Gutkind - The Art of Creative Nonfiction: Writing and Selling the Literature of Reality

The Art of Creative Nonfiction Writing and Selling the Literature of Reality Wiley Books for Writers Series

By: Lee Gutkind

ISBN: 0471113565

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Introduction Writing for the Reader This book, The Art of Creative Nonfiction: Writing and Selling the Literature of Reality, will introduce the genre of creative nonfiction and explain it with meticulousness-from idea through structure and development to finished product. The organization of The Art of Creative Nonfiction: Writing and Selling the Literature of Reality respects the order shown in the name of the genre. Part I confronts creative matters: It presents the anatomy of the essay by breaking down the essay, article, and book into their vital components and analyzing the creative structure so that readers understand how to design and build a provocative creative nonfiction effort. Part II is the nonfiction part, dealing with a writer's search for a salable subject for books, articles, and essays, and the unique challenge of gathering and communicating information from a personal point of view and the intimate process writers often call immersion.

Among other things in this book, you will learn a great deal about the writing life. You will see how long it takes to write a book, essay, or article, how hard a writer must work, how diligently he or she must research, read, and fact check-and the skill involved in revealing a subject with qualities that contain universal appeal, because the true test of a creative nonfiction writer is to attract and capture readers who do not have a built-in fascination or connection to a subject or narrator.

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The Creative Part One of the most memorable compliments I ever received through an eight book, 25-year career as an author, essayist, teacher, and editor is from a woman who began idly leafing through her husband's copy of my book about National League baseball umpires called The Best Seat in Baseball, But You Have to Stand: "I have always hated baseball.

It's a boring game. When my husband and son are watching it on TV, I leave the house. But I realized, as I looked through your book, that these were real people with unique problems-not just baseball fanatics-you were writing about. I sat down and read the book cover to cover in two nights." This is the basic objective of creative nonfiction: Capturing and describing a subject so that the most resistant reader will be interested in learning more about it. The writer establishes a certain humanistic expertise, becoming a reader's filter so that the reader will gain intellectual substance (about baseball, politics, science, or any other subject) while focusing on the drama and intensity of ordinary people living unusual, stressful, and compelling lives.

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The Creative Part My memory ends with Tommy's being struck, and my own remorse. I don't recall whether or not he eventually caved in. I had learned a lesson then that I have never forgotten. It's a variation on the well-known aphorism about being careful what you wish for. It goes something like: "Be careful what you say. Someone might act as if you mean it." All it takes is someone closer to the edge, perhaps a bit more unbalanced or extreme than you are, or someone who simply takes you at your word, who doesn't share your understanding that there's a line that isn't to be crossed no matter how heated the rhetoric. The line is then crossed, and the one who put the idea there at the outset must face his or her culpability. I was recently reminded of the incident with Tommy as I thought about Binyamin Netanyahu, the leader of Israel's opposition Likud Party, and his response to the murder of Yitzhak Rabin. Bibi, as he is called, had allowed his followers to depict Rabin in recent months as a traitor to Israel, a murderer, even a Nazi. Accepting this view of Rabin would make his demise justifiable, desirable, even necessary. It made him fair game. After the assassination, Bibi worked hard at distancing himself from the act and its perpetrator. He woke up one day after the assassination, he tells us, "with a shudder running through his whole body." I recognize that shudder. I too have felt it-every time I think about Tommy and see Skipper whip that lanyard across his face.

2.4 Reorienting the Writer's Eye To begin thinking in the creative nonfiction mode you must begin to reorient your writing eye. 14

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For Writers, Thinkers, Silent Observers (and Other People with Stories to Tell) 1.1 Crossing Genres Today there are just as many poets, playwrights, and fiction writers writing creative nonfiction as there are journalists-perhaps more. Novelists John Updike and Louise Erdrich, poets Diane Ackerman and Adrienne Rich have recently published collections of essays and memoirs, a very popular form of creative nonfiction. Essays by poets, novelists, and playwrights are appearing with increasing frequency not only in literary journals, but also in popular magazines and newspapers. Says poet Donald Morrill, "All the years I have been working on poetry (learning metaphorical structures, rhythm, imagery) have made me a better prose writer." 1.2 Thinkers and Scholars-Reaching Out from Academia Creative nonfiction demands spontaneity and an imaginative approach, while remaining true to the validity and integrity of the information it contains. That is why the creative nonfiction form is so appealing to people with new ideas or fresh interpretations of accepted concepts in

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The Creative Part history, science, or the arts; people with an intellectual curiosity about the world around us or a fresh viewpoint or approach to staid and seemingly inaccessible disciplines. For example: the Harvard University anthropologist Stephen Jay Gould, whose essays often explain principles of evolution and geology through discussions of the origin of baseball or cable car rides in San Francisco. Or Lewis Thomas or Oliver Sacks, whose perspectives on science in general and neurology in particular have provided a general reading audience with special insight. Biographies are often considered to be works of creative nonfiction. David McCullough, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, has written accurately and creatively about Harry Truman, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Brooklyn Bridge. An increasing number of historians, including Simon Schama (The Landscapes of My Life), are creative nonfiction writers, although they call themselves or are described by others as "narrative historians." 1.3 And People with Stories to Tell Autobiographies-memoirs-are becoming increasingly popular, as shown by recent record-setting bestsellers by Colin Powell, Jimmy Carter, Donald Trump, and Gore Vidal. Or the many tell-it-all books about O.J. and Nicole Simpson, the sex life of Bill Clinton, and the tragic and frightening story of the Menendez brothers. Not to forget books by Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, and Charleton Heston-there are celebrities ad infinitum. These authors may not be considered "scholars"

or thinkers but many may have compelling stories to tell, and stories, after all, are what good literature of any genre is all about. 1.4 Flies on the Wall The books and essays of Gould, Thomas, and Sacks provide windows through which the general public can observe situations that are often inaccessible. In a recent book, Oliver Sacks writes about learning of a surgeon who had Tourette's Syndrome-a malady that would seem to Page 7

For Writers, Thinkers, Silent Observers render surgery impossible. Sacks decided to spend a week living in the surgeon's home with the doctor and his family. He accompanies the surgeon into the operating room and into the sky (the surgeon is a private pilot) and then Sacks shares the intimate perspective he has gained of this unique man with his readers.