Writing Forward (Creative Writing)

"We think back through our mothers, if we are women", claims Virginia Woolf in her seminal essay on women and literature, "A Room of One's Own" (1929, p. 88). In the century that has passed since this essay's publication, a growing corpus of women's writing has indeed generated such historical foundations for contemporary writers: these days, women writers may think themselves back not only through a (still) male-dominated canon, but they may critically and creatively inhabit a female tradition of writing, which offers roots as well as a repertoire of themes, motifs, and styles to adopt and adapt into their contemporary writerly practices.

While writing requires such foundations to build upon, it also thrives on breaking with traditions, conventions, and expectations (cf. Woolf, Eliot). In other words: writing (by female and male writers alike) thrives on the critical "thinking back" put forward by Woolf, as much as on a creative "thinking forward".