On Writing In the Moment, for the Moment: Episode 4—The Meditative Essay

When it comes to written meditations, I love this one, "Somewhere a Siren," by Robert Vivian—available for your reading pleasure at the one and only Guernica. "Somewhere a siren already announces its formal edict," Vivian writes, "and I hear it as the underpinnings of a mysterious truth rising and falling on waves riding the late night air, for here is a way to be carried from this world to the next."

This week, I'd like to talk a bit about the concept of the "meditative essay." I learned about this essay form in grad school at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, where I met Vivian himself. A quiet, soft-spoken, pensive man, Vivian personifies his chosen form. For decades, he's written meditations on the natural world, his family, his work, and our society at large. His excellent "Thoughts on the Meditative Essay" is here at Doug Glover's writing website, Numéro Cinq.

In his craft essay, Vivian writes, "The meditative essay hinges on stillness, on a moment delicately teased out of the cogs of time to live in the timeless present: it is not interested much in opinions or even ideas, preferring instead to live in the realm of pondering and contemplation." To Vivian, the meditation isn't about motion, or a linear progression through time, or a "first this, then this" approach to telling a story. In fact, perhaps his "meditations" aren't stories at all - after all, they "hinge on stillness," evading the arc that traditional stories, especially in the West, typically follow. 

And Sue William Silverman, author of the wonderful CNF genre overview essay "Meandering River," explains the meditative essay like this: "A meditative essay, as the name suggests, explores or meditates upon an emotion or idea by drawing upon a range of experience. It’s a contemplation." 

Vivian admits that "the meditative essay is also a very elusive creature, as elusive as anything, perhaps, in any genre." It can be tough to pin down, to identify. "More than anything," Vivian writes, "the meditative essay is like a shy wild animal that will bolt at the slightest sign of undue ego or aggression, though it may occasionally use tiny bits of these to furnish its lair." 

Yet in the end, explains Vivian, "[the meditation] is a consummately intimate form of exchange, as tender as a confiding lover propped up on his or her elbow in bed after lovemaking. Fear is not in its nature, nor is blame or accusation; indeed, intimacy may be its single-most distinguishing characteristic, the way it takes us into the heart, mind and soul of its author."

Reader, what are your thoughts on the concept of meditation—in general, or as a writer? Some of you meditate as a practice—how does your practice inform this topic? Or, how would you describe your experience reading "Somewhere a Siren"? Did you enjoy? Dislike? Were you disoriented, annoyed, or made jubilant? Did the essay lead you towards meditative feelings or emotions of your own? How closely did the essay's intention align with YOUR understanding of meditation?

Helpful hint: In general, Guernica is a great place to read terrific writing by new writers and seasoned pros alike. Many great writers got their starts at Guernica - so add this to your list of places to submit work, whenever you decide that the time has come.

Embracing the Lyric: Episode 3—Writing the Ineffable

 

In her excellent essay on creative non-fiction subgenres, "Meandering River," Sue William Silverman writes: 

"In the lyric essay, as in the meditative essay, the writer is not constrained by a narrative of action; the movement is from image to image, not from event to event. Here, the psyche works more in the mode of poets who 'let what will stick to them like burrs where they walk in the fields,' to quote Robert Frost."

For those who feel compelled by the concept or act of meditation, the lyric essay form might also appeal. Driven, as it is, not "by a narrative of action" but by a focus on imagery, emotion, and an effort to capture "the ineffable," the lyric essay allows the writer to spend time focusing on a moment, a feeling, or a fleeting sensation rather than on fleshing out a scene or creating a narrative arc. GD Dess, in the Los Angeles Review of Books, characterizes the lyric essay form in this way: 

"The lyric essay partakes of the poem in its density and shapeliness, its distillation of ideas and musicality of language. It partakes of the essay in its weight, in its overt desire to engage with facts, melding its allegiance to the actual with its passion for imaginative form."

As such, poets reading this post might especially appreciate the lyric style—Silverman adds that "one reason writers use this form is to explore the boundary between essay and lyric poetry." For examples of the lyric form, visit the Eastern Iowa Review's list, here. Or, find two lyric essays in Asymptote Journal by Chen Li that might inspire or appeal. Finally, here are a couple of samples at Brevity Magazine, Dinty Moore's beloved publication of brief creative non-fiction. 

