busting genres has never been my thing til now

genre blending, creativity and permission to not know

I caught myself bashing my book yesterday. Caught myself and pivoted quickly, for once.

“My next book is kind of a weird thing,” I said to one of my students. I sifted through other adjective, slang, and cuss word combinations and landed on, “it’s memoir with a literary twist.”

What sounded like an apology for my memoir in progress became a comfortable description, with some stomach upset and internal finger pointing in between.

We do these things, writers. When we are in the midst of figuring it out, rather than be transparent and say we aren’t sure yet, we don’t have the words, or just, “I’m figuring it out,” we fumble the pass. We lose the opportunity to do some airable sorting too.

Not sure what to call this structure you’re trying—talk about it.

Feel like your theme, idea, thesis, illustration, chapter or epilogue isn’t quite there yet..—say that.

This is the power of the class, the writing group, the partner, the mastermind…

At the beginning of my Creative Non Fiction course this year I invited the students to examine Why I Write essays by Joan Didion and George Orwell. I wanted them, me, and all of us to remember that the writing life, it’s predicaments, perils and pleasures are evergreen, shared, ubiquitous, and easier managed when aired with others. I’ll let Didion and Orwell finish this post:

“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear."
(From Why I Write, 1976)

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand." (From Why I Write, 1946)

Catch the words that leave your gub about your project. No only is it listening but so is your brain. Who needs more negativity bumping up against the desire to create…none of us. Find someone who will balance you out when the going is a slog.

It works. I love being redirected by my coach, and reminded by a

Loving Large reader that they saw what I was doing in a particular story in the book.

Write on.