The Making Of, Part 2: Skills

I have a Master's degree in Creative Writing.

That's set-up, not bravado.  As they say, my degree and $17 will get me a cup of coffee (I actually don't know how much a cup of coffee is these days, but I figure that's about right).  I think it would be safe to assume, though, that I, at the very least, have some knowledge on how to write, just as I think it would be safe to assume that someone with a degree in Spanish probably has some knowledge on how to speak Spanish, at least more so than those of us who didn't pursue that degree.

Technically, my degree is in Creative Writing Fiction, and that should be your first clue as to where this is going.  All of the work I did for my Master's not only involved writing fiction, it consisted entirely of short stories.  That's what I did for those two years and kind of what I did before those two years and almost exclusively what I did after those two years.

I spent most of my time writing fictional short stories and then decided to write a non-fiction book.

That would explain a good part of why it took me so long to write this thing.

For what it's worth, fiction and non-fiction are really, really different.  Yes, I know, that's probably obvious, but I don't mean as far as the content is concerned, I mean even the simple act of creation.  Gone were the days when I could sit down at my computer and ramble out any crazy idea that came to me.  No, now I had notes.  I had resources.  I had historical documents.  There were times when I felt like I did more pre-writing than actual writing.

My alma mater, Ohio University

And I had to organize it.  Organizing 20 pages is usually pretty easy, if for no other reason than it's generally self-organizing.  Yes, sometimes, I might move things around in time, move a middle to the beginning or a beginning to the end, but in general the initial story, at least on a thematic level, comes early.  It tells you what it's going to be.

In fact, that's the other difficulty with non-fiction: it doesn't tell you squat.  Not to be wishy washy, but when I sit down to write fiction, I generally start with a germ of an idea.  The story unfolds in front of me, but I don't have any real control over it.  It's both maddening and wonderful and it's always surprising.

But the story can't unfold that way with non-fiction because the story already exists.  I couldn't just place the character of my grandfather on a B-25 bomber in the South Pacific and let my brain run wild with that.  I had facts and dates that told me exactly what he did.  There was no real mystery there.

The mystery, I discovered, was to be found in how the story was told.  This was a big concern for me right from the start.  I am a fiction writer, and writing non-fiction in intimidating.  I didn't feel as if I was someone who could speak about the world with any kind of authority...in fact, I don't really believe that anyone can.  We all have our own views of the world, so writing the book based solely on facts and figures seemed...well, cold to me.  It seemed distant and heartless.

I realized that if I was really going to write this, I had to write in a way that was natural for me, a way that would ultimately underscore the emotional aspects of the book, not just the historical elements.

While this move made the book much stronger, it also led me to another problem: shutting up.  I made the book personal to me.  I was writing about my family, a subject that I knew quite a lot about.  But that doesn't mean every stupid little thing in our collective history needed to be in this book.  And, as should be evident by this blog, I am no stranger to rambling on and on when given something that I know a lot about.

Thankfully -- as I might have mentioned a few times up until now -- my wife has no qualms about telling me what's important and what is isn't.

It was an eye opening experience, really.  In a lot of ways I felt like some free form jazz musician suddenly being forced to score a musical; I had specific confines that I had to work within.  In the end, though, I think it made me a better writer.

We'll see if there's any more non-fiction in my future.