Welcome back. Today, we’re continuing our exploration of ethics. We’ll spend the first half reflecting on Lee Gutkind’s The Creative Nonfiction Police. But after this, we’ll go a bit deeper, to explore not just the ethical constraints on us as writers, but also our ethical motivations.
The Creative Nonfiction Police
These are the questions I asked you to discuss.
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What, according to Gutkind, are the ethical problems faced by nonfiction writers?
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In what sense are they problems?
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What is Gutkind’s checklist? Do you agree with his points?
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Would you add anything to your checklist for ethical nonfiction?
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Was there anything you disagreed with in Gutkind’s piece?
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How, if at all, did this piece make you think about your own writing?
We’ll talk about these in groups.
Manifestos
For the rest of this session, we’re going to work on a writer’s manifesto. A manifesto is ‘a written statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its issuer.’
The word ‘manifesto’ is an Italian word, but its roots go back to the Latin ‘manifestus’, which means ‘clear,’ ‘obvious’ or ‘easily understood.’ The Latin word originally meant something that could be grasped by the hand, so ‘manifesto’ is related to words like ‘manual’ and‘manicure.’ Originally when people talked about something being manifest, they meant it could be easily grasped: it was something you could easily grab hold of.
There are two ways in which a manifesto can be easily grasped. First, you can easily get hold of the ideas in a manifesto. A manifesto isn’t a complex, tangled argument. Instead, it sets out its ideas as clearly as possible, so the moment you read it, you can go, ‘Aha! I see!’
But there’s another way of thinking about manifestos as things that you can easily get hold of. And that is by thinking about the kind of physical objects that manifestos would be, if you printed them out. A manifesto isn’t a big, epic thing like War and Peace. If you printed it out, it wouldn’t be a brick or a doorstop.
Instead, manifestos (or many of them) are brief and light enough that they are easy enough to pick up in your hand, to physically grab hold of, or to quickly scroll through on your phone.
Let’s look at one writer’s manifesto [by the writer Joanne Harris](https://nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/writing-hub/a-writer-s-manifesto/).
Planning a Nonfiction Writer’s Manifesto
So we’ve seen one writer’s manifesto, although from a fiction writer, and now we have a chance to think about our own. So we’re going to spend some time reflecting on our own impulses behind our writing. For the next exercises, think about the following questions.
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Why do I want to write nonfiction?
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What do I want to write about and why?
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What knowledge, perspectives or understandings do I have to contribute?
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What do I hope to change through my nonfiction writing?
Make notes on this for 15 minutes. Maybe take a new page for each of these questions, and give yourself give minutes to make notes on each.
Breakout Groups
Next, I’ll put you into breakout groups to share some of your ideas.
Write Your Manifesto
Now you have time to write your writer’s manifesto. Don’t make it too long. It need to be short and punchy. But also make sure that it says everything you want to say about writing. So you need to practice writing concisely and accurately.
You can write this in any way you want! You might have numbered paragraphs like Harris. Or you might have totally different ways of writing it. Anything is fine! What matters is that the manifesto clearly manifests your beliefs and your ethical impulses! Have fun.
Sharing your Manifesto
Your homework is to polish your manifesto, and then to share it on canvas.