My tongue has never spent much time outside of my mouth, and I imagine it as a walrus basking in the rays of the dental light. He has my tongue on a tissue paper and is gripping its sides with his pointer and thumb. “I tell him they’d been there a month at least, and he looks concerned. ‘ Flowering Walrus’ by Scott Skinner (Reedsy) Written with confidence, this nostalgic story’s unique mission entertained our judges with its creative thinking. Sometimes the best writing is just downright wacky, and protagonist Frank’s quest for a unique type of sandwich in this story was simultaneously weird, endearing, and uplifting. ‘Mahalo King Cod Fillet’ won Reedsy’s weekly writing contest (and its coveted $50 prize) thanks to its humorous blend of the absurd and the earnest. Gordon Warmbacher, franchisee of sixteen Arby’s restaurants across the upper Midwest and Great Plains, about the legendary Mahalo King Cod Filet, to be precise.” “Frank was there to meet a man about a sandwich. ‘ Mahalo King Cod Fillet’ by David Gottfried (Reedsy)
What’s more, this story is an excellent example of something that often happens in creative writing: a writer casting light on the thoughts or moments we don’t admit to or openly talk about. From paying the bills to facing criticism in a writing workshop and envying more productive writers, Paul Dalla Rosa’s story is a clever satire of the tribulations involved in the writing profession, and all the contradictions embodied by systemic creativity (as famously laid out in Mark McGurl’s The Program Era). This short story is a delightfully metafictional tale about the struggles of being a writer in New York. I was in a Starbucks and I wasn’t writing any poems. On the bank of the Huangpu.’ It wasn’t an aside or introduction. In the bar, he read, ‘I wrote this in a Starbucks in Shanghai. “At Starbucks, I remembered a reading Zhen had given, a reading organized by the program’s faculty. ‘ An MFA Story’ by Paul Dalla Rosa (Electric Literature) Formally diverse and addressing a wide range of subjects, these works all share a freshness and originality of approach, something that’s really integral to helping a piece of writing take flight. Let’s start with fiction: the category most people have in mind when they think of creative writing. From personal essays and novels to graphic narratives, short stories, and memoirs, you’re guaranteed to find something that interests you in this collection of 25 creative writing examples.
To that end, we’ve collected a list of works that have inspired the writers we work with here at Reedsy. Beyond defining creative writing, though, it may be easier to understand what it entails by looking at examples that demonstrate the sheer range of projects and styles that fall under this umbrella. By virtue of the creativity that characterizes it, creative writing is an extremely versatile art.