Reading essays and books about people’s personal lives and thoughts always teaches me something new, broadens my awareness of the world and its people, and reminds me of the similarities we share. I don’t remember the first memoir I read but I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that Cheryl Strayed’s Lost and Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking affected me at a time when I needed to hear what they had to say. These two books will always be on my shelf and be read again and again.
CNF writers impress me with their willingness to open up and share the deepest hurt, the bitterest disappointment, or the most ecstatic moment in their lives. Reading about real people is infinitely interesting. In addition to personal ruminations, essays about the natural world, the tech world, or the cultural landscape are often eye-opening as well as entertaining or thought provoking. The wealth of conversation in nonfiction is so expansive and varied that a reader always has something to read.
Writing CNF isn’t always easy. Sometimes it is - sometimes it comes out of the pen like party string, shoots out all colorful and celebratory. Other times, it’s a drip drip drip and one of those drips for me is the worry that I might be stepping on someone else’s story and that someone might get pissed or have their feelings hurt over it. Even though I am also in the story, I recognize that it’s not all about me and a shared experience can be remembered differently and affect people differently. I’m always looking out for what other writers have to say about this conundrum. (Great word, conundrum.) This craft essay by Marilyn Duarte in Longleaf Review looks at the different sides of the coin very well, I think.
This week I listened to two engaging podcasts about writing CNF on Let’s Talk Memoir, a podcast series hosted by Ronit Plank who is author of her own memoir, When She Comes Back (highly recommend!). Ronit’s conversations with Abigail Thomas and Dinty W. Moore are filled with stories about their own writing experiences as well as gems for writers of memoir, personal essays, and creative nonfiction in general. I gleaned so much from each podcast.
In my personal nonfiction reading I recently found some pieces I’d like to share.
In Why Deny the Obvious Child by Camille U. Adams in Hippocampus, the first line reels you in like a fish on a line: caught and captive to the very end.
“In Trinidad, when my mother tells the story of why how she finally left her two-year-old baby, she regales, she relates, she details, she pontificates.”
Generational Wealth by Katy Goforth in Brevity talks about what compels her to write and why preserving family stories is so important.
“I write, so I won’t forget the people I love. I write, so the people I love won’t forget that I love them.”
New-to-me writer Sarah Marty-Schlipt tells a wistful story, We Live Here Now in Hippocampus, centered around a new garden in a new house just as the pandemic hit. I’m a sucker for nature themed personal writing and this fits right in.
“Last spring, we moved to this wild, wooded acre in Indiana. We unpacked our belongings as the pandemic shut down our state, then our country. We woke up in a world made new.”
Girls Like You in Guernica is by another new-to-me writer, Annell Lopez. The story cast me deeply into her world as a young woman struggling to define herself. I thought this piece was a personal essay when I read it only to discover later that it’s fiction. No matter. It’s a wonderful piece of writing you should read.
“But your mother, a Dominican immigrant who’d grown up on a sugar cane plantation, who treated Bounty paper towels like coveted possessions, had made it clear that photography was not a real career. She had come to the United States by boat, trekking from one Caribbean island to the next. This meant you owed her excellence.”
Honestly, I only have a few published CNF prose pieces under my belt. I continue to doubt that what I have to say will be interesting to anyone but me and I have a habit of censoring myself as I write. I get too much in my head, I think. But right now I have a short piece of around 760 words I submitted to Brevity and JMWW. Both replied with personal rejections so there’s that. Shall I revise or send it out again, elsewhere? I haven’t decided so, for now, it’s shelved. I’ll pick it up again in a few weeks or months with fresh eyes.
Like Cheryl says in this song,
🎶Don't miss the diamonds along the way
Every road has led us here today
Life is what happens while you’re making plans
All that you need is right here in your hands.✍️
Thanks for this, Charlotte. Going to dig in to all that great resources you shared! I have written about my family...a lot. And it is a fine line, one that challenges me in my craft, but also emotionally, in revisiting, I discover "my part." I also wrote a piece about the loss of a best friend and sent it to an editor for some help. She sent it back with a blunt note, "this is not your story to tell." Wham. I still can't let go of that story and know if I ever tell it right I will have grown as a writer.
Thank you for sharing my podcast and memoir here, Charlotte!