Blog 3

Coming up with a topic to write about as my first paper has proved to be more challenging than I had originally anticipated. I feel like there are two prominent ideas that come to mind when someone is asked to write a story of creative nonfiction. One is to shy away and close yourself off from anything too deep or personal. It's not always easy to share your inner most thoughts with a class full of somewhat strangers. However, the polar opposite thought might occur and that is to immediately and right out the gate jump to the deepest, most personal and revealing tale about yourself that you can. While this might seem like the "right" thing to do, if one does it simply to be a spectacle, I feel as though that is being disingenuous and that is not what the genre is all about. I could talk about a lot of dramatic things that happened to me during my relatively short years of living, but the question of whether I should or not jumps to mind and makes me nervous.

Having done that exercise last week and thinking about what I saw in my head leads me to think I should write about my mother and certain experiences that took place with her. I can think of one conversation in particular that might make for a decent story. The tale of a boy coming out to his mother is something I'm sure someone might want to read about but, and probably more importantly, it might something that I HAVE to write about given the fact that I haven't been able to get it out of my head since last week. It's not an extraordinary story, but it's something.

Blog 2

Definitions tend to never sit well with me, especially when being applied to such complexities such as a genre of literature. Definitions are black and white and can apply certain and strict rules to whatever they're referring to and literature is something that is constantly changing and adapting to the context in which it is being created around. Creative nonfiction is the same way. Besides the fact that it is still a relatively new genre, it is still a work of art, to a certain extent, and this will have to be open to interpretation just like any other work.

If a definition must be applied, however, I suppose there are a handful of cornerstones that would have to be set in place. One being that CNF has to be about the truth. It has to be inspired by actual events, people, and emotions that the author had experiences with. This doesn't mean that it has to be a dry reselling of events that took place, however, which is where the creative part comes into play. The only other rule that I would say was worth applying is the fact that whatever story is being written, the author must, to the best of their ability, keep to the truth. They must be honest with themselves and any other persons who appear in their writing. However, if what is true to the author is not the same as what was true for someone else in the same situation, the author only has a responsibility to what they felt at the time. As long as they've strived to be as truthful with themselves as possible.

Blog 1

From what I've been able to gather, attributes of creative nonfiction can be a little varied. What I know for sure is that, obviously, whatever stories are told in this genre are ones that actually took place. They are either direct recollections of actual events or based on events that the author is attempting to remember as closely as possible. Originally, I thought creative nonfiction was just ones memoirs written more like poetry rather than just straight narration but there seems to be more to it than that. I'm curious about what different things comprise the genre as and look forward to learning about them.