I’ve been writing a lot of nonfiction lately: short memoirs, essays, and book reviews, in addition to this column. This isn’t a particularly noteworthy or interesting revelation, except when you consider I have shirked the realm of “creative nonfiction” in all its forms up until now in my writing career. Even during my MFA program, in which we turned in a lengthy craft essay and lecture which incorporated the informal “I” in lieu of a more stringent academic voice—I had loved writing both critical essays—I cast aside any thoughts of delving further into nonfiction.
Why? Call me a fiction snob. Not in regards to my fellow writers—I fully deemed the nonfiction works by my faculty mentors such as Robin Hemley, Xu Xi, and Sue Silverman to be stellar exhibitions of prose. Just when it came to me, my own writing, I dismissed the possibility of penning essays and memoirs with a sort of, “well, why wouldn’t I just turn x-y-z into fiction, if I want to write about it?” Drawing so explicitly upon real life seemed too easy or mundane; in either case, not worth writing about.
But is either assumption true? Could the greater truth lie in the possibility that I felt so comfortable and safe beneath my fiction mask, and had for so long (not only for my adult writing life, but my youth as well), that what I was really resisting was the vulnerability inherent with writing “CNF,” the somewhat cutesy and disarming nickname for a literary genre which is as varied and versatile as it is exposing. And I didn’t want to be exposed. At least not that way. I liked protecting the real-life people and scenarios I sometimes drew upon for fiction, not to mention myself. Even some of my poetry felt too risky, too in danger of upsetting a relative who might stumble upon a line and recognize herself.
So a full-length essay, or memoir? Not a chance.
But then, last spring, I had the good fortune to share a residency at Ragdale with the author Elinor Lipman. One night at dinner, Elinor mentioned the feedback she continued to get from an essay she’d written for the New York Times’ “Modern Love” column. I went straight upstairs, Googled the essay, and read it—a wonderful piece, touching and truthful about her late husband’s illness, everything a terrific piece of writing, fiction or nonfiction, should be. Inspired, I wrote two short essays during the residency, one of them intended for the “Modern Love” column.
The New York Times rejected my essay, but The Paris Review picked it up for their blog. Upon publication, a painful episode of my personal life out there forever for the world to see, I was confronted with mixed emotions. I had written around the real names to protect the identities of those mentioned in the essay, which dealt with the arrest of a former boyfriend by the FBI for securities fraud, but publishing the piece felt markedly different from writing fiction.
So why didn’t I write it as fiction? Why didn’t I spin the subject matter into a yarn like I usually do?
One answer was that I already had a fictional version, a short story that is forthcoming in a literary journal. Only there was something still nagging at me about the whole experience that the story version hadn’t touched upon. Perhaps certain experiences beg to be shared as nonfiction—that there is a moral obligation that you, the writer, share what you’ve been through with the world, with no bending of facts or changing Aunt Mary’s dress size from 2 to 22. Just you, the author, your straightforward voice, no mask.
What the feeling reminds me of is standing on stage in a sequined bra, white lights blazing, and a thousand pairs of eyes staring at you. I remember the first time I performed several years ago, a group number but nonetheless, it was exactly like those dreams you have of appearing on stage in your underwear. Only it was really happening, and I had chosen to do this crazy thing, perform a Bellydance number in gold pants and a bra. Why? the panicked, fleeting thought darted across my mind, knees knocking, as the music started. Why would anyone chose to do this? Why would I?
The best answer I can come up with is: because sometimes life demands that you stand in front of the world in a sequined bra, and say, here I am. This is what I’ve done, this is how I live, what I can do. Sometimes nothing less will suffice.
Because there’s nothing more honest and important than showing each other what is real. What I’ve learned about nonfiction in the months since I’ve written those first two essays and several others is that nonfiction is some of the grittiest, riskiest, finest writing one can ever undertake. In putting everything out there, pushing yourself to expose what is necessary but not more, you can tug readers’ emotional and intellectual strings in a way fiction can’t. And, like dancing on stage in a gold sequined bra, doing so doesn’t have to be smutty or in the vein of tell-all journalism. It can be restrained, classy, spellbinding.
Nonfiction is riddled with risks, but it is the undercurrent of risk that makes the exposing worth it. No work of art worth undertaking is void of risk. Think of how the word “essay” is from the French verb “to try.” Writing is unpredictable and no matter what, some degree of failure always looms.
On the last weekend of October, I performed four routines at Orlando Bellydance’s presentation of “An Evening Unveiled”—the seventeenth such recital of my school, and a show which featured over one hundred dancers. There was only one routine I had prevailing doubts about pulling off: the sword. In practice the day before, I had trouble keeping my headband from slipping even when bobby-pinned to my head; I could barely make it through the floor work without the sword wobbling and falling. And what happened during the show, but a different segment which in practice had always gone off without a hitch did not go as smoothly as I had predicted. No, the sword didn’t fall, just underwent some barely perceptible teetering. Later on, in the final routine which I knew backwards and forwards and could do with my eyes closed, the veil slipped out of position too early, much to my chagrin. I recovered, forced a smile, and in recent days let go of my frustration that I did not perform the veil number, my favorite, as flawlessly as I’d hoped.
But that’s art for you. When you think you have something figured out, down pat, what you least expect roars up to say, not so fast—remember, I’m showing you how this works. Without risk there would be no surprise, no revelation of essential truth. The important thing is we show up, we drop to our knees with the sword on our head in front of our audience; we keep going even when the blade slips or the veil snags. We try.