Creative Nonfiction
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What Dreams Can Do for Creative Nonfiction Writers
When she was dying, my grandmother gave me her dream books. The well-worn three volumes had been stacked on her bedside table for as long as I could remember. They consisted of alphabetical listings of dream subjects (airplanes, bananas, cats, death . . .), and their meanings. To dream that a cat jumps onto your… Continue reading
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How to Write about What You Don’t Know in Personal Nonfiction
Writing personal nonfiction—memoir or the personal essay—generally requires us to approach our subjects from a first-person point of view. Since we are telling our own stories, we naturally refer to ourselves as “I” and speak as ourselves. We write as factual human beings about our actual lived experiences. By writing in first-person, though, we limit ourselves… Continue reading
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Tomatoes
I’m taking a class on food writing. This is my first attempt at a writing assignment. I used to grow bushels of tomatoes every summer. Early Girls, Better Boys, red cherries and yellow plums, sometimes Romas. Once I grew San Marzanos. Every year my plants were healthy, their leaves the warm tone of summer grass… Continue reading
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What? There’s a Problem with Memoirs?
A few weeks ago, I posted “Let’s Legitimize Personal Nonfiction.” In this post, I recounted my own experience of negative attitudes toward people who write about their difficult personal experiences and called for a firm recognition that personal nonfiction can be literary, and therefore legitimate, writing. Since then, I’ve been researching to discover some of… Continue reading
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Guest Blog Alert
What do chef Anne Burrell and journalist Dan Charnas have in common? They are both mentioned in my guest blog “What a Chef Can Teach Us about Writing” at The Heart of the Matter. Please check it out! Continue reading
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What to Do When Your Writing Stalls
It happens to me regularly. Maybe it happens to you, too. I’m writing something, and I think the work is going well. Then, after a while, I’m struck by the feeling that what I’m writing is dull and unoriginal, and that it lacks energy. Or I realize that what I’m writing is not the message… Continue reading
Do you write about yourself and your experiences? Do you write about traumatic events in your life? Or, do you struggle to find time and motivation to write?
If so, this blog is for you.
Person on the Page 