Creative Nonfiction

Creative Nonfiction.

What IS that?  What does it mean?

Broken down, to me, it sounds a bit like someone stretching the truth a little?  In other words, maybe even telling a lie?  Well, doesn't it?

Heaven forbid!  It does say NON-fiction, after all.  But "Creative . . . ?"

Creative Nonfiction.

It's hard to explain, but there are other terms meaning the same thing, but which make it seem a little less like prevarication and more definitive, perhaps.  Literary non-fiction.  Or narrative non-fiction.  Those makes a little more sense to me, but neither sounds as provocative, or even as much fun. 

Lifted directly from Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_nonfiction - it's described as follows:

"Creative nonfiction (also known as literary or narrative nonfiction) is a genre of writing that uses literary styles and techniques to create factually accurate narratives. Creative nonfiction contrasts with other nonfiction, such as technical writing or journalism, which is also rooted in accurate fact, but is not primarily written in service to its craft. As a genre, creative nonfiction is still relatively young, and is only beginning to be scrutinized with the same critical analysis given to fiction and poetry.

For a text to be considered creative nonfiction, it must be factually accurate, and written with attention to literary style and technique. “Ultimately, the primary goal of the creative nonfiction writer is to communicate information, just like a reporter, but to shape it in a way that reads like fiction.”^[1] Forms within this genre include personal essays, memoir, travel writing, food writing, biography, literary journalism, and other hybridized essays. Critic Chris Anderson claims that the genre can be understood best by splitting it into two subcategories—the personal essay and the journalistic essay—but the genre is currently defined by its lack of established conventions.^[2]"

There's loads more said about it at Wikipedia at the link I've given above, and it's all quite interesting - I urge you to go see for yourselves.  Especially if you're a blogger.  I guess we bloggers are writing "Creative Nonfiction."  Aren't we?  I like it.  And it sounds loads nicer that "blogger."   Well, doesn't it??

Is it just another term for storyteller?

Or essayist?

Essays seem to come into literary fashion at times, then become less fashionable at other times.  Right now seems to be a "in" time for them.  Just like womens' clothing  -  everything old is new again.  For instance - scarves and shawls are "in" again, which tickles me pink,  and I'm glad I still have several from back when they were "in" several years ago.   I am a lover of long scarves.  Toss one around your neck and you've dressed up your white shirt and jeans just a tad.  Toss a shawl around your shoulders, and you're instantly feeling a little more dressed up, and maybe a little mysterious.

Actually, there are a lot of us who tend to ignore "fashion" and wear (or read) what suits us best.  

Essays have long been a favorite of mine, as have shawls.  

Some people have a special knack for "creative nonfiction," and are able to turn it into an art form that can bring great joy.  

Just as some peoples' novels bring some of us more joy than others, so too the short story and the essay.  The same with any form of artistic expression - a painting, a piece of handwoven or hand-knitted textile art, handthrown pottery . . .  whatever.  The artist imprints each piece with their own, individual style.  That style can become quite recognizable once the artist has found their technique, or "voice."  And some we find more pleasing than others, of course - art, in any form, is a very personal thing.

I have a few books of essays that stay pretty close at hand.  They're the perfect late night reading for me when I feel like a short read before turning in.  I cannot go to sleep without reading.  Can't do it, and really - don't even want to.  But.  I have this terrible habit of picking up a book late at night, then reading until the wee hours which makes it pretty tough to get up when that alarm starts its rude shrieking.  So, I've discovered short stories and essays work a little better for me.  

I've learned though, not to go on-line and start reading some of my favorite creative nonfiction blogs late at night.  It is way too easy to get caught up in that - especially if I feel moved to comment.  Talk about hours getting away from me.  Oy.

So, here's a couple of the books of creative nonfiction I've been re-reading lately -

 

While Nancy Peacock was trying to make it as a novelist, one of the things she did while trying to support herself was work as a housekeeper.  Finally, after two critically acclaimed novels she thought she had "arrived," but still couldn't afford to quit cleaning houses.  Not only that - the act of cleaning other people's houses gave her, in her words, what she needed to write - "solitude and gossip."  I just love this book.   I highly recommend A BROOM OF ONE'S OWN - WORDS ON WRITING, HOUSECLEANING & LIFE.

