04-05-2025
Get Creative: The craft of non-fiction
Ever thought about writing non-fiction, be it an essay, a memoir or even a brief snapshot of your life? Why not take the leap?
In a new series, author, critic and broadcaster Cristín Leach explores the craft of non-fiction.
When I'm writing, I think of the late American author Denis Johnson's oft-quoted three rules. He advised students to:
1. Write naked. That means to write what you would never say.
2. Write in blood. As if ink is so precious you can't waste it.
3. Write in exile. As if you are never going to get home again, and you have to call back every detail.
That said, when it comes to writing personal essays, it might be useful to pair those rules with Stephen King's evergreen editing advice from On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2020), to:
"Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you… but then it goes out… it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it."
The first personal essay I wrote and had published was written with the door slightly ajar, because I wrote it as I sat with my grandmother who was dying in a nursing home. The room was warm, her breathing steady, and she didn't wake up while I was there. The door was being kept just barely open as nurses came and went, stopping and popping their heads in to check if everything was still ok. Of course, nothing was ok because my grandmother was dying, but at the same time it was ok. She had lived a long life. She was comfortable. We were quiet and resting and waiting together. And, because I am a writer there was a notebook and pen in my bag, and so I began to write.
Sometimes, your initial job as a writer is to just capture those words as they land.
The essay was published almost three years later in Winter Papers 5 (2019), along with four photographs I took that day. While She Was Sleeping is one of those unusual essays that almost fell out of me fully formed. The stream of consciousness I wrote in my notebook by her bed was only lightly edited by me before submission, and barely touched by editors Kevin Barry and Olivia Smith, who suggested minor changes to some words and came up with the title to form the final version. Not every essay arrives like that, but opening or closing lines, or significant phrases attached to important observations, often do. Sometimes, your initial job as a writer is to just capture those words as they land.
Right now, the island of Ireland is pulsing with a vibrant network of literary journals that are open to non-fiction writing, including personal essays: The Dublin Review, The Stinging Fly, Banshee, Gorse, Winter Papers, The Four Faced Liar, Profiles, Howl, The Pig's Back, Storms, Sonder, The Belfast Review, The Martello Journal, The Ogham Stone, Púca Magazine, Ropes, The Tangerine, Trasna. Tolka focuses exclusively on non-fiction (inviting submissions of essays, travel writing, reportage, and creative non-fiction hybrids like auto-fiction). They don't all pay for accepted work, but many of them do. And with publication comes something else: that early nourishment that can lay the ground for future themed anthologies, memoirs, and books of collected essays.
