Lizzie Lawson on Writing About Relationships in Creative Nonfiction
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1. You mention in your class description for "It's All Relative: Writing Our Relationships in Creative Nonfiction" that writing our own stories without writing about other people is near impossible. What, if anything, do you believe we as writers owe the people we write about?
This is a great question and a big part of why I wanted to design this particular class. I’ve heard a lot of authors get asked questions like, “what does your family think about your writing?” Or, “what would you do if someone didn’t like what you wrote about them?” Most of the time, I think that question comes from the asker’s own curiosity about how their family will react, but because everyone’s relationships are different, no answer from an author will be satisfactory.
I want to turn the question around, back to the individual writer. This class will be a place where we think about our own answers to these questions. What do we owe the real people who appear in our writing? How do we write with consideration while telling the story we need to tell? In class, we’ll read a bunch of different essays and craft pieces and think about what’s right for us.
My answer to this question is that as a nonfiction writer my focus is on my own story. Other people could play a large role, but I only include them to the extent that they add to my personal reflections and reckonings. I don’t attempt to tell other people’s stories or share their details purely for embellishment. I also expose a lot more of myself, including the unflattering parts, than I do other people.
2. In your class, you’re discussing writing about all sorts of a wide spectrum of relationships: parents, family, friendships, lovers, etc. Which category of relationships do you find presents the most challenges to write about and why?
It’s tough to say! They all present challenges, and I’d assume it’s different for everyone. My first thought is the parent-child relationship. So much of our identities are wrapped up in our parents and how we were raised. It can also be hard to see our parents as people with their own stories, struggles, and needs, and we need to do that in order to write with complexity. Overall, it’s a relationship ripe for reflection. When choosing the readings for this class, I had to scale back on the essays about parents because I had so many I could include.
3. There are a lot of gorgeous essays on your syllabus. Do you remember the first piece or author that made you fall in love with the Creative Nonfiction/Memoir genre? What was it/who were they?
I first fell in love with the genre when I took a creative nonfiction writing class in undergrad without knowing what it was. I was a marketing major at the time, and I mistakenly thought “creative nonfiction” could help me write slogans or other advertising copy. It quickly became apparent that CNF wasn’t what I thought and was, in fact, so much more exciting. Something clicked when we read Jo Ann Beard’s famous essay, “The Fourth State of Matter.” I was awestruck by her prose. I loved how the essay could be about a squirrel infestation, a dying dog, divorce, and a horrific school shooting all at once. I still love Jo Ann Beard, and I return to her work all the time.
4. Can you share a preview of one of your favorite generative writing exercises featured in this class?
Yes! One of my favorite essays we’re reading in class is a direct address to the author’s best friend from childhood. As a generative exercise, I ask writers to think of a friendship from their past, perhaps one in which there’s something unresolved. Write a letter to that friend, asking yourself, what did you feel at the time? What do you feel now? What is the difference between then and now?