Three Computational Methods for Writing Nonfiction
Nonfiction, in the tradition of the personal essay, is a wandering expression of ideas, a memory here and a dreamscape there. But how do you begin the composition process? Moreover, how can you organize your ideas and establish a strong workflow? Years ago, I came across a YouTube video in which an instructor (I don’t...
Nancy Drewing the Essay: A Guide to the Literary Expedition
When I was first introduced to the creative essay, I was gobsmacked. An essay provides the perfect vehicle to explore the self while prying open the larger world. I’ve used the form to wonder and wander my way through topics as wide-ranging as class and gender ever since. It was a match made in genre-heaven....
How to Untangle Environmental Stories: Five Contradictory Lessons
When we talk about environmental writing, one irony has always fascinated and sometimes frustrated me. Alongside chronicling the wonders of the non-human world, we’re writing about people trying to fulfill very basic needs—food, air, water, clothing, shelter—in sustainable ways, but doing so leads us into a dense tangle of politics, race, gender, and class. Too...
Recognizing Eternal Moments in Narrative Nonfiction
A writer too sure of her material and destination can weaken her potential to discover new insights, ideas and connections as she writes. On its face, nonfiction seems more vulnerable to this than fiction and poetry. All three may begin with real-world events or memories, but fiction and poetry automatically release these events from the...
The Alchemist
Here is the dilapidated residence of Dr. Anthony Galante who retired from teaching chemistry at Nauset high school to work on his experiments to turn one thing into another, with the goal of getting rich. He fails, year after year, to turn foil into silver, water into fuel, fabric into armor—he came close with the...
Anniversary Disease
Every day is the anniversary of something. May 26th is the anniversary of my mom pulling out half her hair while giving birth to me. It is also the anniversary of the public hanging of Alse Young, the first person executed for witchcraft in the American colonies. May 27th is the anniversary of my unquenchable...
Abandoned
The manager of the marina explained why I saw few deserted autos in the Keys. “After hurricane Wilma, we hauled 65,000 automobiles out of Key West. Most of those sat neglected long before Wilma arrived.” “And, you know, the population of Key West is only 25,000.” In the ocean, plastics, chemical sludges, and other man-made...
How to Erase an Arab
“Israeli General Says Mission is to Smash P.L.O. in Beirut” Seventh grade, social studies—On the family tree, next to the names of my father’s family, I write locations of birth: Lebanon, Palestine, Syria. I trace flags from my atlas. There is no Palestinian flag in the book, but I know how to draw it. When...
Notes on Conscience
“The Ayenbite of Inwyt,” Richard Rolle of Hampole called it. Prick of conscience. The voice of God within. Internal wisdom. Tolstoy saw most people seeking to silence it with habit, if not with tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs. See “Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves?”: “The cause of the world-wide consumption of hashish, opium, wine, and...
A Brief Atmospheric Future
If we’re to believe the neuroscientist Professor Marcus Pembrey, from University College London, who concluded that “Behaviour can be affected by events in previous generations which have been passed on through a form of genetic memory…phobias, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorders… [even] sensitivity to [a] cherry blossom scent…” then the pigeon knows of its ancestors’...
On Keeping a (Writing) Notebook (or Three)
In her essay “On Keeping a Notebook,” Joan Didion writes about the odd notes she has taken over the years – on conversations she has overheard (“That woman Estelle is partly the reason why George Sharp and I are separated today”), facts she has learned (“during 1964, 720 tons of soot fell on every square...
Post-Mortem
In the arctic, there is very little predation. The cold and lack of scavengers or insects keeps death on pause. The puffin with wet wings will lay on the beach for months. A washed up narwhal must wait for a polar bear. If he dies north of the tundra, a polar bear must wait for...
Crossing the Rapidan (#18)
I’m falling. I thought the ground was there, that the wall would hold. I was wrong, and now I am moving through the air, nothing holding me. Grant moves south. Grant moves south. The sun is high in the sky, rising over my forehead. As I accelerate down, I think, quietly: I am falling. ...
Wide Open Spaces
The policewoman, let’s call her Ann Marie, doesn’t stop talking as she shows me the crime scene photographs of the woman who shot me when I was seven years old. This is the first time I’ve seen the photos of her suicide, though I was seven a long time ago. Twenty-four years. These are my...
Silence and Not-Knowing: An Introduction and Silence Is My Playlist (On Being Asked for One to Go with My Work)
Silence and Not-Knowing: An Introduction If I had to name our household’s mantra, it would probably be “go look it up.” This, of course, is the most basic response to not-knowing: researching in order to learn, confirm or dispel. (For example, a certain person always wanted to be a hostage negotiator, until, in her research,...
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