The motivations that improve the creative writing process: what they might be and why we should study them

Abstract

ABSTRACT Which knowledge and skills would help creative writing students to improve their writing? Writing is a complicated activity that involves the mingling of a great number of social, cognitive, behavioural, environmental, and bodily factors, and an incredible number of these factors have been shown to affect the writing process. One cognitive factor which has significant effects upon the writing process is the writer’s motivation to write. In this paper, I review research from motivational and educational psychology in order to set the stage for future research in this area. I review research on nine (or so) motivational constructs which could have positive effects on the creative writing processes of some groups of writers, and I develop some hypotheses that researchers could use to test the veracity of this research. Finally, I discuss some of the ways in which future researchers in the field of creative writing studies could study the effects that these motivations have on the creative writing processes of different writers.