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Text Production & Writer’s Statement

“To be a producer as well as a consumer of texts … obliges the writer to understand works of literature from the inside out.” (Bloom, 1998)

What is a writer’s statement?

A writer’s statement appears at the beginning of a submission, and makes the paper both critical and creative. You self analyse your writing, explaining what your goals/intentions were and showing your critical engagement with the writing process. It helps you articulate what you wanted to accomplish and helps the teacher assess the work. It ensures that the activity of creative writing has accomplished its purpose of deepening your engagement with the writing process and your appreciation of writing as a craft. A good comparative document is the statements that are posted at exhibitions in art galleries by artists.*

What do I talk about in a writer’s statement?

Firstly, while the writer’s statement appears first, you write it after you have written the creative piece. Secondly, your target audience is your teacher / editor / your readers. There are no hard and fast rules about writer’s statement, so please do not treat my suggestions below as such; they are merely a guide.

Suggested structure:

• Paragraph 1 – Explain what you chose to do (form, genre, purpose, target audience, context) and how you met the needs and expectations of the target audience. • Paragraph 2 – Describe the literary effects or thematic implications of your piece. Explain the creative decisions you made in the process of writing and why you made them. • Paragraph 3 – Describe your writing process and identify techniques (structural, conventional and linguistic) you used and how they achieved your desired goals.

Make sure that, overall, your writer’s statement is self reflection and that you articulate the methods used in, and the purposes of, your work in a way that shows what you know / have learned about writing as a craft. The major focus of this piece must be your use of linguistic techniques.

How long does my writer’s statement have to be?
Conventionally writer’s statements are approximately 1/4 or less of the creative portion. There are two exemplars on the SACE website*. One is 1/3 (273 writer’s statement, 730 piece) of the written document and another is 2/3 (360 writer’s statement, 576 piece). I’m going to set a rule of between 30% and 50% and we’ll see how it goes. This document will make you apply what you learned about conciseness!

*Exemplars

Click on Support Materials and you will find two example documents under the Assessment Type 4: Folio heading. The first is Student 1 Response (A grade) [PDF] and the second is Student 2 Response (C grade) [DOC]. Keep in mind that exemplars are usually bare minimum, so the A example is teetering on being a 16.