Nonfiction writing....
I've always thought of nonfiction as "easy" writing. Personal essay in particular.
(Though readers should consider that I'm a ridiculous extrovert with no shame, and that maybe it would be fair to accuse me of sometimes "skimming the surface.")
But still, it has always felt a little easy to me, nonfiction, personal essay writing. Like, "Oh, hey... some shit happened to me, and here it is, and because life is complicated and interesteing, now that I've told you something about life, I get credit for being complcated and interesting."
There's no work of creation, invention, nothing but decorating the cake, sculpting the surface of the narrative.
Poetry is harder, in that the work is 99% in the craft. It doesn't matter what it's "about" hardly at all.
BUT fiction is HARD in that you have to create an entire world, invent rules of logic, a universe, hearts and minds. Fiction is what God does. And you have to pace it right, which is SO HARD, and which God does less well I think.
So I've always figured I'd steer clear of fiction, and just write my little essays, and maybe put them in a book someday...
But then recently I read an interview with Jane Smiley, and they asked her if she ever thought about doing nonfiction and her response was a gentle version of "Fuck no!"
She explained that if you put yourself into fiction, there are limitless paths, endless options, but that if you tell you own story, eventually you hit a dead end. She said it better than that, but that was the gist.
Which makes sense. Recently, I was asked to share the story of my Vegas wedding with an anthology, but I said no, because I want to "use that" myself. And in nonfiction, you have to tell it the "true" way (or mostly, at any rate), so you're limited in how many times people will listen, or read.
There's a reason people lie when they tell personal narratives. Uphill both ways. 5 ound bass. "Dear Penthouse..." It gets boring after you tell it the same way too much. We lie to make it interesting....
Which brings me to fiction. I'm thinking about fiction today. Reading Didion, I have that same feeling I had reading Karr, and yes, Frey too. That it was much needed, the telling of it.
But so many memoirs are just like, "Hey, some shit happened to me, and isn't life funny as hell, and sad too, or hard, or utterly ridiculous?"
Which I'm thinking now, God gets the credit for.... not me. Which makes me feel like chickenshit. And makes me want to invent something...
(BIG DISCLAIMER: I am NOT meaning to put down nonfiction, or suggest we shouldn't write it. I'm just feeling the limitations of my own process, and pondering my own inclination to ignore fiction thus far...)
(Though readers should consider that I'm a ridiculous extrovert with no shame, and that maybe it would be fair to accuse me of sometimes "skimming the surface.")
But still, it has always felt a little easy to me, nonfiction, personal essay writing. Like, "Oh, hey... some shit happened to me, and here it is, and because life is complicated and interesteing, now that I've told you something about life, I get credit for being complcated and interesting."
There's no work of creation, invention, nothing but decorating the cake, sculpting the surface of the narrative.
Poetry is harder, in that the work is 99% in the craft. It doesn't matter what it's "about" hardly at all.
BUT fiction is HARD in that you have to create an entire world, invent rules of logic, a universe, hearts and minds. Fiction is what God does. And you have to pace it right, which is SO HARD, and which God does less well I think.
So I've always figured I'd steer clear of fiction, and just write my little essays, and maybe put them in a book someday...
But then recently I read an interview with Jane Smiley, and they asked her if she ever thought about doing nonfiction and her response was a gentle version of "Fuck no!"
She explained that if you put yourself into fiction, there are limitless paths, endless options, but that if you tell you own story, eventually you hit a dead end. She said it better than that, but that was the gist.
Which makes sense. Recently, I was asked to share the story of my Vegas wedding with an anthology, but I said no, because I want to "use that" myself. And in nonfiction, you have to tell it the "true" way (or mostly, at any rate), so you're limited in how many times people will listen, or read.
There's a reason people lie when they tell personal narratives. Uphill both ways. 5 ound bass. "Dear Penthouse..." It gets boring after you tell it the same way too much. We lie to make it interesting....
Which brings me to fiction. I'm thinking about fiction today. Reading Didion, I have that same feeling I had reading Karr, and yes, Frey too. That it was much needed, the telling of it.
But so many memoirs are just like, "Hey, some shit happened to me, and isn't life funny as hell, and sad too, or hard, or utterly ridiculous?"
Which I'm thinking now, God gets the credit for.... not me. Which makes me feel like chickenshit. And makes me want to invent something...
(BIG DISCLAIMER: I am NOT meaning to put down nonfiction, or suggest we shouldn't write it. I'm just feeling the limitations of my own process, and pondering my own inclination to ignore fiction thus far...)
1 Comments:
But in fiction, we don't necessarily invent new things, new worlds. Often fiction is 50% true, or more. There has to be truth in it or it doesn't work. Well, often it doesn't or it becomes formulaic.
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