Strang Loops and Confessions: In Search of a Creative Writing Research Methodology and AI PI: A Novel

Abstract

The journey through the exegesis and creative work, discourse on the nature of the exegesis, and an examination of awarded PhD and DCA creative theses, leads to the idea of modelling the relationship between the exegesis and the novel. This idea is taken further to explore the relationship between the writer, creative work and readership; the journey within the chasm that opens between original drafts of a novel and the complete re-writing of the novel; and the possibilities of providing a framework to help other postgraduates conceptualise, explain, model and map their own creative theses. I explore in this exegesis the possibility of drawing together all methods currently used into one methodological framework. To do this, we need a language – a system of understandings – to communicate our methodologies. It is this I am trying to achieve in this dissertation, by searching for a concept of a flexible or hybrid model and seeking a metaphor for that model, a language to map the creative/academic process of making.