I went into college with a pretty specific idea of what I wanted to write — I had a fiction novel in the works, and by the time I graduated, I wanted to have the manuscript ready to pitch to agents.
In other words, I wanted to take fiction classes. Everything else I deemed a distraction from my main goal. But a liberal arts curriculum will always ask you to deviate from what you thought you wanted to do and who you thought you wanted to be — that is a good thing!
Creative nonfiction was a genre that was always “around” me but never something I participated in until my later years of college. One of my friends claimed that if you asked any random person on the street what creative nonfiction is they wouldn’t have heard of it. Fiction reigned supreme (poetry coming second, because neither of us were poets).
To my surprise, I became defensive. “Well, creative nonfiction is a pretty broad genre. So, maybe not everybody would be able to explain what creative nonfiction is as a term, but I bet most people know what a memoir is. Or a personal essay.”
Ah, the taxonomy of CNF. I’d have surprised my younger self by knowing at least that much about a genre I’d largely ignored — even brushed off myself, once upon a time ago.
I believe CNF came into my life at a time where I was most receptive to learning about it. A class I added to my schedule junior year out of vague interest ended up being a seminar that changed the way I view myself, my relationships with people, and the world around me — and now I will happily defend the validity of the genre.
The “I”
Introductory CNF classes focus a lot on the concept of writing from the “I”. It’s more than simply expressing yourself in first person; it is thinking of yourself as a character in the events of your life. I think that’s where the “creative” comes from in CNF, because the process of doing this almost always results in something akin to fiction; we can’t really rely on our memories for the truth, and so we will always end up fictionalizing at least some aspects, even if the event itself remains true. We call this sort of strange half-truth “the emotional truth” of the essay or memoir; the way that we feel is what’s true, even if our memories are garbled. The way that we feel might speak to some sort of universal feeling that is shared amongst others, and our essays will speak to our readers.
This approach to memory and emotion truly reshaped the way I thought about the events of my own life. Not only did it tell me that it was valid to feel the way I did, but it also asked me to be intentional about how I express it. I used to be the kind of person who would throw together impulsive text messages when I was feeling upset. Creative nonfiction asked me to be more thoughtful with my language — that was craft.
Developing my craft gave me some semblance of control. The page was much like a lab — a controlled setting where my feelings could take some sensible shape. Once I put the pen down and returned to the “real world,” I was at the mercy of life’s shifting tides, but I knew I had the page waiting for me when I’d return. It was therapeutic.
Much of my material came from my own life. My essays became love letters to the people I knew I was leaving behind, for one reason or another.
When the love letters were written, I found I had no new material to work with.
Writing beyond the self
CNF is always teaching me new things, and my newest challenge is to write beyond myself and gather material from the world around me. I was inspired by my brilliant cohort at The Kenyon Review in realizing that CNF begins with the self, but it does not end there. It is nonfiction, after all. While much of my earlier essays were founded on material from my own life, I’m trying to look outward rather than inward now. Not only does it help me become a better writer (certainly more well-rounded than I was when I began college) but it also asks of me to be a more curious person. It asks me to pay attention to my surroundings and the people around me, rather than closing myself off from the wider world where there is still so much to see.
While I’m still a fiction novelist at heart, and my passion project is still in the works, I don’t think I’d be the fiction writer I am now without the mark of CNF in my life.