If you ever read Gourmet Magazine, you're familiar with Laurie Colwin's columns.  This is a collection of some of the columns she wrote before dying quite young and unexpectedly.  I loved every word I ever read that she wrote.  She wrote funny, touching pieces.

 And, of course, the one you've all heard me rave about numerous times already - 

Because I'm as big a fan of food as I am writing, I'm sure this book would have eventually found its way onto my nightstand.  Given the fact, however, that it was written by my favorite all-time writer ever, I had it pre-ordered the day I heard about it.  It did not disappoint.  I simply love and adore this book - it's full of great recipes, of course - but it is SO much more than that.  It's full of wonderful stories, and words of wisdom and wit as only Pat Conroy can give them, and I'm betting his next book of essays will join it on my nightstand, where they'll both live in harmony - oh boy . . .

Pat Conroy writing about books he's loved . . . I can't wait.

Unexpected Favorites by Neil Plakcy

Neil Plakcy is the author of Mahu, Mahu Surfer, Mahu Fire and Mahu Vice, mystery novels set in Hawaii, as well as the romance novels GayLife.com and Three Wrong Turns in the Desert (coming September 29 from Loose Id). He edited Paws & Reflect: A Special Bond Between Man and Dog and the gay erotic anthologies Hard Hats and Surfer Boys.

Plakcy is a journalist and book reviewer as well as an assistant professor of English at Broward College's south campus in Pembroke Pines. He is vice president of the Florida chapter of Mystery Writers of America.



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Unexpected Favorites by Neil Plakcy

If you know me as a writer of a police procedural series featuring a gay cop in Honolulu, Hawaii, you might make some assumptions about what I like to read. For the most part, you’d be right. I love mysteries, an affection I nourished throughout my teen years on a steady diet of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, and other classic detective authors.

I read almost everything that comes out in the gay mystery niche, which is bigger than you might think—there were 19 nominees for the Lambda Literary Award for best gay men’s mystery last year. It’s not a stretch to assume I’d read other gay fiction and at least a few books from the best-seller list. Delve a little deeper into my background and find that I was an English major in college, that I have a master’s in creative writing and I teach writing at a college, and you can see that I might appreciate James Joyce, Jane Austen and George Eliot.

But I have a few unexpected favorites, too. There’s a fantasy trend that runs through my reading, from Tolkien to Rowling to Neal Stephenson, whose works encompass historical and speculative fiction. Naomi Novik and her Napoleonic dragon series, and the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan, feed that appetite.

Those British mysteries honed my appetite for Anglophilia. I read the R. F. Delderfield historicals in high school, as well as the village stories of Miss Read, a pseudonymous country school teacher whose books are as charming as Alexander McCall Smith’s Mma. Ramotswe series, without quite so much murder and mayhem. (Though when the gypsies bring their carnival to Fairacre, watch out!)

When I ran out of library books at home, I could always dip into my mother’s teetering stack of Harlequin romances, and from them I developed a taste for chick lit and humorous romance. I love what are called “Aga Sagas” in Britain, big thick romances by Jilly Cooper and others, named for a kind of stove.

Maybe that’s what led me to Laurie Colwin.

For the most part, I don’t reread books. Colwin is one major exception. Happy All The Time is like comfort food to me, something I dip into over and over again. Colwin’s charm, insight into human behavior, and the way her domestic details illuminate character draw me back to her whenever I need a boost.

I’ve worn out one paperback edition and replaced it with a newer one. I’ve read and enjoyed her other books, including the two collections of her Gourmet magazine essays called Home Cooking. But Happy All The Time is the book that draws me back. It’s the story of two young men of wealth, education and privilege, living in 1980s Boston and New York, and the women they fall in love with. It’s a simple story, in the end, but the characters are so vivid, the locales so perfectly evoked, that it somehow transcends its simple material.

I’ll bet we all have one or more of those unexpected favorites. What are yours?

What might your friends or fans be surprised to learn that you read?