Today’s guest blogger is Angie Mellor, an Assistant Professor of English at East Carolina University where she teaches creative writing, creative nonfiction, and composition. Originally from Wisconsin, Mellor earned her B.A. in English at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, and an M.F.A. at Georgia College and State University. She is currently pursuing a Masters in Multicultural and Transnational Literature at East Carolina, and her work has appeared in The Whistling Fire and The Green Blade.
In my Introduction to Creative Writing class a few weeks ago, my students and I began discussing nonfiction. I was certainly surprised when the conversation began with this comment: “It’s boring.” When I asked why they thought of nonfiction as boring, it turned out that most of my students equate nonfiction with biographies. Once they learned that nonfiction comes in many varieties —such as the memoir, the personal essay, travel writing, and immersion journalism— they grew a little more curious about what type of nonfiction could work well for them.
However, the debate of what constitutes creative nonfiction continued. When one student, a communications major and campus newspaper editor, brought in a journalistic piece describing a particular place, students were shocked to find out that this could be considered nonfiction. Many were also hung up on the idea that nonfiction had to be a personal story, preferably a tragic one. We discussed that although personal tragedy is at the center of some memoirs, it is not a defining factor of nonfiction in general. In fact, the best nonfiction authors strive to go beyond the personal.
That brought us to the topic of the presence of the author’s personal experience and voice in creative nonfiction—specifically the use of “I.” Creative nonfiction is sometimes criticized as being self-centered or narcissistic because of the focus on the “I,” and many authors have countered that criticism. Some differentiate between the “I” as the self and the “eye” that sees and includes the outside world; both of which are essential to nonfiction. While such a distinction may be difficult for beginning writers, it is always helpful to encourage them to be aware of their audience. A piece of nonfiction needs to do more than just “relate” to readers, it needs to show that there is a larger and greater world beyond simply the self, or the “I” of the piece.
Any exercise that encourages students to move beyond their own experience will help them become better writers of nonfiction. One idea is to ask students to write about a particular place that has historical significance. This assignment would require them to conduct some significant research, whether through the use of personal interviews or library archives. This is not to says that students should have no personal voice in their nonfiction; rather, such an assignment gives them practice in being aware of the larger world beyond their own experience—practice with tapping into both the “I” and the “eye.”