Leavetaking: a novel & Arrivals and departures: lessons from a first time novelist

Yun, B (2017) Leavetaking: a novel & Arrivals and departures: lessons from a first time novelist. PhD thesis, Bath Spa University.

Abstract

This thesis contains a creative manuscript and an accompanying piece of contextualizing research. The creative component is my first foray into the noval form. 'Leavetaking' follows Eve as she arrives in Honolulu to start a new life after some traumatic personal and professional failures in San Francisco. Her story is a highly fictionalized version of my own real-life experiences. As such, it underwent serious and drastics revisions in three distinct phases of development - nonfiction, hybrid, and fiction - each of which posed different and complex challenges for me as a creative writer. Thus, my supporting research explores Leavetaking's evolution from start to finish - from my early interest in the airport as the book's subject and setting, to a blend of real and imagined experiences, and finally to the novel it is today. I organize this research into three sections that detail my writing process's phases. In each section, I analyze the mix of poems, travel books, memoirs, short stories, and novels that served as literary models for my own creative work and justify this use of multiple genres. I also reflect on feedback I received along the way by describing how it informed my writing. Finally, I consider not just the fundamental techniques that needed development but also the deeper lessons I learned in writing my first novel. As such, this process was radically transformative - if sometimes challenging - for me as a person and for my literary work, and I hope it may be of use and interest to other aspiring writers. The manuscript and research inform each other. They serve as evidence of how I've developed as a writer and as a person in equal measure, for in order to complete both components of this thesis, I had to confront my past and learn from my failures.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Note:	Thesis supervised by Tracy Brain.
Keywords:	PhD by Practice, creative writing, life writing, Hawai'i, USA, novels, poems, travel books, memoirs, airports, writing technique, past experiences, W.S. Merwin, Pico Iyer, Alain de Botton, Walt Whitman, Margaret Atwood, Vanessa Diffenbaugh, Elizabeth Gilbert, Cheryl Strayed, Louise Bogan, Tim O'Brien, W.G. Sebald
Divisions:	School of Writing, Publishing and the Humanities
Date Deposited:	10 Jan 2018 09:55
Last Modified:	19 Feb 2024 19:11
URI / Page ID:	https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/10632

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