Time is moving quickly and I am now in a new writing workshop for school...nonfiction to be exact.
I have never dabbled in nonfiction writing.
I guess I figured it would be too difficult. I was right. It is difficult.
After reading short nonfiction works in the book The Best Creative Nonfiction Vol. 1 I have learned there really isn't a right or a wrong way to write it.
It doesn't need to be long, can focus on only one event, and doesn't have to be negative.
Reading Telling True Stories has taught me that when writing memoirs, we tend to focus on the negative and try not to make it good. I have always done this. I think that is why I never liked writing nonfiction. I mean, who doesn't have a ton of bad stories about growing up.
But, after reading so many great short nonfiction stories, I realized that spinning it into a positive creates a great story.
I tried this theory for my first writing assignment - a short story nonfiction piece that took a low point in my childhood, that honestly has haunted me since it has happened - and spun it into a positive.
I have been practicing this form of writing now since I started this piece and I am finding so many great things to write about! I can't wait to type them up and see what it leads to!
*I am not sharing bad parts of my childhood in search of sympathy. Everyone has bad things happen to them and ultimately I chose how I wanted to be as a person as I grew up and my past is in the past - where it belongs. However, writing about it has taught me that it helps free some lingering bad feelings I have about the situation. I'm telling my own story, just as anyone should be able to.
Teacups Shouldn't Make You Cry