When it comes to the "lyric," the writer gives herself permission to focus not on a story, a narrative, or a linear scene, but on something she deems to be "ineffable." You may be asking yourself: What the heck is Kate talking about now? Fair enough. The lyric form, after all, is asking you to take a creative risk here, since the word "ineffable" is, inherently, defined by that which cannot easily be named. So, you can't name the ineffable, but you can write around it, towards it, shaping it with your words as you get closer and closer to its center. 

Consider these remarks about the word "ineffable," from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary: 

'Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness," wrote Frederick Douglass in his autobiography. Reading Douglass's words, it's easy to see that ineffable means "indescribable" or "unspeakable." And when we break down the word to its Latin roots, it's easy to see how those meanings came about. "Ineffable" comes from "ineffabilis," which joins the prefix in-, meaning "not," with the adjective effabilis, meaning "capable of being expressed." "Effabilis" comes from "effari" ("to speak out"), which in turn comes from ex- and fari ("to speak").' 

To embrace the lyric, I recommend you begin by taking a few deep and calming breaths. Shake your body out and allow your mind to loosen. Then, spend about one minute coming up with a theme for your lyric practice - something "ineffable." For example, perhaps you'd like to examine a moment that left you feeling a certain powerful—but ineffable—way. Perhaps you'd like to describe a snippet of a relationship that contains something ineffable. Maybe the politics of the day have an ineffable but pronounced effect on you - something you can't name, but are certain you can feel. Don't think too much about the focus of your lyric approach; this is a low-stakes introduction to the form, and no one has to read the end product but you.  This is your chance to practice, let yourself ease into a form that, for writers past, present, and future, is characteristically difficult to define.

Taking Risks In Creative Non-Fiction: Episode 2—What Do We Put On The Line When We Write?

This week, I want to explore the idea of taking "risks" in creative non-fiction - and this post is dedicated to my friend and fellow writer, Marylou Butler. Marylou passed on, but her writing is something I think about all the time - that and her risk-taking spirit. Marylou, a former SFCC student of mine - and a friend to some of us here - went courageous places with her writing, never feeling afraid to look silly, get lost, try something that wouldn't work out, or over-revise. 

Her writing has been published (here's one selection for you to peruse!), but that's not why she wrote - she did it for the love of the process, and into the final days of her life, writing was an adventure for Marylou, a wild ride that she knew could take her anywhere. 

It pays to spend some time thinking about the risks you've taken in your own writing. Ask yourself: What does it mean to take a risk? Creative non-fiction is a risky genre for many reasons. We make ourselves vulnerable, for one, in a way, some might say, that other writers, like novelists and poets, don't. Their material isn't explicitly about their own lives, after all - although I believe all writing is deeply informed by our own experiences. 

Good writing, as most of us know, is often that in which narrators makes themselves vulnerable - they share, they probe, they dig deep, they proffer up what they've held back, hidden, kept down. And this is risky. Creative non-fiction writers also harvest their own experiences in ways that could hurt other people. The fact is, all writers hold within them the ability to offend, to do unintentional harm, to say the wrong thing. My writing mentor, Philip Graham, wrote about his parents - their characters thinly veiled in a novel - and his relationship with his folks was irrevocably damaged afterwards. We risk injuring our friends, our family members, and our loved ones when they read what we've written and don't like it, or don't like the way we've portrayed them, or don't realize we thought the way we did about something important to them. Writing is risky in this way, too, and many writers simply avoid loaded topics altogether - their parents, their siblings, their childhood, their broken relationships - because of this very reason. 

 But to me, the riskiest part of writing is where we can take ourselves. Sometimes, we don't want to travel down certain roads. We're afraid of "going back," of being forced to remember and reflect. Writing about something you fear can be risky. Writing has this funny way of teaching things us we didn't know we knew about ourselves - sometimes unflattering things - and of showing us the past - and the present - through lenses we hadn't considered or examined before. It can hurt to revisit a painful relationship or a loss, for example - and sometimes, it's hard to shake those old feelings, those memories and triggers once we let them back in. "Risk" means something different, I suspect, to every writer. For some writers, the act of writing means risking one's life - quite literally. For others, risk means trying a new form, something that's never worked before. It means revising something with gusto, and "killing your darlings" as you go - cutting that which you love for the sake of the work. 

