I have blogged at least once a week for the last ten years. First on my old metaphysical blog, then on the interim Christian blog and finally on this one. One thing I have noticed is that some of my most popular posts have been those that shared my own experience.
So today I wanted to share a wonderful resource that I found helpful and should help other writers do that too. The book is called “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up: The Complete Guide to Writing Creative Nonfiction–from Memoir to Literary Journalism and Everything in Between” (affiliate link) by Lee Gutkind.
Gutkind is a great teacher and a very inspiring writer. For me, his book identified something which had, in a manner of speaking, been hiding in plain site. Creative nonfiction.
Creative nonfiction is a genre. It is lyrical and it is factual and it allows for the exploration of our own subjective truth. It a new name for an old friend. It is Hemingway and it is The New Yorker. Reintroduced, I felt that I had come home.
Gutkind does much more than define creative nonfiction, however. He teaches this new / old genre with subtlety and insight. While he is at it, he teaches writing, too. And that is no small feat.
