Using Creative Writing as a Tool in Academic Writing
Workshops animated by Marie Beauchamps, Amsterdam-based poet, creative entrepreneur, academic, and policy officer at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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This series of workshops makes space to explore a diverse and creative pallet of writing styles in academic writing practices.
The choices we make when we write have profound effects on the reality that we observe. Giving an account of our observations requires a multitude of styles of writing for achieving the greatest accuracy. Finding the most accurate style of writing for a particular purpose sometimes implies letting go of a seemingly neutral style of writing, instead embracing a plurality of voices, such as staging a dialogue or exploring a more poetic style.
These workshops aim to explore what happens when we loosen up the frame of our habitual academic writing practice, inviting multi-layered stories to bubble up and become part of the conversation unfolding on the page. In these interactive workshops, I will lead you through a series of hands-on exercises to make you experience creative writing within your academic practice.
Introductory workshop: 2 x 3,5 hours
In this introductory workshop spread over two sessions, we practice writing scenes, working with sensory details, defining the main characters driving the story of our work, and staging conversations between them. All sessions are designed around sample texts, and include on-the-spot writing exercises. There will be time for peer-review, and we will take time to reflect on what it takes to make space for creativity within our academic work.
Price: contact me for an offer.
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Consolidation session on storytelling: 1 x 3,5 hours
In this consolidation session, we work with the full narrative of our text and research. We study sample texts to see how writers convey their story, and discuss foundational storytelling tools to design our own text. Following on-the-spot writing exercises, we practice finding the stories driving our text and research; pausing on where it started, its importance, and the transformation it generates.
Price: contact me for an offer.
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Modular follow up workshop series
Each session of 3,5 hours is designed around sample texts; it always includes time for on-the-spot writing exercises and for a peer review session.
Narrators: In this session, we play with narrators, writing and re-writing portions of our text using different kinds of narrators, exploring how the choice of narrator affects what we observe and say.
Tone: In this session, we play with tones, experimenting first with lyrical language, then with a purely matter of fact tone, erasing all metaphors and figurative traces, taking time to discuss the effects of tone on the text and the analysis.
Mood: In this session, we practice ways of creating an atmosphere by carefully choosing words to denote the quality of time, space, and affect of our text.
Price: contact me for an offer.
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Individual consultation:
In individual conversations, I research what is the source of blockages that stand in the way, segmenting the task into graspable elements, suggesting hands-on exercises to unlock the writer’s creativity, with the aim to get back into a flow.
Workshop tailored to a research group:
I also offer workshops tailored to the specific needs of a research group. Together, we can research what kind of creative space is most needed, and which tools of creative writing would help best.
What people say about the workshops:
I tried a few similar workshops recently, and I find Marie’s ones by far the best: they are not only extremely helpful but also a pleasure to do.
Chiara, associate professor
This course has inspired me to develop my own writing style in my papers. It helped me to be creative and productive (for it makes one want to write!), and it has given me perspective regarding the use of poetic, experiential and metaphorical language in crafting academic texts.
Rodante, PhD candidate
When I asked Marie to organize the first workshop Creative Writing, my aim was to help us find writing time as the Covid pandemic continued. For most of us our own writing and thinking had taken a backseat to online teaching and caring for others during the pandemic. In a short time, just 3 sessions, Marie succeeded in helping us find not just time, but also joy and so much more creativity in writing. Within the space of the first hour of the first session, we had become a small writing community: we wrote, read each other’s work, gave feedback and learned from one another.
Maartje, full professor
Resorting to our body feelings and sensations, bringing them to our awareness while entering a scholarly conversation, opens up a spectrum of alternatives to engage in discussion. Thank you for your expert guidance, so human, that allowed me to feel at ease while exploring “the feeling” of theoretical argumentation. Your workshop contributes to awareness in academic writing, to taking responsibility for choices, to freedom, to integrity. A real eye opener.
Marina, PhD candidate
Marie’s expertise lies in the fact that she used to be a highly successful academic, and is now both an inspired writer and a gifted teacher. This combination is what makes her creative writing for academics courses so inspiring!
Ida, PhD candidate
I’m grateful for participating in Marie’s workshops. The creative writing sessions have helped me enter the scenes of my research, and to shape these worlds while I write with all my senses. Marie’s prompts facilitate a somatic opening for engaging with my data in ways that my whole body is there; writing-as-inquiry from this space enhances fieldwork memory, feelings, creativity, and clarity. It has been a joyful experience to learn on-the-spot techniques for doing this. After these sessions, I wanted to keep writing! Thank you Marie for sharing your gifts with us.
Nadia, PhD researcher