CHAPTER ONE

Creative Nonfiction and the Essay

The word genre gets used quite a bit in creative writing classes, so it might be helpful to learn  and keep in mind the different, sometimes overlapping meanings of the word. Quite literally, genre means kind, style, sort, or type. It’s related to other words like general, generic, gender, even genetic and genius. In creative writing circles, it is sometimes meant to distinguish between poetry and prose. Poetry is most often composed with an ear toward linguistic music, as discussed in the previous section, and it usually looks different on the page, too, with broken lines that might be organized into stanzas. Prose, on the other hand, is most often composed with the sentence in mind, with unbroken lines organized into paragraphs. This distinction might seem obvious, but some forms of short-short prose or prose poetry can challenge our understanding of genre.

The word genre can also be used to distinguish within each of these two broad categories. Within poetry, the traditional distinction is between lyric and epic poetry. Since we don’t really write epic poems any longer, most contemporary poetry would be considered lyrical, within which you might make further distinctions of style and mode. Within prose, we distinguish between fiction and nonfiction. The word fiction is derived from the Latin verb fingere, meaning “to shape.” We understand that fiction is made up, created out of something that wasn’t there before, invented ex nihilo, out of nothing except the writer’s imagination taking the form of a story.

Nonfiction, however, is not shaped. In other words, it’s not invented out of nothing but is assumed to be derived from things that have actually happened and must therefore convey the truth—or at least some version of it. Journalism is nonfiction, as are biographies and histories of various kinds, all of which are beholden to the facts. You might assume nonfiction only cares about communicating the facts and nothing but the facts, but there is another word we attach to nonfiction that brings it to life: creative. There is a tension between these two words: to be creative, inventive, and imaginative, on the one hand, and to be beholden to facts and truth on the other. Creative nonfiction as a genre carries with it great potential to generate dynamic writing because of this tension—not in spite of it.  

The form of creative nonfiction that we will focus on in this textbook is the essay. I want to liberate this word from what you most likely associate with it. To your mind, essays might be those things that teachers made you write in school to analyze, to persuade, to argue. Maybe you learned that you weren’t allowed to use the first-person pronoun I when writing an essay. Maybe you learned somewhere that an essay must have a thesis statement, three pieces of evidence, and five total paragraphs with a conclusion that begins “In conclusion.” Among creative writers, however, the essay is far from that old standby template, which might well be useful as a scaffold from which to build other critical writing forms, but has less to offer creative writers as they approach the blank page.

The word essay literally means “to try, to test, to experiment.” It might help to know the broad outlines of the essay form’s dual history over the past four hundred years. On the one hand, we have the English tradition from the scientist Francis Bacon (1561-1626), the so-called Father of Empiricism who helped to develop the Scientific Method. Not surprisingly, his writing is systematic, very much concerned with observation and logical argument. In this way, Bacon’s essays are a trial, a test, an experiment. On the other hand, we have the French tradition from the philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), whose essays incorporate personal anecdote and meandering meditations. His writing wanders to and fro, seemingly following his thoughts as they occur to him, trying to discover some insight about the question at hand. In this way, Montaigne’s essays are also a trial, a test, an experiment.

In order to illustrate my point, let’s compare the openings of two essays. Here is Francis Bacon’s “Of Friendship” (1612):

It had been hard for him that spake it to have put more truth and untruth together in few words than in that speech, “Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god:” for it is most true, that a natural and secret hatred and aversation towards society, in any man, hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it is most untrue, that it should have any character at all of the divine nature, except it proceed, not out of a pleasure in solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester a man's self for a higher conversation: such as is found to have been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathen; as Epimenides, the Candian; Numa, the Roman; Empedocles, the Sicilian; and Apollonius of Tyana; and truly and really in divers of the ancient hermits and holy fathers of the church.

Bacon remains focused on establishing the truth of a statement made by Aristotle, teasing out the implications before moving forward in his argument. Montaigne’s essay “Of Friendship” (1588) begins quite differently, however:

Having considered the proceedings of a painter that serves me, I had a mind to imitate his way. He chooses the fairest place and middle of any wall, or panel, wherein to draw a picture, which he finishes with his utmost care and art, and the vacuity about it he fills with grotesques, which are odd fantastic figures without any grace but what they derive from their variety, and the extravagance of their shapes. And in truth, what are these things I scribble, other than grotesques and monstrous bodies, made of various parts, without any certain figure, or any other than accidental order, coherence, or proportion?

Montaigne begins with a character in a scene, an anecdote. Having observed a painter working for him, he decides not to imitate the man’s process, comparing his own writing instead to the “grotesques and monstrous bodies” the painter leaves for the margins. Montaigne charms while Bacon argues. From Bacon, we get the essay that you’re likely familiar with from English classes. I have come to refer to these instead as papers to distinguish them from what I consider the much more artful and inviting tradition of the Montaignian essay. Papers require clarity and value concision, and they usually erase the first person pronoun I in the interest of objectivity. The essay, however, allows you to be a little messy (or a lot), to prioritize beauty over other virtues, to be (and express) yourself. While papers often pretend to know the answers beforehand, essays seek them out in the midst of writing. The essays on offer in this textbook have been written in this spirit.

Even so, with this creative liberation comes responsibility. Instead of persuading someone of your point of view or convincing a reader of your well-reasoned argument, you are charged with something far greater, a task more challenging but far more rewarding and longer lasting. You are charged with making art.

What is art? The creative writing class you’re likely taking—as well as the design of this book—will cover a range of elements and tools that are meant to help you become a better writer with the eventual aim to create art. These tools are not, by themselves, what make a good artist. Just because you can write a pleasing sentence or render a vivid image doesn’t mean that you’ve created art, not yet at least. But you do need to know how and when to wield those specific tools in order to do so. The tools are necessary but not sufficient. The more you use them—and the more you dwell in their possibilities—the closer you will come to art. To be clear, even as published writers and editors ourselves, we all still consider ourselves approaching art, never quite arriving but always in transit, our reach necessarily exceeding our grasp. Why else continue?

To our mind, the artist is someone who makes the world strange again, allowing a reader to see things anew, as though for the first time. Art must astonish. Art must create a rift in our ordinary, everyday world (however small and temporary) to allow us to see into Reality itself. This is a tall order, I know—and perhaps impossible—but as you embark on your career as a creative writer, know that you’re doing so for this deep and important reason. Creative writing is not frivolous. It is not extra. It is vital. It has the power to save your life.  

Exercise: Composing Your Artist Soul

To get a sense of the possibilities of writing in the essay form and becoming an artist, read Sofia Samatar’s essay “The Unknown Country.” Notice that throughout the essay, Samatar presents lists of italicized words. Eventually, we learn that these enigmatic, somewhat opaque words come from Joseph Cornell’s collage story The Crystal Cage, representing elements that “compose his soul” as an artist. His association with these words is more or less unexplained. As an exercise, make your own list of “​​things that quicken the heart,” dredged from the depths of your inner life, that compose your own artist soul. You may also think of this exercise as simply making a list of words that you are attracted to for one reason or another—or for no explicable reason at all. At this point, making the list may be enough to begin the lifelong composition of your artist soul, but you could develop further ideas for narrative and reflection from any number of these words. At the very least, sharing your list with others in your class or with your writing group can be a good way to get to know each other as people and as writers.