Sherry Ellis - Now Write! Nonfiction: Memoir, Journalism, and Creative Nonfiction Exercises from Todays Best Writers and Teachers
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An essential handbook for nonfiction writers, featuring the trusted personal writing exercises of todays masters of creative non-fiction, including Gay Talese, Reza Aslan, John Matteson, Tilar Mazzeo, and many more!
Beginners and seasoned writers alike will relish the opportunity to use the top-notch writing exercises collected in Now Write! Nonfiction culled from the personal stashes of bestselling and critically-acclaimed nonfiction authors like legendary essayist Gay Talese (Thy Neighbors Wife), New York Times-bestselling authors Ishmael Beah (A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier) Reza Aslan (No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam), and Tilar Mazzeo (The Widow Clicquot), 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winner John Matteson (Edens Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father), creative nonfiction icon Lee Gutkind (Creative Nonfiction magazine), and many other top memoirists, journalists, and teachers of creative nonfiction, these exercises offer fresh ideas for every facet of creative nonfiction writing, from pushing through writers block to organizing a story, capturing character to fine-tuning dialogue, injecting new life into a finished piece to starting a new work from scratch.
Now Write! Nonfiction will take you out into the field with creative nonfictions master practitioners:
*Peek inside Gay Taleses mind, as he shares the writers road map he used to organize information for his classic book Thy Neighbors Wife and his seminal essay Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.
*Learn from Reza Aslan why what you remember isnt as important as why you remember it the way you do
*Explore the importance of cultural nuance in language with Ishmael Beah
*Discover Lee Gutkinds simple trick, performed with a highlighter, that can help any writer identify whether their piece is truly showing action, or just telling
An essential resource that will help writers of any level to hone their craft and get writing, Now Write! Nonfiction offers over 80 quick, simple exercises trusted by top nonfiction writers to get their pen moving!
Retail.
Beginners and seasoned writers alike will relish the opportunity to use the top-notch writing exercises collected in Now Write! Nonfiction culled from the personal stashes of bestselling and critically-acclaimed nonfiction authors like legendary essayist Gay Talese (Thy Neighbors Wife), New York Times-bestselling authors Ishmael Beah (A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier) Reza Aslan (No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam), and Tilar Mazzeo (The Widow Clicquot), 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winner John Matteson (Edens Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father), creative nonfiction icon Lee Gutkind (Creative Nonfiction magazine), and many other top memoirists, journalists, and teachers of creative nonfiction, these exercises offer fresh ideas for every facet of creative nonfiction writing, from pushing through writers block to organizing a story, capturing character to fine-tuning dialogue, injecting new life into a finished piece to starting a new work from scratch.
Now Write! Nonfiction will take you out into the field with creative nonfictions master practitioners:
*Peek inside Gay Taleses mind, as he shares the writers road map he used to organize information for his classic book Thy Neighbors Wife and his seminal essay Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.
*Learn from Reza Aslan why what you remember isnt as important as why you remember it the way you do
*Explore the importance of cultural nuance in language with Ishmael Beah
*Discover Lee Gutkinds simple trick, performed with a highlighter, that can help any writer identify whether their piece is truly showing action, or just telling
An essential resource that will help writers of any level to hone their craft and get writing, Now Write! Nonfiction offers over 80 quick, simple exercises trusted by top nonfiction writers to get their pen moving!
Retail.
Sherry Ellis: author's other books
Who wrote Now Write! Nonfiction: Memoir, Journalism, and Creative Nonfiction Exercises from Todays Best Writers and Teachers? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Sherry Ellis
Lee Gutkind
Casey Clabough
James B. Stewart
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Table of Contents
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO
DENISE GESS
DENISE GESS
AUTHORS NOTE
During the three years since the fiction version of Now Write! was published, several writers and teachers have mentioned how helpful the book has been. Ive received feedback that the exercises helped writers break through impasses and add depth and layers to their writing. Also, there are writing groups that have used these exercises to provide weekly structure to their meetings. It is with this feedback in mind that I decided to collect nonfiction writing exercises for this second book in the Now Write! series.
GET WRITING
MICHAEL STEINBERG
Three Things That Stopped Me in My Tracks: An Exercise in Discovery and Reflection
MICHAEL STEINBERG has written and edited five books. In 2003, ForeWord Magazine chose Still Pitching as the Independent Press Memoir of the Year. Hes also founding editor of the anthology The Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction, and coeditor of The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction. Currently, hes writer-in-residence at the Solstice/Pine Manor low-residency MFA program.
Writers often talk about the sensation of discovering what we didnt know we knew. Its a shorthand phrase that describes the unexpected surprisesideas, insights, and/or feelingsthat we didnt plan on encountering. And if these discoveries are compelling enough, they can resemble what fiction writers and poets describe as epiphanies or moments of self-illumination.
