Fiction vs. Non Fiction

Don’t get me wrong, I love my genre. Nonfiction moves me, thrills me, and inspires me. In short, it completes me. Okay, so maybe that was a little over the top, but you get the picture. I’m a big fan of nonfiction. But, this quarter I’m hanging out in another fiction class and loving it. This form and theory class is looking at point of view and time. The reading list is awesome: To the Lighthouse, Cloud Atlas, A Mercy, As I Lay Dying, The Known World, Pedro Paramo, Runaway, and The Zero. Homegrown author and local hero Jess Walter …

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with one of the fiction faculty members in my MFA program. Some of the second year nonfiction students have asked to switch advisers—something that sometimes occurs in all genres in our program. The instructor theorized that nonfiction students were more sensitive about their work because it describes actual events—reality—and is therefore more personal. This made me ponder if I react differently to critique of my fiction pieces than I do on my essays. What I found was the opposite of what the faculty member believed. Our program requires all students to take …

Wow! The time is just flying by as I try to stay on top of teaching, as well as, taking classes. It is painfully obvious that this new schedule is going to require some adjustment. I’m fairly sure that I’m going to have to choose between eating and sleeping because there’s not enough time to do both. I’m also not sure how much actual writing I’m going to get done. At the moment it seems like I’ll be doing a lot of writing about writing, reading about writing, and reading other people’s writing, but not so much of my own …