Cirrus@Austlit

'We generally recognise that creative writing involves a number of intelligences. Linguistic intelligence is the ability to learn and use language. Throughout history, creative writers have sought to have and to improve upon their linguistic intelligence. Interpersonal intelligence is related to effective communication, and while creative writing is an art it has always also been a form of communication. Creative intelligence is of course fundamental to creative writing – creative intelligence being the ability to imagine the new, the distinctive, the unusual, the different, the previously unimaginable. Creative writers often do what they do to in order to apply their creative intelligence. Audiences seek out works of creative writing because of wanting to engage with that application. This exchange creates an individual bond in what is often a communal exchange. For example, an individual writer writes a novel and we buy that novel in the expectation of it appealing to us individually, even though dozens or thousands or even millions of people will buy that same novel.' (Graeme Harper, Editorial introduction)