2008-03-28 - 5:25 p.m.
I recently had a revelation about what I’m writing. It’s perhaps not very profound, but it’s enormously helpful to me. I’m not writing “essays”, but rather “chapters” in a creative nonfiction book. I had been calling the material I write essays, because I was told they should be referred to that way to distinguish them from fictional “stories”. But they are in fact parts of a continuous narrative, not the disconnected units the term “essay” implies.
My friend went to a publishing convention in LA a few weeks ago. All the publishing house representatives there said their companies weren’t really interested in collections of discrete works unless there was a unifying theme. Wait, I realized. The stuff I’m writing is all part of a continuous thread – me going back to college, older and sicker. I’m in fact writing chapters! My friend said he was glad at least someone had gotten some benefit from his expensive conference ticket, because he hadn’t…
Many creative nonfiction authors I admire (like David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs) also write essays, but these are separate from their books. Texts like ‘Me Talk Pretty One Day’ or ‘Dry’ are continuous accounts of specific periods in the writers’ lives. That’s what I’m doing: recounting my time at Brown (and right after graduation, re-meeting Nya). While writing is never “done”, I have about 8 chapters in a form I’m not ashamed of and another 6 or so in development. I don’t know how long my book will be exactly, but maybe 30 chapters?
I found my editor right here on DiaryLand (hi, if she’s reading this!). Her diary’s locked right now, otherwise I’d refer you to it. She’s awesome. She was my original year at Brown and we knew some people in common. She’s a grad student at Boston College and grew up outside the city, so she knows the territory when I write about either Boston or Brown. Plus, we have the same student schedules and are relatively free to work at similar times. I feel honored to have her as an editor. Props to her!
© 2008 Geoff Gladstone
If you’ve ever enjoyed my writing, please donate to the Accelerated Cure Project for Multiple Sclerosis and/or the Montel Williams MS Foundation.
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