January is Art & Craft Month at the Writers Chatroom. This Sunday we are going to talk about the Art & Craft of Creative Nonfiction. 

Let’s talk about what Creative Nonfiction is and some of the techniques are used to create it. 

I have just finished two novels that really messed with my head. So, I thought I’d change things up and try on some Nonfiction for a change of pace. I am glad I did. 

I am reading…

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb. 

Lori Gottlieb is a psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author who writes The Atlantic’s weekly “Dear Therapist” advice column. A contributing editor at The Atlantic, she also writes regularly for The New York Times, and has appeared on The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, CNN, and NPR. Learn more at LoriGottlieb.com or by following her @LoriGottlieb1 on Twitter.

I am enjoying the way she disguises her clients by melding some together, the way she shows us how each client changes her, what she learns, what she does with it. Some of the chapters break my heart and at the same time Miss Gottlieb gathers my pieces and puts me back together again. Maybe, with a leftover piece I no longer need beside the candy dish on the end table. 

She is both a novelist and a memoir writer. A researcher. When she isn’t writing I am sure she is as interesting in her own kitchen as she is sharing a session between herself and her therapist. 

What exactly is Creative Nonfiction?

In some ways, creative nonfiction is like jazz—it’s a rich mix of flavors, ideas, and techniques, some of which are newly invented and others as old as writing itself. Creative nonfiction can be an essay, a journal article, a research paper, a memoir, or a poem; it can be personal or not, or it can be all of these.

What Is Creative Nonfiction?

Lee Gutkind

Join us on Sunday at 7PM EST and And Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. 

 

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