costello was alleged to have made some racist comments about the named musicians.

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Correspondence to Liz Giuffre .

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Giuffre, L. (2021). Critical Distance: Creative Writing as a Critic-Fan. In: Adelaide, D., Attfield, S. (eds) Creative Writing Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73674-3_14

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