Bark Like a Puppy, Ooze Like a Sump

This week’s musing is neither comprehensive nor balanced in comparing the approaches to writing of Anne Lamott versus Janet Burroway.  Let’s get Lamott's Bird by Bird out of the way.  One, writers are subject to jealousy of more successful authors as an occupational hazard.  OK, Lamott, I understand jealousy of other writers makes you bark like a puppy and ooze like a sump.  But I am not a professional writer so I am not consumed with jealousy—only some minor envy--of other writers.  Yes, I’ll keep dancing.  Two, carrying index cards at all times is a useful method to capture ideas that “float into your head like goldfish, lovely, bright orange, and weightless.”  I or my cats have killed every single fish I ever brought home from the pet store in less than a week.  I have tried jotting down ideas on bits of paper but they end up strewn about my house like tickertape after a parade in New York City.  See Lamott, I can use similes too.  However, I lack the discipline to do something with those ideas after they are jotted down so I need to work on writing on a schedule now, not generating new ideas for writing.  Three, authors may find it useful to call experts in the field both as a source of technical knowledge and “witty and articulate” material.  Yes Lamott, I will be sure to call some Teddy Roosevelt experts at some point.  Thanks for making me read four pages to find out that the technical name for the wire cage over the cork on a champagne bottle is a wire hood.

Burroway discusses techniques that can be used in writing creative nonfiction such as image, voice, scene, character, setting, etc.  After reading her section on transition in Imaginative Writing, I realize that I still have no idea what a transition is or how to use it.  Her definition is “authorial intrusion.”  I look up “transitions” in www.theeditorsblog.net.  Beth Hill defines transition as a passage that “takes characters and readers to a new location, a new time, or a new point of view. Transitions can also be used to show a character’s change in heart or frame of mind.”  Transitions can be as simple as the phrase “Later that week” or a series of pound signs or as complicated as multiple paragraphs.  Hill says transitions can be used to change level of tension, pace, time, mood, character point of view, etc.  So I review the stories published in Imaginative Writing to determine how transitions are handled.  Margaret Atwood in “The Female Body” uses cardinal numbers.   Gayle Pemberton in “Do He Have Your Number, Mr. Jeffrey?” uses a paragraph to transition from the narrator describing working for a caterer at an upscale party to her mother’s experiences working as a maid fifty years earlier.  Burroway, why complicate your explanation of “transitions” to pretentious, academic incomprehensibility?

That brings me to “fact and truth” in creative nonfiction.  How’s that for a transition Burroway?  As Burroway states, “The distance between ‘facts’ and ‘essential truth,’ of course, can be troubling.  What and how much is it fair to make up?” I had this question when reading Ann Dillard’s “The Giant Water Bug.”  Having spent a misbegotten year as an undergraduate biology major, I was suspicious of the “truth” of Dillard’s description of a frog deflating before her eyes due to the dining habits of a giant water bug; digestive enzymes do not act that fast.  So I did some research on belostomids and found that it takes a giant water bug twelve to eighteen hours to suck dry its prey through multiple bites.  Her description is “monstrous and terrifying” but is it true?  How important is the distinction between “instantly” and “twelve hours”?  Would only a biologist care?  Because the biological “truth” is important to me, I now suspect the “facts” in Dillard’s writings while envying her literary skills.  Dillard, stick to scaring frogs.

Lee Gutkind states that a writer of creative non-fiction leverages “the diligence of a reporter, the shifting voices and viewpoints of a novelist, the refined wordplay of a poet, and the analytical modes of the essayist.” I found Gutkind’s inclusion of journalism problematic from the viewpoint that a reporter holds to standards of fact-checking and on-the-record versus off-the-record that may not apply to a writer of creative non-fiction.  Bruce Chatwin in In Patagonia incorporates his memories of conversations with people in that country without previously warning them he may “quote” them in his book.   Chatwin’s biographer Nicholas Shakespeare reports several Patagonians complain that these conversations are biased or totally made up. As Shakespeare says about Chatwin “He told not a half-truth but a truth and a half.  His achievement is not to depict Patagonia as it really is, but to create a landscape called Patagonia—a new way of looking, a new aspect of the world.”  Patagonians, don’t talk to writers.

I face the same challenge in my Algonquin book.  I am making up dialogue and details about scenes.  I will essay to explain in my footnotes where I employ a lot of creativity. How ironic it is that good creative non-fiction relies on enhancing the truth to make a good story whereas good fiction writing requires making the reader believe that story is true enough to suspend disbelief.