...

Observations & Interviews

1. History professor

• Who: She is an American historian and the author of multiple books on British natural history.  She is also the recipient of the Whiting Writer's Award.                  
• Quote:  "Downloaded books or papers on your computer can seem invisible."
• Interesting Moment: As a long established writer, she believes that the digital age has made writing more difficult in ways.  Tracking different electronic resources is hard because papers and books are no longer physically visible, and it can be easy to lose downloaded materials on one's filesystem simply because their presence is somewhat "invisible".  She also finds that organizing materials for different projects, and sharing them with a collaborator are also problem points.  

2. Communications instructor

...

5. Math student involved in a literary society

• Who:  
• Quote: 
• An MIT undergraduate who studies math and also has a strong interest in reading and writing fiction, especially fantasy.  He is part of a writing group that holds writer's workshops and competitions and URGE, a reading group that focuses on technical papers.  He also has enrolled in MIT writing courses, such as "Writing Fiction".  
• Quote: "Research for creative writing can be tricky. Sometimes it's not as much about getting factual information as much as understanding a viewpoint...For example, it may not be easy to write about a janitor's life even if you know what they do!"
• Interesting Moment: Like many other students, he sometimes finds himself too busy with schoolwork and activities to find the time to write.  He is interested in writing short day-to-day entries and being able to tag and share them with others, such that in creative writing, it is less difficult to find a reference for one's story.  Interesting Moment:

6. Philosophy student who composes creative writing

• Who: An undergraduate student at brandeis university at Brandeis University who studies philosophy and frequently write papers as part of the coursework. Her area of interest include religion and artificial intelligence. She also like to write poetry and short stories as a hobby in her spare time. 
• Quote: "The biggest problem writer's have is Writer's block - you have something in mind but it just refuse refuses to come out."
• Interesting Moment: Her inspirational moment moments for poetry and stories usually come to her when she is writing her philosophy papers. She will quickly jot down the idea but has no time to work on them immediately. When she does have time to write on it later, however, she usually find it hard to achieve the same kind of inspirational level and hence difficult to expand on the idea. There is a mismatch between motivation and time to write: there is no time to write when she wants to and when there is little inspiration to write when there is time. 

...