Get Creative: The craft of non-fiction - writing groups and first readers

RTÉ News​

2 days ago

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.
I'm going to start with a touchy topic and end with a complicated one. I have heard more than one tale of an emerging writer sharing their work with a writing group only to find their idea appropriated or coming back at them later, recognisable in different but similar form. The only advice here is to never do that to someone else, and to be careful about where you share your works in progress. The best first readers, advice and feedback-givers are symbiotic not parasitic.
I recommend finding a reader-writer peer at a similar stage in their writing career to pair with. Attending workshops with a focus on the kind of writing you interesting in doing can be a good way to meet someone. In a pairing scenario, you give some time to their writing and they give some time to yours. It's the kind of fruitful attention bartering that can be invaluable because it is free and mutually respectful. It can also be helpful to have a first reader who is not also a writer; a reader who treats your work with joy and respect, and requires nothing back other than the pleasure of doing this important early-response job for you. It goes without saying that you should not join a writing group where the traffic is all one way.
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If possible, another option is to find a professional mentor. The Irish Writers Centre in Dublin runs an annual open-submission 32-county National Mentoring Programme, which includes writers of creative non-fiction, pairing selected mentees with professional writers over a period of six to eight months.
If your first reader is someone close to you and you are writing non-fiction in the form of memoir or personal essay, you may hit the second topic quite quickly. It's a question of ethics, and voice, and how to own your story in public when it is a personal one. Personal essays tend to have real life other people in them, unless the account is of an entirely solo adventure, and even then no one exists in a vacuum.
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There's no definitive, foolproof way to approach this. I can offer a few steps. First, give yourself permission to tell your own story. Second, identify what elements of the story are in fact yours. Third, don't try to tell the story from a perspective that isn't yours. Anonymise where possible. It is also acceptable to change names and other details to protect identities. After that, whether to invite comment, feelings, thoughts, or permissions has to be a personal choice.
Melissa Febos' Bodywork: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative (2022) is an excellent resource on this complicated territory. She writes, "it is difficult to predict what will upset people… Each person who was present for the events about which I have written has a different true story for them." And she offers this pertinent advice for the memoirist: "There are good essays that there are good reasons not to write."