Non Fiction Writing

Just heard from the editor at Bylines that the new calendar is out, including my contribution to the writer’s insights on the writing life that appear on each weekly page. I’m not sure which page my contribution is on, but here’s what I wrote:           Clark Kent and Me While his alter-ego used super powers to fight super villains and keep Metropolis safe, Clark Kent wrote for the Daily Planet. My life is the exact opposite of his, well kind of. I’m not a super-hero during the day–I’m a science teacher–but my alter-ego is a writer. It is now said …

Wow, talk about a testosterone shower. This book is full go from the beginning to end. Here’s the last craft essay I’ll post from the profiles class. Righteous Now and Then Tom Wolfe was not present when a lot of the conversations and other events he reports on in The Right Stuff took place. He started writing about astronauts in 1972 for a series of articles for Rolling Stonesmagazine about the Apollo 17 mission and eventually began researching the whole of the space program. The only way to find out what happened during Project Mercury, which ran from 1959 through …

This may have been my favorite book of the profiles class. I have a hard time chosing between this and The Last American Man. Anne’s Alternating Views While writing her book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman faced the daunting task of introducing a culture that is unfamiliar to many westerners and show how the difference between that culture and the American medical community ultimately caused a young girl to become irreversibly brain damaged. To pull this off successfully, Ms. Faden had to make sure that the readers couldn’t blame one person, one group, or one …

Another craft essay and this one also ties in with the previous post Krakauer vs Gilbert. Elizabeth Gilbert’s Presence in The Last American Man The author’s presence is prominent throughout this book. Before we see her and Eustace Conway together on the page, we learn a little bit about the author’s background which includes working on a ranch in Wyoming for two years with Conway’s younger brother. “Like me, Judson was twenty-two years old and a complete and thoroughgoing faker.” (9) The purpose of including this is to show the readers that Gilbert and everyone she worked with on that …

Here’s the craft essay about Into the Wild, it ties in with the previous post Krakauer vs Gilbert. Framing Jon Krakauer In the visiting writer workshop on Friday, Lee Gutkind described how the basic building blocks of creative nonfiction are scenes and stories. An author uses a frame, or a larger story, to keep the reader turning pages, but stretches each scene out so that the substance (the “aboutness”) is cleverly woven through the narrative. In other words, the frame keeps the reader reading because it keeps him or her wanting to find out what happens next. After the workshop, …