Chapter Eight: Writing Literary NonFiction

This week we move into a most challenging and rewarding area of the creative process, Creative Non-Fiction, or Literary NonFiction.

In many respects, this increasingly popular form of expression provides a fitting bridge between prose poems and the short story, much as Ron Block's work does.

As you have discovered, the boundaries between genres describe something very fluid, which is a good thing, giving you plenty of room to experiment.

And the motivations you felt for a poem will follow you on this journey: the various genres provide a different creative perspective on your experience, a means to connect with your reader in a dynamic fashion.

Now, works of creative non-fiction or literary nonfiction, as your text notes, come with a built-in credibility:

"They can be as artful in language and form as the most ambitious poet, dramatist, or novelist, yet they have the bonus of built-in credibility, for the moments they re-present have existed in time." (163)

This writing does come with the real-life connection-- you do not, in other words, have to convince your reader to suspend disbelief. On the other hand, your reader therefore pays close attention to the facts of the matter, putting a good deal of pressure on the writer, for she must maintain credibility throughout the narrative.

You must, indeed, write with a specific purpose in mind, a big idea your narrative emphasizes, something akin to a thesis statement in an essay.

Well, a look on the internet at both creative nonfiction and literary nonfiction will reveal the growing popularity of this challenging genre. Take a look, for example at Brevity, which offers memoirs of 750 words (just the length for which you aim). You will find some excellent selections here. And check out as well, this journal, Etude, from the University of Oregon.

You will find a lot of links on the internet connected with this genre, many better than others.

As your text indicates, authors have written in this genre for a long time, from Francis Bacon to Virginia Woolf, from Pliny the Elder to Truman Capote. Now, you will not write an autobiography this term. But as the text indicates, you have plenty to say:

"[T]he writer of a memoir attempts to write about his life by examining one detail at a time in order to tell the story as well as to explore the themes and ideas relative to his story." (166)

While the first part of the chapter focuses on much longer narratives--from autobiography to history--than will occupy us these next two weeks, what the authors have to say concerns you directly, especially about what unifies even a very short Memoir: THEME.

"The issues the memoir explores are called themes" (166).

As you read the short memoirs in our text and on the internet for this week's discussion, concentrate on the themes and the manner in which the writer emphasizes the themes without stating the big idea directly.

Now, you might want to include something of a thesis-directed statement in your opening paragraph to raise some specific expectations for your reader and to provide yourself with a guide for the remaining paragraphs.

Write with a purpose in mind that the details will reinforce.

This strategy of showing instead of telling will serve you well in nonfiction and in fiction.

"The aim of the nonfiction writer," our authors insist, "is to explore an idea, a feeling, or an opinion in such a way that the writer shares his own exploration of that idea, feeling, or opinion with the reader" (167), whether recounting a spiritual experience or a pre- puberty sexual encounter.

Because you draw on your personal experience, you will connect, strange as the assertion might sound, with your reader, if you present the ideas well.

That is to say, while the reader will not have experienced exactly what you recount, he will nonetheless probably have had an approximate encounter. Thus, bear in mind that "What you are trying to do in a memoir is not just to tell "what happened," but to explore ideas about your experience, using the details of memory to put flesh on the bones and voices in the mouths of the shades and figures you recall" (169).

Get inside the hidden head and view experience with a purpose--the exact significance of the experience about which you write never maintains a static importance in your life. Experience shifts in emphasis as you redirect your concerns and change opinions.

And because you write of an actual experience that made you change in some way, you will recall vivid details and put them to use.

For this reason, the assignment asks that your consider all the details surrounding the change in perspective your experience elicited. Think hard, too, about the senses connected with the conversation or event, smells and sounds that will provide the flesh for the bones.

These details will, in fact, accent the conflict at the center of your narrative--often, we have ambivalent feelings about a situation. Thus, we might realize that this experience revealed something unpleasant; however, the knowledge served us well. This conflict, then, does not have to be anything earth shattering, something many beginning writers fail to appreciate. Remember your Cocteau: polish the ordinary.

As our authors note, "The everyday, the ordinary, even the private and seemingly mundane details of the writer's life can make the memoir vivid and evocative" (170).

Consider these points as you read Langston Hughes's "Salvation." As you enjoy the essay, note as well the manner in which Hughes utilizes dialogue in the middle section to emphasize the important ideas he sets up in the opening paragraphs. And the conclusion points back to that scene in which he succumbs to his aunt's and the congregation's calls. The introduction and the conclusion serve as well to emphasize the ideas Hughes dramatizes in the narrative.

Read carefully that section of the chapter that talks about organizing your memoir. See, for example, on Page 174 the discussion about N. Scott Momaday's description of his grandmother. He talks about his grandmother because she serves as a foundation point for the broader experiences he will describe in the longer book.

To use the text's language, she is one of Momaday's "islands of time and experience" (174) that unite the longer narrative, Way to Rainy Mountain, from which this description comes.

The section on the grandmother uses her as a focal point, whereas Hughes utilizes an alternating method; he does not focus only on the matter at hand, so to speak, but uses other information to create the context in which the reader comes to appreciate the significance of the event: in other words, he tells us certain important information we need to appreciate all the more the central ideas.

Again, Hughes alternates between showing and telling.

The section of the text about flashbacks will serve you well next week, when you will, in fact, use this particular structure in your memoir. So we will return to these pages.

Which structure to choose for your particular essay will depend on what you want to emphasize. One chooses a poem's structure for very much the same reason: not simply what one wants to emphasize, perhaps, but the structure with which the writer feels most comfortable:

"Overall, the rule of thumb for structuring your autobiographical essay is this: use whatever tools are at your disposal to make the story come to life and illustrate its themes clearly. The memoir can use any structure, including narrative, to explore its subject." (178)

And the essay need not have a strong, persuasive goal. As you will appreciate, none of the material you will read this week seeks to convince you about something specific. Instead, the authors investigate, well, themselves, placing the events in a context that a broad range of readers will appreciate:

"The memoir's only concern, ultimately, is the meditation you are creating upon the story of your life, and your feelings and ideas towards it." (179)

Dorien Ross's detail-laced account, "Seeking Home," reinforces the preceding point quite well. And she utilizes wonderful irony.

The final section in the text touches on a very important concern, that of voice, "the personality of the speaker you hear talking as you read the essay or memoir" (183). You want to take care here how you present yourself.

Do not, unless you have the prose and the experience to back up the tone, try to sound deeply philosophical: write as you feel and above all remain consistent.

Remember, too, that the memoir you write need not tie all matters up in a neat bow at the conclusion. As the authors of our book point out, "the memoir writer can examine an experience or a memory without necessarily finding a conclusion for it" (185).

"The aim," the authors emphasize," of the memoir is not to put the experience in a box, but to examine it, to re-order it, to experience it anew, and to share it with the reader so that it becomes a part of the reader's experience as well" (185).

At this link, you will find a beautiful memoir by E. B. White, "Once More to the Lake." Take the time to read this famous description of White's taking his son fishing. Note the details and the manner in which time comes rather unstuck. And we really do not have a "conclusion" in which all comes together and ends discussion of the matter.

And note, too, the beauty of White's descriptions, the vivid details, the impeccable prose. So when you write, concentrate on details and use excellent prose.

Good luck with your writing.