Jamie Andrews

Looking at the vast majority of Andrews’s works it is easy to ascertain that he leans towards a more simplistic and easy-to-read writing style out of consideration for the reader opposed to circumlocution. Indeed, when asked about this he stated that he “wanted his work to be more accessible.’† But when asked about how he traversed the complexities of finding the blend between his usual layman’s writing style and a more academic voice, he raised the salient point:

When looking deeper into the infinitely repetitive void that is creative writing, it becomes easy to disassemble the plethora of unnecessary complexity attributed to the epistemological assumption that the core of writing itself is its own truest reality and that, this reality is not only gregariously homogeneous but also disappointingly lacklustre. To invent using only the act of language via an emanation, utilising contrived interpretations such as the misty, the foggy, the cliché, the concrete and the metaphorical can not only be limiting but a hindrance to the overall. However, because a vast majority of writing also strives to introduce preoccupations surrounding the peculiar notion of communicating in a presupposed set of language that never fully achieves its fundamental desideratum of  unifying the unknown orders of what could easily be elucidated for the latent nonsensical institutionalisation recently highlighted by the prosaic and sanctimonious lugubriousness within the old fashioned academician status quo. Could it not, therefore, be said that all writing, regardless of intent, is in itself a purely creative act? Many may argue with limited insight by binarily insisting that creative writing is limited to a presupposed set of media: Poesy, Film, Television, Theatre, Fiction, Song, Memoirs, Personal essays, Creative non-fiction. This entirely limiting and primitively substratal viewpoint has lead to the condescendingly supercilious argumentum that the only schools of thought bothered enough to add such a deontologically backward taxonomy to the “art” of creative writing are either intimidated by its potential or have the same peculiar sensibilities as a follically challenged, gentleman of middle age with an epidermis of negative pigment and a phallus the size of half a polymorphonuclear leukocyte. The very same sort of gentleman, who has a tendency to unstably strive to externally discuss their antiquated conjecture with pomp only achievable by demonstrating an ego inflated by the insecure, lackadaisical and fainéant need to own said opinion but do not intend to internally explore “why” they own said opinion.  Whereas it is a much more sensible notion to believe that creative writing can sit outside of those remits and if that is the case and all writing is indeed creative then much like the zen principles behind the question ‘Who is asking?’ It is easy to argue that if all writing is creative writing then all writing is also academician.‡

It took a long time to garner any sense from what Andrews had to say on that day, but what Andrews probably means is that creativity revolves around thinking outside of the norm to stop it from repeating itself in an infinite loop of self-reference, and accounting for this makes all writing creative and academic at the same time.