Critical Reflection

Eugen Bacon says 'The act of creative composition involves ‘seeing’,‘apprehending’, ‘making sense’: this, as Jen Webb rightly asserts, is research.' (Bacon 2017:236). He goes on to explain how writing is practice and discovery, that 'method does not threaten creativity (Cook, 2013: 203). He talks about a 'cycle of activities of doing and reflecting.' (236) He calls it an 'Action research cycle.' (236). Here's a quote from him about his method of reflection: 'Journaling was a qualitative method that helped me, the reflexive artist, in an important path to the exegesis: the analysis, the exposition that positions itself between the creative work and the audience (Bacon 2014, 1). The journal was more than a device for whimsical entry, for non-reflexive anecdotes; it was a flexible instrument of personal and scholarly insights (1). I used journaling in the study as a manageable capture of the contextual experience, i.e. the mapping of self and research (1–2). My commitment was to the practice in three modes: a cathartic journal to discover a ‘self in process’; an academic journal to capture scholarly literature; and a literary journal that housed excerpts of literary writing from relevant writers (2). Journaling enabled me to sketch a portrait by focusing the analytical gaze at self and process (6). The portrait was a self-reflection, as I invented and re-invented myself. It functioned as a placebo for the writing process, tricking me through false starts into creating. It costumed the research, as it were, so that I was not facing a blank screen. It also functioned as a control – the cathartic journal especially – reminding me that writing is process and product; it is the gauge of how are we feeling today? What progress have we made so far?’ (238) Obviously, he's right.

And I like that phrase 'self in process'. I also like the idea of it being a cycle. There are days when I don't write (or re-write) a word of this novel, but never a day when I don't think about it: the plot, the characters. Today, this phrase came to me: 'She felt small and hot.' I don't know why. I thought I overheard someone say it, but, since it was just me and the dog walking down the canal towpath, that's unlikely.

Helen Garner says 'Long experience has taught me never to know anything in advance, and not to know better, but to let the unconscious take precedence.' (Woolfe & Grenville 1993:70) and I think this links to pyschogeography, and my reflection, too.

Bacon, E. (2017). Creative Research: Mixing methods in practice-led research to explore a model of stories-within-a-story to build a novel, New Writing, 14:2, 235-256, [Viewed 8 July 2017] available from: DOI: 10.1080/14790726.2016.1270969

Grenville, K. & Woolfe, S. (ed.) (1993) Making Stories. How Ten Australian Novels were Written. Australia: Allen & Unwin