Parting The Veil

Friends, happy #NFF! (Oh dear, I think I've been on Twitter too much.  I just made Non-Fiction Friday up.  But it sounds nice.)

Warmest thanks for checking out my piece in Her Circle Ezine today, describing this fictionist's evolving relationship (and growing love) for non-fiction.  Her Circle, if you're not familiar with it, is a fine zine focusing on art, politics and social issues from a woman's perspective.  Here's an excerpt from "Parting the Veil":

"The difference between fiction and non-fiction is often slight—often no more than the angle from which you see the stage—but as a form of presentation, as a stance taken in front of an audience, it’s profound. This is me talking now. I know many writers who move with great fluidity and grace back and forth between these genres (and others), and I may yet become one of them.  The tools I use in these different forms of writing are very much the same—that is, the words seem to pile up in the same way—but I’m liking right now the way non-fiction fits to my hand. There’s always something to be said for a new angle. It makes you see the tools all over again. Learn them all over. Feel them fresh and clumsy and wet. See, the trouble is, once you leave school, no one is around to make you do things you don’t know how to do. You can spend years gripping a pen in exactly the same way. Until the day someone comes to you and says, Tell me about the death of your father." 

Comments

I just got chills at this. Amazing.
Mylène said…
Oh dear, Kathryn, I hope not chills in a bad way, in a here's-a-gal- abandoning-fiction way. I don't see myself abandoning the novel. But I do see myself stretching in an unexpected direction. Very unexpected.
No, no, no. When I get chills, it's because the writing is powerful. It's because someone has written something that speaks to my spirit. No worries. :) But on the other hand, I DO see you doing very well with that genre, as it seems quite suited to you and other literary writers.

Sometimes I think that's where many poets and literary fiction writers will find their niche--because people tend to like true stories, and who can better get down to the truth than someone who writes literary (and by that I mean REAL literary)? At UH, the creative non fiction class took off like a rocket, and many people flourished. Not me, as I just couldn't take my clothes off yet. There's a nakedness about nonfiction that scares the crap out of me, but my hat is off to anyone who can do it. :)

It's funny. I can be naked in fiction, but not nonfiction. If that makes any sense.

Great post!