It is said that truth is often stranger than fiction. But can you translate this into prose that will hold a reader’s attention? To deliver a ‘good read’ the writer must combine the personal and the universal, the intellectual with the emotional, the macro with the micro, and the biographical with the historical.
But how?
In Writing Beyond the Self, Jenean explains that every writer has at least one creative nonfiction story hiding inside him or her. But one needs to separate the writer self from the self-healer. Hence, the book begins chapter one with a question: Everybody has a sob story, why should I read yours?
What follows are nine lessons gleaned from her MFA program, with fully-fledged examples, to guide writers through the key fundamentals of writing creative nonfiction. And because “everyone is strapped for time nowadays,” says Jenean, “the book is blessedly brief.”
