Myth and Creative Writing

Creative writing has always been influenced by myth, and examining the sophisticated relationship between creativity and myth can help writers develop their craft. Myth and Creative Writing: The Self-Renewing Song is a practical guide to using myth to understand the creative process, and to enhance creative writing with the use of mythic material.

Offering writing exercises and examples of the use of myth in prose, poetry and song, Adrian May provides a clear and accessible guide through the process of writing and how it can be enhanced by myth. From the classical to fairytale, the Biblical to urban myth, and symbols of nature and time, the concept of myth in all its forms is studied with insight and sensitivity. A subject dictionary of ways that writers can make mythic and symbolic connections within their work offers writers the opportunity to make new writing resonate as the best mythic writing does. Drawing on subjects as diverse as Gilgamesh and contemporary film, Myth and Creative Writing: The Self-Renewing Song makes the rich resource of myth accessible to all writers, from students of creative writing to seasoned authors.

Adrian May was a songwriter in English folk clubs before becoming a teacher of writing at the University of Essex. He has published essays on writing, myth and song lyrics, and is the author of a collection of poems, An Essex Attitude (Wivenbooks, 2009).