Technical and Creative Writing

Winsor's "Invention and Writing in Technical Work" was really interesting to me. She writes that engineering work is traditionally seen as coming before and largely determining its written representation in the form of a report (Winsor 843). So we tend to think that there is no creativity or invention involved in technical writing.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have creative writing. For instance, this semester I’m writing a textual history of Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea. It’s a fantasy novel in which another universe is envisioned—complete with an imaginary world map (consisting mainly of islands), distinct imaginary cultures, distinct imaginary economies, etc. Think LOTR and Narnia, only more Taoist and less British. In an essay describing her creative process, Le Guin writes the following:

"I did not deliberately invent Earthsea. I did not think ‘Hey wow—islands are archetypes and archipelagoes are superarchetypes and let’s build us an archipelago!’ I am not an engineer, but an explorer. I discovered Earthsea” (Le Guin 49-50).

This is kind of interesting. The traditional view of technical writing is that it is a report on the real work of invention. It doesn’t involve much creativity in and of itself. Le Guin characterizes her writing as discovery rather than invention. Earthsea was already there (in her unconscious), and writing about it constituted a “discovery” of that universe rather than a creative “invention” of it. The main difference between the two is that engineers report on concrete objects and Le Guin is reporting on a fictional object.

As we find out, however, technical writing is deeply involved with the engineering process. The students Windsor studied used writing to “recall, juxtapose, and trigger ideas,” to serve the purpose of “establishing and validating group knowledge,” and just generally as a method for “attaching writing to the object as a way of thinking about it” (Winsor 846, 853, 849). If we keep reading Le Guin’s essay, we find that she wrote notes and preliminary short stories in order to “discover” the people and geography of Earthsea. Her process sounds like it involves recalling, juxtaposing, and triggering ideas to me. It also sounds like she used her short stories to attach writing to her fictional object, so as to solidify her way of thinking about it.

I found the parallels between the two interesting. To me, it indicates that technical writing is not on the opposite end of the spectrum from creative writing after all.

Le Guin, Ursula. “Dreams Must Explain Themselves.” The Language of the Night. Ed. Susan Wood. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979. 47-56.