The Cambridge introduction to creative writing
From Walden, or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau
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| From Walden, or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather anew wearer of clothes. If there is not yet anew man, how can the new clothes be made to fit If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure anew suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in someway, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. (NA1: In the first excerpt, the poet and soldier Keith Douglas recreates the action of desert warfare in a vividly experimental narrative. This memoir of World War II Alamein to Zem Zem, written when the author was in his early twenties, has the momentum, precision and honest perception of an improvised spoken monologue. Douglas was killed inaction before the publication of the book. Thoreau was also in his twenties when, in 1845, he built himself a wooden hut on the edge of Walden Pond, near Concord. In Walden, or Life in the Woods he recounts his two-year experiment in self-sufficiency. He assays himself and his daily life with intimate attentiveness and scrupulous honesty. Ask yourself: How did these authors make their particular so general In your own writing of creative nonfiction, begin paying attention to the worlds to which you are closest, and maintain a logbook of your experiences. Creative nonfiction 181 Basic structure We will discuss topics later first, we look briefly at a basic structure for your creative nonfiction. Ina creative writing class, it is simpler to concentrate on shorter forms of writing such as a memoir, rather than a whole autobiography, or an article that explores some aspect of the world around you. We use the essay’s form as a basis for writing articles, and even memoirs. Think of your creative nonfiction articles as simply creative essays – essays with literary panache, essays that employ narrative. The structure of essays depends on stylistic intention and the function of the piece, but the first draft takes a straightforward shape. Use the first paragraph to setup your theme and tell the reader why it is significant for you and for them. Follow this with a series of paragraphs, each of which should present at least one complete idea, argument or demonstration of an aspect of that theme, and which maintains the forward momentum of the piece. There is usually logic to the order of these middle paragraphs, even a sense of narrative and certainly of scene-building. Conclude with a final paragraph in which what has gone before is summarised. This is the indispensable structure known as introduction–body–conclusion. It offers your piece structural clarity however, it is simply the starting point. Subverting the structure In subsequent drafts, play creatively with the order of narrative, and inject your writing with energetic details and devices. For example, if you have not already woven speech or dialogue into the piece, now is the time to do so. You may also wish to subvert the structure, jump-cutting between paragraphs or making the narrative move backwards. You might interrupt the flow of prose with inner monologue, or poetry even, or hold the reader in suspense by removing information from one paragraph and withholding it until close to the end. Examine your piece to find a framing device that supports the story’s structure. Bear in mind also that audiences are fickle – they are always searching for something new and stimulating – and only by surprising yourself will you surprise them. As an example of structural subversion, read aloud Fates Worse Than Death by Kurt Vonnegut (in NA 2183). Listen to how Vonnegut plays with the focus of this piece, and is constantly undercutting serious points with dark humour and self-deprecation. He mixes the registers of the vernacular with the factual- scientific, and collages his ideas, bringing in dreams, genetics, politics, asides about the New Yorker, and religious history. This piece is intended to be a spoken 182 Creative writing lecture, and was originally delivered at the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York City. Vonnegut uses the setting in the piece then he plays with his audience (rather than playing to them), buttonholing them with apparently spontaneous remarks, weaving in and around the title subject. The order has the semblance of logic, but it is the logic of a freewheeling conversationalist with something on his mind. Atone point he pulls back the focus entirely, and pulls the rug from under himself, declaring, So I haven’t had much luck, have I, in identifying fates worse than death Yet the point is to turn and return the audience, to cajole and tease them, to the real subject that racism not only allowed and allows slavery it also encourages a slavery of the moral mind, one that can celebrate the incineration of innocent people through nuclear attack. The man had something on his mind, and this frames the whole piece. Be sure to read your own work aloud also, testing it on the ear for euphony, textual colour, emotional honesty and impact. Try to replicate some of Vonnegut’s literary and rhetorical effects in your own work. Speaking with the reader The attitude of the work should not merely echo your writing voice it should be your voice, even to the extent of it being your spoken voice, and an honest voice at that, for – as in all writing – honesty is a craft. In 1933, the poet Osip Mandelstam, writing in his great nonfictional account Journey to Armenia, wryly supposed, It must be the greatest impertinence to speak with the reader about the present in that tone of absolute courtesy that we have for some reason yielded to the memoirists’ (2002: 200). Yet this is exactly what the best writers of creative nonfiction do. Like good novelists and poets, they aspire to speak with the reader, and the only impertinence for some commentators is that the genre is so popular that it even appropriates the word to describe some of its parts – popular science, popular philosophy, and so on. However, speaking with the reader is more than a fireside conversation over a few pages. Speaking with the reader often takes the form of speaking upon behalf of an important personal, social or environmental issue. Writing is a matter of responsibility, and there is much to be said about writing well about the concerns of your time, such as social and political injustice or the environment. In fact, Journey to Armenia is a superb example of that very form of address, dealing as it did, obliquely, with the harmful realities of Soviet collectivisation even though the aim for its sponsors was propaganda disguised as literary travel writing. Creative nonfiction 183 Passion and involvement Creative nonfiction differs from nonfiction by its very literariness, by the quality of expression and construction and, as Lee Gutkind argues: when people are discussing essays, articles or nonfiction books, they use words such as interesting, accurate, perhaps even fascinating. Passion and intimacy are not words that are often attached to nonfiction they sound too spontaneous, emotional and imprecise . . . But passion is what is required of a creative nonfiction writer . . . A passion for the written word a passion for the search and discovery of knowledge and a passion for involvement Try not to view memoir writing as a place for confession, since real-life details confess much more in being shown to the reader than you ever could by telling all. Try to write to entertain as well as inform, but design your work in subtle ways to teach by demonstration, not assertion. The information carried in creative nonfiction is accurate and scrupulously researched, but you deploy creative devices such as narration, edited (but real) dialogue, characterisation and well-developed scenes to maintain a reader’s attention. However, the sharpest creative devices remain your personal engagement and emotional honesty. Sometimes the writer is in fact partly the story sometimes the writer’s style is a large part of the story and sometimes, as in autobiography, they are the story. Download 2.89 Mb. Share with your friends:
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