{"id":243,"date":"2020-09-14T18:23:17","date_gmt":"2020-09-14T18:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/accintrotocreativewriting\/chapter\/creative-nonfiction\/"},"modified":"2024-05-16T22:20:48","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T22:20:48","slug":"creative-nonfiction","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/accintrotocreativewriting\/chapter\/creative-nonfiction\/","title":{"raw":"Creative Nonfiction Exercises, edited by Jess Smith","rendered":"Creative Nonfiction Exercises, edited by Jess Smith"},"content":{"raw":"<h1>Creative Nonfiction Exercises, edited by Jess Smith<\/h1>\r\nAs a younger writer, I thought I wouldn\u2019t need prompts for creative nonfiction. I was writing what happened\u2014the \u201ctruth\u201d\u2014so why would I need prompts to help spark my imagination? Like most thoughts I had early on about writing, this one turned out to be misguided.\r\n\r\nCreative nonfiction distinguishes itself from reporting, from hard news, and even from human-interest journalism, by virtue of being <em>creative<\/em>. It operates, as a genre, in the liminal space of experiential art. One must adhere to the truth, but also has the gift of exploring the nature of truth itself. I think we wouldn\u2019t have genre-defying creative nonfiction like Claudia Rankine\u2019s <em>Citizen<\/em> or Jenny Boully\u2019s <em>The Body<\/em> (to name only a very, very few) if we didn\u2019t permit ourselves, as practitioners of creative nonfiction, to be imaginative, playful, and disorienting. The truth can certainly be described by these three words.\r\n\r\nThe following exercises will challenge students to write their biggest truths. It will broaden their idea of what an essay is and how we can tell true stories in a way that most closely represents the experience of living those stories. I only wish I\u2019d had these prompts as a newer writer, and I will certainly incorporate them into my own practice now.","rendered":"<h1>Creative Nonfiction Exercises, edited by Jess Smith<\/h1>\n<p>As a younger writer, I thought I wouldn\u2019t need prompts for creative nonfiction. I was writing what happened\u2014the \u201ctruth\u201d\u2014so why would I need prompts to help spark my imagination? Like most thoughts I had early on about writing, this one turned out to be misguided.<\/p>\n<p>Creative nonfiction distinguishes itself from reporting, from hard news, and even from human-interest journalism, by virtue of being <em>creative<\/em>. It operates, as a genre, in the liminal space of experiential art. One must adhere to the truth, but also has the gift of exploring the nature of truth itself. I think we wouldn\u2019t have genre-defying creative nonfiction like Claudia Rankine\u2019s <em>Citizen<\/em> or Jenny Boully\u2019s <em>The Body<\/em> (to name only a very, very few) if we didn\u2019t permit ourselves, as practitioners of creative nonfiction, to be imaginative, playful, and disorienting. The truth can certainly be described by these three words.<\/p>\n<p>The following exercises will challenge students to write their biggest truths. It will broaden their idea of what an essay is and how we can tell true stories in a way that most closely represents the experience of living those stories. I only wish I\u2019d had these prompts as a newer writer, and I will certainly incorporate them into my own practice now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"menu_order":1,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":["jasmine-v-bailey","kate-osana-simonian","jess-smith"],"pb_section_license":"cc-by-sa"},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[63,65,64],"license":[53],"class_list":["post-243","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","contributor-jasmine-v-bailey","contributor-jess-smith","contributor-kate-osana-simonian","license-cc-by-sa"],"part":257,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/accintrotocreativewriting\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/accintrotocreativewriting\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/accintrotocreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/accintrotocreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/accintrotocreativewriting\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":244,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/accintrotocreativewriting\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/243\/revisions\/244"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/accintrotocreativewriting\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/257"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/accintrotocreativewriting\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/243\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/accintrotocreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/accintrotocreativewriting\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=243"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/accintrotocreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=243"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/accintrotocreativewriting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}