Part one of this exercise is designed to help you become more attuned to catalystsincidents, observations, encounters, situationsthat can, if youre paying attention, trigger these unexpected discoveries. And part two asks you to use those discoveries to take your writing a step further.
EXERCISE
Part One: Three Things That Stopped Me in My Tracks
Write three separate entries or notations that describe three things that stopped you in your tracks. To get the maximum benefit out of this exercise, do each one at least two to three days apart.
For example, say on the tenth of this month you found out that your best friend was badly injured in an automobile accident; on the twelfth, the temperature unexpectedly plunged from the seventies to the thirtiesand something unusual happened because of that; and on the fourteenth you found out that something you were looking forward to with great anticipationan encounter, an interview, an appointment, etc.got canceled and/or put on indefinite hold.
If you did your first notation on, say, Wednesday, then do the next on Friday, and the third on Sunday. Just describe the specifics of what you saw and/or what happened. Then, write a short note to yourself explaining why this particular thing caught your attention.
These notations can be as long or short as they have to be. They can be serious, sad, playful, puzzling, exhilarating, disappointingand so on. Itll depend on what three things you write about, and the mood youre in when you write them.
Lets say, though, that you cant find three things that stopped you in your tracks this week. Maybe you can only find two. In that case, go into your memory bank and write about an episode, incident, encounter, etc. Pick one that has been nagging at you for a while.
Part Two
Now lets see if we cant make some sense out of these three seemingly random happenings.
First, read your notations back to yourself, with an eye toward discovering some common thread or patternno matter how far-fetched or speculativethat links all three. There are lots of possibilities here.
Maybe, for example, the common link is a running motif of some sort; maybe its a feeling of dj vu; or, maybe these three things have reminded you of a problem thats still unresolved.
In any case, when you come up with a connection (trust your subconscious; itll be there if you look for it), write a thoughtful paragraph or two of speculation/reflection/analysiswhere you try to determine exactly what connects the three things that stopped you in your tracks. Then write about how and why you think theyre connected.
In the process of writing this, hopefully, youll discover something you didnt know you knew. And, in the best-case scenario, it will become rich material for you to write about in more depth and detail.
JAY KIRK
The Dying Goat
JAY KIRKS nonfiction has appeared in GQ, Harpers, The New York Times Magazine, and Chicago Reader, and has been widely anthologized. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Pennsylvania, and is the author of Kingdom Under Glass, to be published in the fall of 2010.
Good nonfiction writing is, largely, about the conviction of ones impressions. Your honest take on the world. I often tell my students to mind not only the details, but, in particular, the weird details. It is not the fact that you notice your nonfiction subject has dark shaggy hair that makes him a memorable character, but the fact that a yellowed curl of fingernail left from his mornings ablutions clings to the fabric of his shirt just southeast of that little embroidered Izod alligator. The same goes for the more soulful aspects of your writing: the deeply personal, subjective impressions you make about your characters, your situations, your prejudices, the vagaries of your own mind. You must give yourself permission to put down the really true stuff, which, at first, might seem inappropriate, obscene, or, again, for lack of a better word, weird. But there is much truth in the strange; sometimes its the only way to reassess the ordinary. Of course, its frightening to risk the truth, mainly for fear that somebody might read what weve written and take it badly or, worse, think badly of usthat our observations and hard-won insights are bizarre or creepy. Thats why, to really get the ink flowing, I often console myself with the morbid thought that, in all likelihood, when I die nobodys gonna remember me, so why the hell not write whats true? Only once we let go a little can we get down to the lonely business of what we really think. So, embrace your mortality and write better! I know, its kind of depressing, but it works.
EXERCISE
Heres one of many variations on this exercise that I like to call The Dying Goat.
Pretend/imagine that you are a goat. You are a goat that has been separated from the rest of your goat community. You are lost in the wilderness. As you stumble through the wilderness, in your goat-like panic, you prick yourself on the thorn of a honey locust. Dont let its name fool you: the thorns are evil, five-inch suckers, very nasty. The puncture wound is deep and, in your best, medically unprofessional assessment, lethal. You will probably bleed to death, alone, out here in the wilderness. You quickly go through Elisabeth Kubler-Rosss five stages of grief and come to accept your demise. Then, in your indefatigable need to express yourself, as a writer of truth, even in the hour of your own inevitable death, you find a well-nubbed twig and dip it in the puddle of your blood. What are your final words?
You can use this as a starter for an automatic writing, as an opportunity to revise your list of subjects/story ideas worth writing about, about which youve previously felt too shy or polite or otherwise constrained to write about yet, or you can use this exercise as a way to purge yourself of the Big Think ideas youve been too humble as of yet to share with the rest of the world. The main idea is to
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