To write creative nonfiction, the author must establish credible accuracy through research and write in literary prose through incorporating plot, character development, scenes and dialogue. As creative nonfiction authors and readers negotiate events of a story, there is an understanding that literary constructs will not alter essential truths. For instance, if I’m writing about an event that happened while I walked along a wooded lane on a spring morning in the UK and I recorded in my journal that it was sunny and I saw bluebells in the woods that day, it is acceptable to add a description of sun filtering through chartreuse leaves onto a carpet of nodding bluebells. This sort of description anchors the event as a literary scene. To add a fictitious fox chasing a rabbit through the wood, would be unacceptable.
The easy aspect of writing In the Footsteps of a Roman Legion – Walking the Via Egnatia, was chronicling one well-documented trip. The more difficult task was incorporating historic and current social contexts. The story flowed once the idea gelled for creating Lucius as a metaphor for refugees and a voice of history. Use of magic realism has been an exciting development in my creative nonfiction writing. In this book, fiction and nonfiction walk abreast and generate a unique energy. The reader, however, remains certain of what is and isn’t fiction. Just to be sure that no one wonders if Pat and I really found ourselves a Roman legionnaire, I used a different font for the fictitious scenes.
How does writing creative nonfiction memoir deal with accuracy of memory.
Countless studies provide guarantees that memory is inaccurate. Different people will seldom remember one event the same way. So how do authors establish truth? How do we present ourselves as reliable narrators? How do we respect our contracts with readers?
I invite people involved in the stories to read early drafts, correct inaccuracies, add their own memories, and confirm agreement with how they are portrayed. Respecting requests for privacy, I do not include anyone who asks that I leave them out of a story.
I trust the accuracy of my journals. For instance, if I recorded that I was cold on a particular day – even if I no longer recall that misery – I don’t invent a scenario in which I was warm.
I’ve stayed in some horrid accommodations, and bedbugs are synonymous with that sort of place. I’ve never been attacked by bedbugs, so haven’t invented bedbug scenarios. A cockroach on a friend’s pillow in Almaty, however, is not an exaggerated anecdote – even so, it didn’t scuttle into Soul of a Nomad.
I establish truth through writing honestly. I use words such as, “I recall,” or “I recorded in my journal,” to remind the readers that the text represents my subjective experience. Writing with respect to established trust, I’m conscious not to betray it through gratuitous exaggeration or misinformation.
I present myself as a reliable narrator through careful research. When I delve into unverifiable situations such as metaphysical encounters with my dead husband, the reader is invited to trust the portrayal as being true to my experience.
My writer/reader contract relies on trust established through my research to ensure accuracy. For instance, when I write that the Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066, this is a recognizable fact for nearly everyone who’s taken grade-school British history. But when did the first woman graduate from university? Perhaps this question requires more investigation. A quick Google search tells me it was on 25 June 1678, when Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia, received a degree in philosophy from the University of Padua. Is this correct? Further research reveals Bettisia Gozzadine had received a law degree and was a lecturer at the University of Bologna by 1239. In 1415, Constance Calenda earned a medical degree from the University of Naples. I note a European-centric pattern here. What might more research reveal? The oldest – still operating – university in the world, al-Qarawiyyin in Fez Morocco, is reported as having been founded by a woman, Fatima al-Fihri. While she was well educated, I’ve discovered no evidence that she held a degree. I invite interested readers to see what you discover should you plunge into research rabbit holes.
Have you always journaled?
I journal when I travel, kept a kayak-trip logbook when I was paddling and make sporadic entries in a ten-year garden journal.
For Pomegranates at 4800 Metres, I relied on those journals and photographs, and discussed details with the various people involved in the stories. My kayak logbook provided many forgotten details for the paddling stories. Mike had the seizure announcing his brain cancer just before I was to leave on a trip to Russia with two friends. He was flown to Victoria while my sons and I drove down. I grabbed my Russia-ready pack as I headed out the door. A journal, already containing notes about the Russian itinerary, soon accumulated details of Mike’s last months. I may not have written that account had the journal not been at hand. Sometimes I feel like burning the two volumes I filled with medical jargon and agony, but for now they crouch in a box and are surrounded by happier travel scribblings.
Do you introduce smatterings of fiction or exaggerated characters? An example, maybe the conversations you might have wanted with your mom but that didn’t unfold exactly that way?
In Soul of a Nomad, I write about events that happened before I was born, while I was very young, and with dialogue that I could not possibly remember. Many of the stories are part of family lore and have been told time and again by my parents. Mum told me numerous anecdotes from my infancy, she kept journals, some of which I have, and she recorded important family events in scrapbooks. Dad was an avid photographer, his slides providing more ample evidence of where we went and what we did. Accepting our family tales, records and photos as reflections of my childhood, I wrote about them with Dad as gatekeeper to their veracity. For dialogue, I was, at times, able to refer directly to Mum’s journals as she recorded comments such as, “Kim said …,” or “Dave told her … .”
Shortly after she died, I found Mum’s journal of our 2004 European adventure tucked into the back of one of her scrapbooks. It provided insight into a complex woman who was much more than “Mum.” She recorded several details of conversations about our relationship which enabled me to write much of the dialogue for the “When the Wall Came Tumbling Down” chapter. The revelations from her journal presented an interesting conundrum as I wrote from my point of view, but with a sense of Mum sharing the pages and speaking for herself.
What is truth? What is real?
Philosophers will do much better with these questions than I, but here’s my take:
Truth – agreeing with and attributed to fact or reality.
Real – existing or having material substance.
How I apply this to writing creative nonfiction is to tell truths through the realities of my experiences. The truth of Pat’s and my walk across the Balkans is that we had a fabulous adventure. The reality is that social and economic conditions created challenges along the way.
While serving with the UN in Egypt in 1978, on a 40°C day, I sat with friends in a jeep in sweltering heat, awaiting the ferry across the Suez canal. A few feet away Ghanaian soldiers wearing hats and coats, also waiting for the ferry, crouched shivering by a fire. Reality is static – the temperature was 40°C. Truth is dependent on who’s perspective is being considered. Was the day hot or was it cold?
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