Blog Entry No. 3
Prefatory note: This is the first of a few postings on/about the narrator as a created persona in personal essays and memoirs.
…the genuine essayist . . . . thinks his way through the essay—and so comes out where perhaps he did not wish to . . . . He uses the essay as an open form—as a way of thinking things out for himself, as a way of discovering what he thinks.
--Alfred Kazin
The comment I find myself making most frequently to my MFA students is that “the main thing missing in this piece is your story.” A lot of nonfiction writers are narrating only the literal story of their experience, and leaving out the ‘inner story’; that is, the story of their thinking.
Here’s a personal example. Read More
Michael Steinberg's Blog--Fourth Genre: The Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction
Finding the Inner Story in Literary Nonfiction
May 29, 2012
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Reading Like a Writer
May 10, 2012
Reading Like A Writer
Blog Entry No. 2
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At a writer’s conference a few summers ago, I witnessed the following scenario: After his reading, the poet Gerald Stern was conducting a Q and A. Someone in the audience asked, “How does your reading influence your writing?” It’s the kind of benign, well-intentioned question that writers often have to field in public forums.
Stern paused for a long beat and then, partly tongue-in-cheek, he said, “All writers are full-time readers. That’s our job description. When we have some free time, we write.”
Exaggerated, maybe. Still, it’s a pretty accurate description of what practicing writers do. And when Stern refers to writers as “fulltime readers,” I think he’s including reading like a writer as part of the mix. By which I mean, the finely tuned awareness of the techniques and tactics that writers call on in order to better craft their work.
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Reading like a writer isn’t the same as reading for enjoyment, appreciation, or self-enrichment, all of which are important pleasures to those of us who love books. Nor is it like reading the way a critic does, which is, of course, how many of us, especially those that were English majors, have been taught. As critics, we’re trained to look for themes, symbols, and ideas in literary works. And in some instances, that’s a useful pursuit. But it doesn’t help us identify and better understand how other writers’ work was made. It’s the difference then, between interpretation and exploration. Read More