Winding Roads: Exercises in Writing Creative Nonfiction Book

Preface     xiii
Introduction     1
Beginning: Points of Inspiration     5
Keeping a Journal     7
Family Stories: History as Heartbeat     9
Memory and Imagination     10
Telling Lies to Tell the Truth     11
Making the Old Story New     12
A Picture Brings Forth a Thousand Words     14
Object Lessons     16
Exercises for Developing Craft and Technique     19
Voice and Style     21
Finding Your True Subjects     21
A Question of Style     23
Conditional Voice     24
Breaking the Rules     26
Perspective and Point of View     27
How You See It; How You Don't: Defining Perspective and Point of View     27
A Communal Story: Using Multiple Perspectives     30
Innocent Perspective     32
Using Biography     34
Detail, Image, and Symbol     35
Detailing a Narrative     35
Turning Abstractions into Images and Action     36
Using All of Your Senses     38
Writing from Art     40
Symbols, not Cymbals     41
Figurative Language     43
Diction     48
Origins of Words     48
Foreign Flavor     49
Simplify     50
Tell-tale Dialect     51
Setting     53
Setting with Personality     53
Setting from Family History     55
Setting Your Hometown     57
Creating Tension     59
Foundations of Tension     59
Plot     59
A Spell of Trouble: Conflict and Tension     61
Reversing the Action     63
Trading Characters, Settings, and Conflicts     65
Reverberating Closure     66
Rhythm     68
Finding Your Rhythm: Poetry in Prose     68
Song and Story     70
Listening to Nature     71
Character and Dialogue     73
Populating a Piece     73
Inside a Character's Mind     75
Compelling Characters     77
Dialogue Dropping from the Eaves     79
Exercises for Exploring Revision, Subgenres, and Frequent Concerns of Creative Nonfiction     81
Revision     83
Rereading, Reimagining, Reshaping     83
What's in a Name: Finding a Title      85
Revision: Beyond the Frame     86
Revision: Reimagining Character and Conflict     87
Creating Scenes: A Revision Narrative     88
Workshop: Thirteen Ways of Looking for Revision     95
Exploring the Subgenres of Creative Nonfiction     97
From Memory to Memoir     97
Researching a Life: Biographical Sketch     99
Personal Opinion: Taking a Stand     101
Living Sources: Gathering and Using Information     103
Reflective Writing: Reflecting on the World     105
Writing About Place     107
A Piece of History     109
Exploring Frequent Concerns of Creative Nonfiction     112
Finding the Emotional Truth     112
Writing Between the Lines: Subtext     114
Time Lines and the Larger Context     116
The Passage of Time     117
Vignettes     119
Mapping Your Memory     120
Writing Inside the Story: Metawriting     123
A Collection of Creative Nonfiction     125
"The Truth About Truffles"   Diane Ackerman     127
"Superman and Me"   Sherman Alexie     128
"Why I Love Tourists: Confessions of a Dharma Bum"   Rudolfo Anaya      131
"An Entrance to the Woods"   Wendell Berry     139
"Myth & Uncertainty" from To Prove My Blood: A Tale of Emigration and the Afterlife   Philip Brady     148
Excerpt from In Patagonia   Bruce Chatwin     151
"Silent Dancing"   Judith Ortiz Cofer     154
"A Son in Shadow"   Fred D'Aguiar     160
"Westbury Court"   Edwidge Danticat     171
"Bilingual/Bilingue   Rhina P. Espaillat     175
"Splendor and Squalor" from Among the White Moon Faces: An Asian-American Memoir of Homelands   Shirley Geok-Lin Lim     178
"Lonely Impulse of Delight: One Reader's Childhood"   Dana Gioia     196
"Documented/Undocumented"   Guillermo Gomez-Pena     201
"The Flying Man"   Joy Harjo     202
"Biography of a Dress"   Jamaica Kincaid     209
"Three Pokes of a Thistle"   Naomi Shihab Nye     215
"Looking at Aaron" from What Becomes You by Aaron Raz Link and Hilda Raz   Hilda Raz     218
"Landscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination"   Leslie Marmon Silko     224
"A Modest Proposal"   Jonathan Swift     234
"Mother Tongue"   Amy Tan     241
"Crossing the Border" from The White Horse: A Colombian Journey   Diane Thiel     245
"Walking"   Henry David Thoreau     249
from Mississippi: An American Journey   Anthony Walton     251
Writers About the Art of Creative Nonfiction     255
"Nine Beginnings"   Margaret Atwood     257
"The Creative Nonfiction Police"   Lee Gutkind     261
"Making the Truth Believable"   Tracy Kidder     267
"Toward a Definition of Creative Nonfiction"   Bret Lott     270
"Other People's Memories"   Gregory Martin     277
"Humor Incarnate"   John McNally     279
Index     289
Credits     293