by Emma Keamy
Nonfiction Editor of Barnstorm Journal
Image: “We Are and Are Not Like What They Are, With Handshake and Rubber Eagle” by JJ Cromer
First, a necessary confession: I am not a nonfiction writer. I’d already known this, but it was confirmed in a nonfiction workshop last semester, where I was forced to confront the fact that creative nonfiction did not come easily to me. I expected to find difficulty in issues of memory and evoking detail, but I was surprised by a much deeper obstacle: vulnerability.
I would argue that most all art requires vulnerability—if not in the text itself, then in the act of sharing, of saying “I made this.” To let others gaze upon a work created in full sincerity is like letting the world take a glimpse under your flesh. “This is what I’m made of. This is what I can make.”
I tend to put bits and pieces of myself in my fiction, though I’ve found that I prefer to write about myself circuitously. I like veiled images only metaphorically connected to my reality, and I choose to muddle situations and characters with enough unfamiliarity that they cannot fully be me. These are small and subtle wounds to display to the onlooker. A fiction author need not have experienced everything they write about, and so there is an implicit separation at hand. There’s speculation, sure, but nothing confirmed simply by way of being on the page.
Nonfiction is a different story. Writing about one’s self with such truth makes for a bare, open wound. The “I” is truly you, without the degrees of separation that birthing a fictional character can offer.
I find this level of vulnerability frightening and admirable. I’ve sometimes come close to it, but even now, I find myself unwilling to reveal the details of the nonfiction I’ve attempted to write—this space being too public, too open, for such vulnerable truths of my selfhood. But nonfiction writers find a way to cast aside fear and shame, to allow themselves to be looked at wholly. They confess about trauma, sex, relationships, family secrets, medical emergencies, losses, love—these things that so many of us choose to keep close to our hearts, only to be divulged to a trusted few, if anyone at all.
What advice can I give here? I’ve already established my difficulty with writing nonfiction, so what help could I be? I’m a fiction writer! A liar by trade, some might argue! But even then, I prefer writing that speaks some truth. My truth tends to lie underneath something like, say, a Cronenbergian destruction of the body; but this is parallel to nonfiction, where a narrator’s struggle with body image is grounded in the author’s lived reality. Both ways of writing are about unraveling yourself, processing yourself, seeing yourself, and letting yourself be seen.
So, in a time when so many things seem irony-poisoned and compassion-avoidant, my advice is this: be vulnerable and sincere, in whatever capacity you can be. And finding your limits might take some exploration. It is a beautiful act to invite readers to see you in your entirety, but there also shouldn’t be shame in keeping some things out of sight. Divulgence is always a choice, and in writing it’s even a tool. How much of yourself you carve into the page is always up to you. The choice is there in any genre, really. I’ve said a lot of very prescriptive things in this post, even as I’ve attempted to remain nuanced, but compelling creative nonfiction can be done without laying the self fully bare. But no matter what you write, it all has to come from you, and your best writing will come when you can choose not to be scared of that.
Emma Keamy is a second-year Fiction MFA student at the University of New Hampshire. She received her BA in Creative Writing at Wheaton College, MA, where she also completed an undergraduate honors thesis. In addition to being an editor at Barnstorm, Emma is a literary intern at the Portsmouth Music Hall and a co-host of Read Free or Die. Though she mostly writes fiction, she has a passion for good prose of any genre. She loves horror movies, friendslop games, symbiosis, crisp Autumnal air, physical media, and the occasional realization that there is still beauty in the world.
JJ CROMER is a self-taught artist from Virginia. His work is in several public collections, including the American Visionary Art Museum, the Intuit Center of Outsider Art, the High Museum of Art, and the Taubman Museum of Art. He and his family live on a farm in central Appalachia, where they have kept chickens, ducks, geese, and bees.
Website: www.jjcromer.com
Instagram: @jjcromer