I am not unaware of the foggy gray line being drawn here, but one can't be easily literal about art and literature.

Dear Lee Gutkind: One can, however, take one's extremely pompous head out of one's arse and examine the compulsion to stick a label on everything in order to make creativity as confusing a concept as possible to those trying to husband it within themselves.

God. I ABOMINATE stuff like this. Just WRITE, already.

I know, it's crazy-making. But if you're looking to market something to small presses it helps if you can classify it, especially as the sort of thing they publish. Astarte, thanks for that, it's been forwarded to the other members of m group.

So, instead of writing a traditional three-paragraph synopsis (This is a novel about..."), a writer these days should instead come up with a small dissertation along the lines of "The deep creative wellspring that propels the fictional segment of this otherwise truth-based "memoir" should in no way be construed as...."

(sound of head cracking open and brains leaking out)

Wow. I still don't get it. Does that mean that anytime I use anything resembling world events in a novel, I'm somehow offering "truth"? Whereas, if I'm writing fiction I'm offering - um, what?

This is too weird for me to wrap my head around.

No, not. Incorporating truth into fiction is an accepted practice. Nothing would ever get written, else.

Where this person was having trouble was in calling her fiction story (based on fact) nonfiction. When she changed facts, it ceased to be reportage and became fiction. You're all good. No brain-leakage. You know what you write and where you stand. In the sane corner, right?

In the sane corner, right?

Well, I thought so.

Very weird concept.

Not going to ever read any books about how to write and how it breaks down, nuh-uh. It would just mess me up.

edit: OH! She was trying pass fiction off as fact? Dude, that's a very slippery slope. Why not just fictionalise it entirely and do a "based on a real incident" disclaimer? I mean, that worked pretty well for Jospehine Tey,

Why not just fictionalise it entirely and do a "based on a real incident" disclaimer?

Bingo! But she had the "c-n" thing embedded in her conscious, and I needed an "official" (not just me) definition to deflect her. No honey, no matter how precious it sounds? This isn't that.

My pleasure, Beverly.

Without knowing the name for it, I was noticing recently how many "memoirs" are coming out. From Enron to the making of a Hollywood blockbuster, there's apparently a huge appetite for the personal spin on public events.

Call it reality publishing.

Call it reality publishing.

See, that's a label I would actually find useful, because it's at the marketing end, not at the creative end.

The thing about the personal spin on public events is that really, if they're one person's view of a ral situation? No different from Thomas Moore's crap book about Richard III. A pure gossipy one person viewpoint.

Which is where I'm heading with my own series, that history can only ever be presented one POV at a time, which makes believing it on the first readthrough potentially disastrous.

So, I guess it would be approaching non-fiction with the language of fiction-description and emotional?

I'm only a little caught up here (bad, bad day with cranky baby) and I've had a beer (okay, two), but I'd always understand this "creative non-fiction" term to be what Astarte summarized here. Old school journalism was supposed to be completely objective ("Just the facts, ma'am"), but "new" journalism allows the reporter/writer to insert themselves and their perspective into the story. So you get all the celebrity interviews with the writer commenting on the subject's life/career/looks, including how s/he perceives the celebrity, for example, rather than simply what movie or book is coming out.

Or, for instance, in post 9/11 stories, you get the fiction-like description of the neighborhood where one grieving family lives, or their new daily routine, but all with a personal spin via the writer. Instead of "The Smiths live in a quiet bedroom community within convenient commuting distance of Manhattan," you get, let's say, "The peaceful eden the Smiths have called home for fifteen years now seems far too close to the ghostly shadow the fallen towers have cast," or some such.

God, I have to go to bed. And so does a certain infant...

I've usually thought of creative nonfiction as something like A Civil Action or maybe that biography of Reagan that came out a few years ago, though that one's debatable. Where everything that's written as fact is actually fact, but the focus of the writing is more "what's the best way to tell this story?" rather than "what's the best way to report these facts?" (And actually, neither of the examples I gave really are very good examples. I know I've read plenty of books that would fit into that category; I just can't think of any right now.)