Representations of Creativity by Posters in Freelance Writing Internet Forums

Charting RAD Research as an Orientation to Creativity in Writing Studies

“…Zhang and Saari Kitalong (2015) suggest that instructors foster students' intrinsic motivation toward creativity by asking students to define creativity and its application to organizational and personal development (p. 211). Zhang and Saari Kitalong's recommendations align with later work by Sarraf (2022), where it is suggested that instructors train professional writing students in business and entrepreneurship skills (e.g., establishing a niche), creative skills (e.g., ideation), and creative practices (e.g., journaling). Crossley et al (2016) suggest that teachers demonstrate how idea generation supports writing quality through activities like freewriting (p. 345).…”

“…In my own research on creativity, I situate creativity as an umbrella term that has various connections to writing studies. For instance, I have argued that rhetorical invention is one of many skills within creativity that writing scholars might attend to (Sarraf, 2022(Sarraf, , 2023. I have also previously articulated my position that writing studies scholars should engage with broader research on creativity, not only rhetorical invention research, because creativity as a term helps us to engage with interdisciplinarity (for a fuller discussion, please see Sarraf, 2022).…”

“…For instance, I have argued that rhetorical invention is one of many skills within creativity that writing scholars might attend to (Sarraf, 2022(Sarraf, , 2023. I have also previously articulated my position that writing studies scholars should engage with broader research on creativity, not only rhetorical invention research, because creativity as a term helps us to engage with interdisciplinarity (for a fuller discussion, please see Sarraf, 2022). In other words, creativity is engaged by a range of research in writing studies that may not explicitly label itself as such.…”

“…Theme 2: Professional and technical communicators' applications of creativity. Three of the 15 RAD articles consider professional and technical writers' use of creativity(Rajan, 2021;Sarraf, 2022;Zhang & Saari Kitalong, 2015) Rajan (2021). andSarraf (2022) explore creativity in extra-institutional technical and professional communicators, finding that DIY innovators and freelance writers use creativity to navigate business and writing-related challenges, repurpose content, and promote their businesses.…”

“…As I illustrate through this systematic literature review, writing studies scholars who have conducted RAD research about creativity provide necessary and concrete avenues for integrating creativity and writing (e.g., Andrews, 2020; Crossley et al, 2016; Sarraf, 2022). RAD research “supports knowledge building in the field” (Driscoll & Perdue, 2012, p. 1).…”