tell it slant writing and shaping creative nonfiction

[...]... her own limited perceptions Lee Gutkind, who edits the journal Creative Nonfiction, says creative nonfiction “heightens the whole concept and idea of essay writing. ” He has come up with the “the five Rs” of creative nonfiction: Real Life, Reflection, Research, Reading, and ’Riting That second “R,” Reflection, means that in contrast to traditional objective journalism, creative nonfiction allows for and encourages... uses all the literary devices available to fiction writers and poets—vivid images, scenes, metaphors, dialogue, satisfying rhythms of language, and so forth—while still remaining true to experience and the world Or, as novelist and essayist Cynthia Ozick put it, “Like a poem, x Introduction a genuine essay is made out of language and character and mood and temperament and pluck and chance.” Creative nonfiction... encourages “a writer’s feelings and responses as long as what [writers] think is written to embrace the reader in a variety of ways.” Imagination coupled with facts form this hybrid genre that is both so exciting and so challenging to write As in any creative enterprise, the most difficult challenge to writing creative nonfiction lies in knowing where to begin One might think that creative nonfiction... are closest to you The Obstacle Course When we write about family, we set ourselves up for a plethora of ethical, emotional, and technical issues that may hinder us from writing altogether It s one thing to write about your sister in your diary; it s quite another to write about her in an essay published in a national magazine And when we set out to write about family, we are naturally going to feel... dangers of “revenge prose” and “the therapist’s couch.”) Our role as writers can be that of the witness We continually bear witness to those around us, and sometimes our job is to speak for those who have never spoken for themselves When we write about our families or take on the mantle of the biographer, we are really writing (and forging) community As Terry Tempest Williams writes, in her essay “A ‘Downwinder’... to see which details leap up from other people’s photographs 2 Writing the Family One thing that we always assume, wrongly, is that if we write about people honestly they will resent it and become angry If you come at it for the right reasons and you treat people as you would your fictional characters if you treat them with complexity and compassion, sometimes they will feel as though they’ve been... presented with understanding —Kim Barnes, author of IN THE WILDERNESS and HUNGRY FOR THE WORLD My brother is swinging the bat and I’m bored in the stands, seven years old My mother has given me a piece of paper and a pen that doesn’t have much ink in it I’ve written, “I HAVE TWO BROTHERS ONE IS A LITTLE ONE ONE IS A BIG ONE WE ONLY HAVE TWO GIRLS IN OUR FAMILY ONE IS ME ONE IS MY MOTHER.” The mothers sit all... focus on either private experience or public domain, but in either case, the inner self provides the vision and the shaping influence to infuse the work with this sense of “pluck and chance.” In many cases, the essayist may find himself “thinking aloud” on the page Then the essay becomes a continual process of unexpected discovery The creative nonfiction writer continually chooses to question and expand his... feel it s worth sharing with others, whether the reasons are literary or therapeutic, and I don’t think we should necessarily engage in self-censorship simply because we might be unwilling to share our work with the person(s) the work deals with I’d say that my decision was made of equal measures of love and cowardice Love and cowardice might aptly describe all of us when we find ourselves writing. .. of being” and they become essential to our very sense of self They are the times when we get jolted out of our everyday complacency to really see the world and all that it contains This shock-receiving capacity is essential for the writer’s disposition “I hazard the explanation,” she writes, “that a shock is at once in my case followed by the desire to explain it I make it real by putting it into . & Suzanne Paola Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction Tell It Slant Copyright © 2005 by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America Memory 3 2Writing the Family 17 3“Taking Place”: Writing the Physical World 25 4Writing the Spiritual Autobiography 39 5Gathering the Threads of History 47 6Writing the Arts 53 7Writing the Larger. like more information about this book, its author, or related books and websites, please click here. Tell all the Truth but tell it Slant Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The