Class 2

The definition of creative nonfiction seems to be as much about what it is not as what it is.  Lott and Gutkind posit that it is not self-serving nor pointless naval gazing. I believe that writing creative nonfiction should be an attempt to use your own experiences to answer your own questions about your own life as well as help others develop insight or reach conclusions about their lives in the process.  It must be unflinchingly honest, perhaps painfully so, and should be if it is to be anything more than a regurgitation of one's memories for one's own sake.

Charles Bukowski wrote that the biggest mistake a writer can make is in assuming that everyone else cares about their lives as much as they do.
And yet, creative nonfiction is asking us to ignore that rule and assume that people not only will care, but may learn or even study our own experiences for +their+ sake.  Far from navel gazing, we are doing it to help the masses.

In another way, I see writing creative nonfiction as somewhat akin to praying, baring your soul before God.  Only be being truthful to God can our lives be redeemed, or given value.  In the same way, only by being truthful as writers can value be attributed to our own work.  Whether or not anyone else gains from it can not be the goal - it can instead be seen as the reward for work well done.

As to the issue of what's been left out of the discussion thus far, one interesting question may be whether a work has to have value for others in order to have value, period.  It may be assumed that the act of writing, of unburdening oneself, is valuable for the writer.  But its unclear if that in and of itself I enough to attach value to the work.  Must the message be one of lessons learned, one of grand scale - the triumph of perseverance or the power or love - or can it be small, simple - the value of a single coin?

Another question left unclear - when and how the lines of perception can be blurred.  Understanding that there is no absolute truth, only perception, how can the issue ever be made clear?  If I dream something and choose to write about it, is it creative nonfiction? It happened, but not in the real world - only to me.   It was not observable by others, therefore it cant be verified - so can it be said to be true?  When I was young, I was left out on a dock during a family fishing trip.  A big pull on the line convinced I had one hooked.  For several minutes, I fought with it and yelled for help until it broke away. At least that's what I remember, but no one else was there.  It may have been a dream or even a scene from some long forgotten film.  Would writing about it be a violation of or a confirmation of the art of nonfiction?  Seems like the question of whether trees make sounds falling in uninhabited forests.   A conversation that I've had with another whose experiences touched me ends up being a story about their experiences - is it personal enough to qualify as creative nonfiction?  Gutkind discusses seeking out secondary references to corroborate your own recollections.  But then they are no longer solely your recollections - in fact they may cause you to doubt your own memories, or even take their place.  By seeking out others memories, you may corrupt your own.  Have we defeated the purpose of nonfiction, seeking an outside truth and the expense of our inner truth?

Writing in the digital age introduces a number of interesting possibilities and pitfalls for writers.  Gutkind places a sort of cage around the writer in terms of how far one is allowed to stretch the use of memories, dialogue and timing in an effort to reach a plot point or a conclusion. In today's digital world, it is a necessity to stretch those rules or to compress plots in order to fit stories into a smaller (sometimes literally) space.  Digital essays cut down to blogs, cut down to posts, cut down to texts, cut down to tweets.  Can a text be creative nonfiction?  A tweet?  Perhaps, if it fits the most basic criteria of honesty and self-analysis - but how much of the payoff needs to be written?  Can it simply spark a conversation (digital or otherwise) or point the reader in the direction of a new idea?  In the digital world, the writer is no longer the only one discussing the topic - no more is the author completing a fully formed piece that is then distributed to wider world.  The writer is now part of an ongoing conversation - adding their piece to a growing conversation that may fulfill the requirements of non-fiction but is no longer a solo work.  One problem with that is that the work can become a living document in cyberspace, open to possible corruption or "correction" that could make the work false, thereby violating the first rule of creative nonfiction.  At the same time, while digital works may not qualify under some of the characteristics of creative nonfiction previously identified, it may be more successful at the key goal.  The digital conversation may actually open the door to a much grander version of exploration, for ourselves and others - allowing us to be examined, prodded and studied in real time through an ongoing discussion or own lives, faults, weaknesses and revelations as well as how they relate to others.  Such an exercise may ultimately be more beneficial for all.