Writing Towards Discovery

Almost daily, we hit on an issue, idea, or question that we can’t let go. Or we recall a complicated image and obsess over it. We linger over what confounds us, examining it, naming and re-naming it, unravelling it. These obsessions compel us toward creating a story to explain this riddle we are trying to solve, since narratives are our primary tool for understanding. It is how we make sense of chaos; find order out of disorder; seek (though we may not find) answers to questions. We explore obsessions not because we are experts with a point to argue but because our voracious curiosity compels us to give form to wonder. 

Creative nonfiction, just like the issues we struggle with in our everyday lives, is compelled by what we do not know or understand. The writing process for creative nonfiction, therefore, is motivated by examining obsessions, which are articulated on the page as a central question. In other words, what and why do we want to know about this image/idea/discovery/ memory? 

Our first job as creative nonfiction writers, therefore, is to find questions that obsess and haunt us, and that don’t have an easy answer. The central question is the curiosity (or a set of curiosities) that serves as a writer’s motivation, inspiration, and compositional directive. Some might call it a creative nonfiction writer’s hypothesis. […] 

This is how the writing process begins: with charged moments in which we intuit deeper emotional and universal truths, even if we don’t understand these moments completely. We start from a place of not knowing and understand that the writing process will be one of discovery— an attempt to articulate our questions clearly—rather than one of definitive answers. 

A: Drafting towards Discovery 

The best creative nonfiction narratives contain genuine surprises for the writer and, therefore, the reader. Think of our first drafts as mounds of clay; as we draft, form begins to emerge. At first, not much more than a vague outline is discernible. Often, we don’t yet know what our central question will be, and we don’t know how it will become meaningful, either to us or to a reader.  

In this part of the writing process, no material is wrong or irrelevant. Discovery lives in the spaces between the movements of a writer’s mind. As we continue to draft—or to return to the sculpture analogy, mould the clay— notice what is taking shape. Do we see the shadows of metaphor, perhaps? Any connective tissue? Do we sense any through-line or patterns? 

We may discover our central question while writing the first draft or it may take many drafts before the central question becomes evident. But whenever and however we discover the central question, let it point us toward the material that feels most relevant, even if we don’t yet understand how it is relevant. That becomes the writer’s job, the writer’s intention, aiming everything toward the central question. As metaphors and connections begin to emerge, bring them into high relief by focusing on them 

During this process of writing toward the central question, it is important to do two things: (1) slowly focusing the direction the narrative is headed in, while (2) keeping ourselves open to the unknown, letting the language, images, and scenes propel our curiosity. This is how we write toward discovery. As we begin the writing process, everything may seem interesting and relevant, but as we continue to draft, notice the ways in which certain stories, ideas, facts, philosophies, or images are more relevant to our central question than others. Incorporate those that seem most aligned with the central question and discard the rest—or save them for another narrative. 
 

B: Creative Memory 

Memory doesn’t work like some sort of file cabinet in the brain. Memories aren’t stored as if on a hard drive, just waiting to be opened. They aren’t preserved in paraffin like the useless organs of long-dead primates. Memories are mutable, science tells us, an act of creation, infused with imagination and viewed through an ever-changing set of lenses. Each time we call upon a certain memory, we re-invent it. Further, the more often we call upon a certain memory, the more it is altered. We re-create our memory to fit our sense of self, the world as we see it now… and now… and now. Essentially, this means humans are not merely a sum of our memories, the way many of us have come to understand our sense of self— instead, we are each of us artists, forever in the process of re-creating our identity anew.  

Karim Nader, an associate professor who studies memory at McGill University, confirms: “When you are remembering something, the memory is unstable. It’s being re-built, re-created.” Our brains re-create (as a function of self-defense or self-sabotage maybe) a slightly larger hand, a slightly longer hug, a steeper walk, a harder ache, a toothier smile, a smaller child. The memories most susceptible to changes are the ones we call upon the most, since every time we re-remember them they change. Novelist Toni Morrison writes, “Memory (the deliberate act of remembering) is a form of willed creation. It is not an effort to find out the way it really was— that is research. The point is to dwell on the way it appeared and why it appeared in that particular way." 

We’ve already discussed how creative nonfiction should have a single central question and how writers can draft toward that central question. Here, we’ll examine another way to help discover the central question: by analysing memories. Often, the memories that return to us most are those we do not understand. These memories contain an implicit sense of mystery, which is a signal that they are meaningful—only through exploring what we don’t know, change becomes possible. These memories, by virtue of repetition, are part of the narrative we tell ourselves about ourselves—in other words, our personal mythology. This is how humans create meaning out of chaos by stringing together memories into a cohesive narrative that tells us who we are, what we care about, and where we’re headed. We call this process creative memory, plumbing our complicated memories to try to make sense of them by fitting them into our personal mythologies. This is the creative memory at work—discovering who we are by mining where we’ve been. 

 
C: Creative Research 

Creative nonfiction writers are almost always involved in research, whether we’re conscious of it or not. Some of this research is specific, focused, and working directly toward refining a central question, much like an academic writer. This is especially true in literary journalism, science writing, profile writing, biography, and other topics in creative nonfiction that rely on subject matter outside our personal experiences. But we are always researching merely by actively observing the world around us and discovering connections between it and our own lives. This work, making connections between our private selves and the world around us, is not frivolity; it is the central business of living. Humans make these connections all the time as we move through our days: what we read, see, hear, experience, and learn become parts of the great web of consciousness and connection that help us navigate our lives. Actively observing and researching the world around us (and this includes everything from remembering to researching to interviewing to reviewing maps and photos) and connecting it to our central questions is called creative research.  

The key to creative research is to allow it to be a fluid process. We may or may not always be specialists on our writing topics. More often, we are collectors: of stories and words, science and myths, jokes and images, and ideas and history. Writers are not oracles but explorers. Our job is to unearth material from diverse and strange places and meld it into meaningful experiences for ourselves and our readers. To make the strange familiar. Or to make the familiar strange. 

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Advanced Creative Nonfiction: A Writers' Guide and Anthology offers expert instruction on writing creative nonfiction in any form-including memoir, lyric essay, travel writing, and more-while taking an expansive approach to fit a rapidly evolving literary art form. From a history of creative nonfiction, related ethical concerns, and new approaches to revision and publishing, it offers innovative strategies and ideas beyond what's traditionally covered and is now from Bloomsbury.com.

Sean Prentiss is Associate Professor of English at Norwich University, USA. He is author of Finding Abbey: The Search for Edward Abbey and His Hidden Desert Grave (2015), which won the National Outdoor Book Award for Biography/History. He is also co-editor of The Far Edges of the Fourth Genre (2014).

Jessica Hendry Nelson is the author of the memoir If Only You People Could Follow Directions (2014) which was selected as a best debut book by the Indies Introduce New Voices program, the Indies Next List by the American Booksellers’ Association, and named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Review. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, USA and teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Nebraska, USA in Omaha.