Readings and Thoughts on Creative Nonfiction

Author: Mimi Schwartz

This piece is about what is considered acceptable in writing memoirs. Some people believe that memoirs need to be completely accurate and factual, but other people think it is all right to blend together time and even characters in order to give the story more focus. Schwartz writes that if a piece gives the reader a true sense of how the writer felt and if most of the story is true, then it is ok to "take an imaginative leap." I think this makes sense, since part of the reason for writing is so people will read what you write, you should focus more on the story-telling and drawing readers in than on all the minute details.

Below are a few select quotes from the piece, along with some of my thoughts regarding them.

That's fiction, not memoir. You have to play by the rules; there's a line you can't cross. And where is that? they ask. I don't know, only that if you make up too much, you've crossed it.

This is a good way to describe the problem many creative nonfiction writers probably face. It's hard to know just how much creativity is too much.

Don't you tell your friends, family, especially your children, about who you were, who your family was once upon a time? And do you want those stories to last more than one minute? If we stick only to facts, our past is as skeletal as black- and-white line drawings in a coloring book. We must color it in.

This is one good way to figure out a good way to tell a story. When telling family stories, people generally want them to be interesting, and the same should go for writing those family stories.

Go for the emotional truth, that's what matters. Yes, gather the facts by all means. Look at old photos, return to old places, ask family members what they remember, look up time-line books for the correct songs and fashion styles, read old newspapers, encyclopedias, whatever-and then use the imagination to fill in the remembered experience.

I think this is a good thing to keep in mind. Facts are important, and rifling through old photos and asking friends and family to recall certain events will help write the story, but what makes it interesting is the emotion behind it.

The challenge of this genre is that it hands you characters, plot and setting, and says, "Go figure them out!"-using fact, memory and imagination to recreate the complexity of real moments, big and small, with no invented rapes or houses burning down.

I think that while it is a challenge to figure out how to tell the story, having the characters, plots, and settings "handed" to you might actually make it easier.

There is one reason not to write memoir, aside from worries about memory and the restraints on creative freedom~ Mom may not speak to you again if you write her story, and you care.

I agree. Sometimes it's hard for the "characters" to read about how the writer sees them.

A writer does have some fictive leeway even in memoir, I believe-if you are cautious (and not too famous).

I'm glad some people feel there is leeway; that way, there is not too much pressure on getting all the facts exactly right, and the writer can focus on other aspects of the story.

Depending on the story's focus, you sometimes collapse time and characters as well, I will tell my students, and still are "true" on my truth scale.

This makes sense because it can give the story more focus and direct the reader to parts of the story the writer feels are more important.

Making up anything, for them, is crossing the line into fiction and should be called that. But I disagree.

While it is important to stick to the truth, I also agree that blurring together some of the details is not such a bad thing.

If the main plot, characters, and setting are true, if the intent is to make honest sense of "how it felt to me" and tell that true story well (with disclaimers as needed), it's memoir to me.

I like this statement. Although facts are important, I think the "emotional truth" is more important, and getting that across will more likely attract readers.

It's OK to trust yourself (with a bit of Quindlen's and Herrmann's wariness)-even if you can't remember the temperature on the night Mom died.

I agree with this sentence. Again, sometimes you can't confirm every single detail.