Welcome to this course on creative nonfiction. Over the coming few months, we’re going to be exploring creative nonfiction together. I’m Will Buckingham — I’ve met most of you before — and as well as teaching at Parami, I’m a writer. This course will be structured a little differently from most Parami courses. We’ll be diving into reading and writing, but we’ll be thinking of ourselves not as students, or as trainee academics, but as writers and storytellers.
Syllabus
Before we get started, we’ll have a look at the course information. I’ll take you through the syllabus, which is available on Canvas on the files tab.
Introductions
We’re going to do some introductions by means of a writing exercise. A lot of our work together will be doing writing exercises. This is a writing and reading intensive course.
The title of this exercise is taken from Maggie O’Farrell’s memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes With Death (2017). O’Farrell borrowed the line from Sylvia Path’s The Bell Jar (1963): “I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
Today, we’re going to use this as a starting point for a first-person writing exercise. The exercise is simple.
Write for five minutes. Start your first sentence “I am…”, and write freely until you have reached the end of the thought, the idea, or the story. When this happens, don’t stop, but start a new line and write, “I am…” again. Then let the next thought unfold.
Each time you start a new thought, try to push a little bit deeper. Get curious about yourself. Who are you? Don’t settle for easy answers. We are often mysteries to ourselves, after all… Good luck!
Introductions 2
Let’s go around to say hello! Choose one sentence from your writing that you want to share. Then we’ll go around the class. Introduce yourself (camera on) with the following information.
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Your full name and preferred name (put your Burmese name in the chat, to help me with pronunciation)
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Your preferred pronouns
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Where you are zooming in from
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Your sentence
Introducing Creative Nonfiction
So what is “creative nonfiction”? One of the best definitions comes from the writer Lee Gutkind, who calls creative nonfiction “true stories, well-told.” In other words:
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Creative nonfiction is about storytelling (it’s not just about giving people facts, but about how we spin compelling and engaging tales for our readers).
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The stories you are telling in creative nonfiction are true, to the best of your knowledge and understanding.
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In creative nonfiction, the creativity doesn’t lie in making up or inventing stories. Instead, it lies in how you select, interweave and tell stories that are true.
This is what we will be exploring throughout this course.
Hot tip: the word “fiction” in English comes from the word “dough”. To say something is fiction is to say it is shaped, kneaded and fashioned, the way you might shape, knead or fashion dough to make bread. From here the word came to mean “something that is invented.” In creative nonfiction, there is a lot of invention. But you don’t invent the facts. Instead, you invent new ways of exploring them, creative ways of putting them together, of telling stories about them, and of presenting them to your readers.
Introducing Memoir
If creative nonfiction is about true stories, well-told, memoir is about writing our own stories. We may think that our own lives are unremarkable, but we all have stories to share, and stories to tell. This storytelling is at the heart of human communication. When we get together with other human beings, we tell stories. We gossip. We confide. We confess. We spin tales. We share information.
Memoir, as we will see, has a long history. It is the art of telling our own stories in a way that people will want to hear them. It’s a great art form because the more stories are out there in the world, the more we can truly appreciate the complexity and diversity of human life.
Hot tip: the word “memoir” comes from the French word memorie, which originally meant, “note, memorandum, something written to be kept in mind.”
We’re going to start exploring memoir by writing a micro-story from our lives.
Writing exercise
Think of something that has happened over the past twenty-four hours. This could be:
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A story about how you sat on the balcony, drinking tea and watching the birds perched on the electricity wires.
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A story about a small misunderstanding between friends.
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A story about something that happened in your family.
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A story about something you saw when you went out to the market.
If yesterday was really exciting — for example, you did your first-ever parachute jump — you can write about this. But don’t invent or embellish the ordinary and every day for the sake of making a good story.
What matters in creative nonfiction is not so much the subject matter as how you tell the story. As we’ll see later on in this course, if you tell a story with enough conviction, everything is interesting.
We’ll share these in groups!
Homework
For your homework, I’m going to get you to read two sets of extracts. The first set is from Saint Augustine, who was a North African writer who lived between the years 354–430, and who wrote one of the first autobiographies or memoirs in the Western tradition — the so-called Confessions.
The second set of extracts is from Sei Shōnagon’s The Pillow Book. Sei Shōnagon lived between around 966 and around 1017 (or 1025, depending on who you listen to). Her book chronicles the life of court women in Japan, and is often extraordinarily beautiful. I’ve chosen this reading because it is another example of early autobiography or memoir.
When you have read through the extracts, choose the extract and section you like most. Then write a short letter to the author of the text (don’t worry that they are dead, and won’t get to read it!). Begin your letter, “Dear Augustine…” or “Dear Sei Shōnagon.”
Now, in your letter, share your responses and your own experiences and stories with the recipient of the letter, as if you are writing to a friend. Everything you put in the letter must be true. Write no more than three paragraphs. Post your letter on the discussion board before midnight (ICT), the day before the next class.