Choose your writing content like a long term relationship…
if you want it to last.
When I started writing as a child, I wrote fiction and poems.
I never imagined writing non-fiction.
Something I read in a Facebook writing group and on Twitter made me think.
Nonfiction authors are writers who tell a true story and must tell it well.
I appreciate all writers and genres or freelance writers and journalists because it is a beautiful time to be a working writer when they are needed for different types of media.
There is also a common misunderstanding for some that non-fiction writers write about only well researched subjects like Thomas Jefferson. I have done this when I co-authored a chapter about educational technology in the US and internationally.
That grabs the attention, doesn’t it?
Not really.
I have become more of a non-fiction writer with my memoir and my poetry. My poetry discusses very real subjects. I confront topics, like inner city and truama, which are uncomfortable for many people.
We need to talk about them through conversation or…
writing.
I still have a lot of fiction on the back burner, but the strength of non-fiction is we discover true stories we never knew we needed.
The Ben Ferencz documentary on Netflix put me into a non-fiction reading binge about how he took on the cruelist Nazi murderers at Nuremberg. It was a real life good guy vs. the world kind of story.
Just as we appreciate great fiction, I think it would be great to embrace our memoirists, non-fiction poets, and research authors.
Yes, I have my food blog.
Yes, this is my writing blog.
Often my writing about, surprise, writing connects to the subjects closest to my heart from trauma in my recent poem about healing through cooking on The Bridesmaid Reject to the domestic kitchen and cooking life on Meals on There Burners. They are real subjects and connect to my poetry and memoir in different ways.
I love the cooking part of non-fiction because food allows for rich writing. The use of adjectives and other descriptions plus the stories told in the kitchen are some of the best sellers never put on the shelf.
You can write more than one genre. I think it makes you an explorer of worlds long after we’ve left childhood in the wings. Who said you have to leave your imagination behind even in non-fiction?
By Rebecca T. Dickinson, The Bridesmaid Reject
Corrie's Season 