This September, I attended an annual writing conference called Inkubator based out of Cleveland, Ohio. Fun fact: it is the nation’s largest free writing conference! It is an event ran in tandem with a lot of cool other bookish things. And while the first few days of this event are virtual, it culminates in two days of classes, mixers, and open mics. And on Sunday, there is a large book giveaway where you can take as many books (and other goodies such as sticky notes, pens, water bottles) as you desire. And that last event has books for all ages and in all genres, even comics and graphic novels.
This isn’t a sponsored post, I promise!
But I say all that to say that it was a pretty busy week and since I was also attending another conference, I was pretty warn out. I almost didn’t feel like going to the last workshop on that final day. I needed a nice long nap. However, something told me to head on anyway. And what was supposed to be a workshop on writing intergenerational nonfiction, turned out to be quite different. At first, I was a bit perturbed as someone who is keenly interested in writing down the stories of my family, but I must admit that I got a lot from the discussion and the generative aspect, we took some prompts and had time to write. (I always appreciate that!)
One thing that we tried is a new way to write memories and while I was skeptical, it was fun and actually allowed for me to remember quite a few key details that I had forgotten about a particular experience: my first time eating octopus. Why did I choose that memory to write about? Well, the prompt was write about food and that’s what came to me. Don’t read too much into it, haha. Anywho, the instructor who works with Lake Erie Ink told us to try and write that memory from the present tense, as though it was happening right then and there. I had never attempted to do that before and so it was wild to me how easy it was, once I got into it.
I was able to recall details I thought I’d forgotten and it was also cool to experience writing in the first person present as I have never done that before, at least not intentionally and with creative nonfiction. It sparked a lot of new ideas and recalled things such as scent and taste and texture, which can easily get lost when you write nonfiction in third person or even in the past tense. I wrote enough that with a few edits and some minor detail changes, I would feel comfortable submitting the piece. It’s not a personal essay, just a little snippet but it is long enough to be flash nonfiction and it ended up a lot better than I thought it would!
What I learned from trying this out is that the present tense and first person grounds the reader and that can be impactful in nonfiction just as much as it is in fiction. Your reader wants to be engaged and just a few minor changes can take them from being a spectator to a participant in the memory you’re sharing. Furthermore, writing in present tense doesn’t allow you to editorialize or slip in some philosophy here and there. (That’s always been a challenge for me!) The reader gets the here and now and they must make do with that, they must come to their own conclusions instead of you providing them as the writer. It isn’t a novel idea, but it is something I never thought of using in creative nonfiction. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed trying it and will probably continue to make use of it in the future!
Have you ever tried this? How did it turn out? Let me know in the comments! Or maybe give it a shot real quick and see what happens! You never know until you try!
Comentarios