Thanks, Kessie - it'll probably be in the late summer, but I don't know anything specific yet.

Congrats, Teppy!

Steph L. .. Congrats!!

Susan , Hope you´ll feel better soon! The writing will come soon, I´m sure, it always does *good vibes*

There might be a way around it -- I could maybe post it and delete it after, say 30 minutes. Like I said, this publication is one of the newsprint monthly free publications that one finds in supermarkets. I fully expect to line many birdcages.

t edit Having said that, I gotta run out the door to my writing class, so if I do post-and-delete, it won't be until later or tomorrow.

HOORAY TEP!!!!

Teppy, that's marvelous! Go you! I'd love to read it, too.

Writers group had a wangle yesterday over "creative nonfiction." Member brought a piece which was lovely. Based on a factual relationship and a true event, but she'd changed the setting, imagined a house that wasn't, decorated in a way that never existed.

I think it's fine to base a fictional story on a real event, an actual relationship, etc. And it's also fine to look at facts in a refocused way in a nonfiction piece. For example, a story about a family funeral when the writer was a child: rather than describing a house and yard that never existed, the "creative" part could have been her describing the house that did exist in a hyper aware and detailed way. The winter sunlight shining through burlap curtains that her aunt had carefully raveled to make fringed edges, the worn boards of the floor, the scarred black varnish of the front door, etc.

Was I right? Or have I misunderstood the creative part of creative nonfiction?

Damned if I know, Bev. I've never heard the term before, or stopped to consider that there were strict forms.

It seems to me that the result - did the piece work as fiction? - is far more important that the terminology being used to categorise it.

It worked fine as fiction, but she was calling it "creative nonfiction."

All the definitions I've heard of that blasted confusing term seem to indicate that the subject be actual fact, or perceived fact, but that the view of the event or, or, fact ferpetessake, be "creative," rather than journalistic.

It's a tough concept to get across, but lots of schools and con ed classes are teaching "creative nonfiction." It would be so much simpler if they'd just stick to fiction and non-fiction. I think. As I said, confused.

Eh, I think that stuff is basically bogus, anyway. If someone can sue her for it, she has to deal with the non-fiction ramifications. If not, she can call it fiction.

It's a tough concept to get across, but lots of schools and con ed classes are teaching "creative nonfiction."

Yet another reason I have never once picked up a single book about "creative process", or gone to a class. Too damned confusing.

I mean, what is the entire Murder Music and Ghosts series? There was a Peasants' rebellion; part of my job as a writer of fiction is to meld that piece of historical fact so seamlessly with my fictional additions that the reader - unless they're a scholar of the period - can't tell where one ends and the other begins.

I don't understand the need to label it. Crikey, isn't writing the damned thing hard enough?

hmm...seems to me she wrote more of a "based on a true story" bit of fiction. Just mo, though. My eleven cents. :)

From this "interview" with Lee Gutkind, founder of Creative Nonfiction Journal here's a explanation.

I will say how creative nonfiction differs from fiction and traditional journalism, however. Fiction, from a literal standpoint, is not true - or at least not totally true (not so as the writer is willing to admit) while creative nonfiction, if not completely true, is as true as the writer can make it. I am not unaware of the foggy gray line being drawn here, but one can't be easily literal about art and literature. The creative nonfiction writer tries to be as truthful and factual as possible. Making things up to enhance the narrative is unacceptable. But creative nonfiction is very similar to fiction in technique.

The creative nonfiction writer is permitted (encouraged, in fact) to take advantage of all of the literary techniques available to fiction writers and poets. By this I mean writing in scenes, using description, dialogue, specificity of detail, characterisation and point of view. By 'point of view' I mean that the reader can be made to see the world through the eyes of the writer, the subject about whom the writer is writing - or through the invisible third person objective eye.

Emphasis added.

So, I guess it would be approaching non-fiction with the language of fiction-description and emotional? Sounds a tad precious to me, but at any rate, it doesn't include making stuff up to make your story better. That's fiction. (Mebbe Jayson Blair's confusion, eh? she typed sarcastically)