The question today is this: What does risk in writing mean to you?

What Is Creative Non-Fiction, Exactly? Episode 1: Defining Our Terms

This month, I’m posting a series of mini-lectures on creative non-fiction—today, an overview of the genre, for anyone who’s ever asked: What is CNF, exactly? I'm a creative non-fiction writer myself—a label that can include the creation of "memoir" and the "personal essay"—but really, it all falls under the umbrella of creative non-fiction (CNF): taking the material in our real lives and in our physical world, and examining them through the lens of a creative writer. Though we CNF writers are describing what's "real" and "true," what "actually happened" and what "we know," we also harness the tools of fiction and poetry - including character, scene, dialogue, imagery, and metaphor, to name a few - to explore the tangible, visceral, "real" world we inhabit right now. 

What’s In a Name? 

When it comes to labels, I'm pretty flexible. To me, what matters most is that we feel free to write about the world we live in - from almost any angle we choose. That can mean a lot of things: Perhaps you want to explore one facet of your life more deeply - you want to examine your connection to a particular religion, maybe, or your relationship to the natural world, or your career, or a member of your family. Maybe you want to trace a certain story - a story you've been told, one that's been passed down, maybe one that you've only heard parts of, but always wondered about. It's easy to go down a rabbit hole of terms, labels, and arguments for or against every conceivable name, but the point is, you're writing from life, and you're acknowledging that it's not "made up"—not fiction.

Maybe you've travelled before - to another country, another state, another town, and you want to write about that. Heck, maybe you've travelled the rocky road of adolescence, and you want to explore those memories in your writing. Perhaps there's a relationship - past or present - that you've been wanting to write about - or maybe there's someone you've been wanting to write to, in letter form - someone you've known, someone you've never met, someone you've heard about all your life. Ta-Nehisi Coates does this in his 2017 book, "Between the World and Me," published as a letter to his young son. That's CNF. It's memoir, in my opinion, and it's personal essay, too - Coates writes from his own life out. 

The point is, so many topics are valid where CNF is concerned, and any experience, large or small, can take a unique form and still be memoir, or an essay, or CNF. What's been catching your eye these days? What's been caught up in your mind? What have you been dreaming about at night? What stories did you file ago years ago, swearing to yourself you'd write them down someday? Why are you here? 

 

Maybe you've got a specific goal where your writing is concerned: You want to work on essays for a collection you envision. You've got a subject you're dying to flesh out in writing. You've got a style that you've honed and evolved, and you want to take it to the next level - all fine! And, maybe you haven't written in years. Maybe you have no idea how the heck you got here, to this page, to this blog tucked away at the corner of the Internet. Maybe you're just curious, and you're thinking, "Eh, why not." 

Or, maybe you're extremely skeptical, because the term "memoir" has gotten a bad reputation over the years - some critics say it's a way to self-glorify an experience, or extort personal trauma for the sake of a story. As Timothy Goodman writes in the New York Times, "There was a time when you had to earn the right to draft a memoir, by accomplishing something noteworthy or having an extremely unusual experience...But then came our current age of oversharing, and all heck broke loose." 

Of course, I wholeheartedly disagree with these comments, but they're pervasive. I believe you stumbled onto this page because deep down, you know you've got a story to tell - at least one. You somehow understand the value of the personal experience. Zachary Watterson writes personal essays "to capture a brief period of time in my life that haunts me even now." When Tova Stulman published an essay which discussed covering and then uncovering her hair during her marriage, she "discovered the value of the personal essay. I gave voice to [my readers'] experience and, subsequently, lessened the loneliness they felt. The experience confirmed for me that all of us have doubts, secrets, and inner turmoil about things most frequently left unsaid." And the poet and essayist Robert Vivian writes, "Each essay we read is as close as we can get to another mind. It is a simulation of the mind working its way through a problem." There's plenty of reason to write from the first-person "I" - to educate and inform, to celebrate and acknowledge, to learn, to teach, to heal. I fully believe that writing has deep value even if it's never published, because the process is often the most important part. 

Wherever you are as a writer, you're here now.