Word Pirates

Word Pirates: What makes a good essay? How does an essayist make a personal experience or opinion resonate with the reader?

Hattie Fletcher: At Creative Nonfiction, we look for essays that balance a strong narrative—a story, in which something happens—with some kind of instructional or informational element. “Instructional” sounds a bit pedantic, but we don’t think it has to be: Even memoir/personal essay calls for a certain amount of research. Our readers expect to learn something from the essays we publish—whether about someone’s job, a branch of science, or just the way life is lived in a different place or time. The subject almost doesn’t matter, if the writing is good enough.

WP: What topics are overdone and overplayed? What do you wish you saw more of?

HF: We see a lot of stories about people’s mothers. Having recently given birth to a daughter, I would like to be the last person to say that mothers aren’t very important and meaningful, but as an editor I’ll say that it’s not always clear why they should be meaningful (or even interesting) to anyone besides their children. Most family member stories fit into this category, as, unfortunately, do disease stories. Cancer is, needless to say, always a dramatic, life-changing experience for everyone involved, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into great literature. That’s not to say that it can’t be done brilliantly—just that we see way too many submissions in which it isn’t.

I wish we saw more pieces that didn’t involve so much of the first person pronoun. Or at least more pieces in which the writers explore topics beyond their own experiences in the world. There’s truth to that old saw, “write what you know,” and it’s certainly important to write with authority. But “write what you know” doesn’t have to mean “write about yourself.”

WP: How would you define “truth” in literary nonfiction? Where do you think artistic license ends and deception begins?

HF: This is really a loaded question, especially in light of recent events like the James Frey business. And, as it happens, our current issue responds to some of the questions that have been swirling around; we’ve put together a glossary of issues nonfiction writers have to grapple with, and we’ve tried to offer some guidance, though we stop short of making rules. At the end of the day, every writer has to do his or her own grappling.

That said, editorially, Creative Nonfiction tends to err on the side of caution. For example, we generally don’t let writers assign characters pseudonyms without a REALLY good reason, and even then we expect a note, ideally in the text, explaining the decision.

Personally, I think artistic license can extend pretty far, but transparency is key. There’s a different contract with the reader in nonfiction—namely, that the things you’re writing about really happened, and that the characters really exist, etc.—and when that turns out not to be the case, readers feel deceived. When you look at the scandals that bring this question up, it’s almost always the case that the writers didn’t let readers in on the decisions they made, to use composite characters or compression or whatever. An author’s note can go a long way.

WP: What is the biggest mistake you see in the essays you receive?

I find there’s a point in most essays when the writer moves from telling a story to getting to what’s at the heart of the story—what it’s really about, and why it should matter. This is a crucial point in the essay; it’s make or break. Too often in the manuscripts we see, writers get to this point and instead of opening the essay up—turning outward to a bigger subject—they turn inward. An essay might be about the story of Aunt Edna’s death, for example, but really be about how a culture deals with death. At that turning point one writer might bring in statistics or studies or go to a funeral home or any number of interesting things, where another writer might just keep telling the story of Aunt Edna and maybe also discuss her feelings about her own mortality. Generally, I think, we would prefer the first essay.

Another common problem in the essays we see is the “so what?” factor. This is particularly obvious in essays about events in the past. Sometimes people have terrific stories about things that happened to them years ago. But it’s not always clear why they’re writing that story now.

WP: How much of what you publish is solicited vs. unsolicited work? Are a writer’s credentials/previous publications important? If so, what is likely to get your attention?

Except in the case of special themed issues, we rarely solicit work in the sense of contracting with specific writers for specific stories, so the majority of the work we publish comes out of the slush pile. As for previous publications, prestigious degrees and the like, we do appreciate having them mentioned in the cover letter, and we flag submissions from people with particularly impressive credentials. We also scan cover letters of incoming manuscripts for personal mention: someone who’s met one of us at a writer’s conference or a workshop or something of that sort. I wouldn’t say we read those manuscripts differently (i.e. the editorial criteria don’t change), but we do try to read them more quickly!

WP: Who looks at the submissions and what is done with them? How do you decide what makes it into the issue?

We receive, on average, 300 submissions a month. The first round of reading is usually done by editorial interns. We have an evaluation sheet that asks questions designed to help our readers focus on the important elements we’re looking for—is there a narrative, and can you explain the frame story in a couple of sentences? What, besides the writer, is the essay about? Is there any kind of “research” element?—and at least two people read each manuscript and decide whether it’s a yes, no or maybe. Two no votes in the first round lead to rejection. A no and a maybe send a manuscript to a third reader. Two maybes or two yesses bring it to an editorial meeting, where all of our readers sit around a table and we talk about each manuscript. At that point, some get rejected because they don’t sound interesting to the group at large or because they seem similar to things we’ve recently published. Everything that makes it through the meeting moves up the chain. Ultimately, in most cases the editor and I make the final decisions about what ends up in a given issue.