This Wednesday, our president Meganne Smith will lead a workshop on creative nonfiction. What is creative nonfiction, you ask? Creative nonfiction is where the arts meet the sciences – a mixture of perspective and personal truth.

The most familiar form of creative nonfiction is memoir. We tell the facts as best we can, but who can remember it all? We make room for imagined dialogue, change names, and shorten the time between events. These are small liberties, but they can grow and turn our simple stories into something more.

Perhaps you decide to start your tale at the end, then work backwards. You leave out boring siblings and weave in instead the saga of women’s jeans. This ancient oscillation of denim from skinny leg to wide hem, high waist to ultra-low rise, enters the fabric of your story, and makes it sturdier. Through combining recollections and literary techniques, your memoir becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Or maybe not – that’s the problem with creativity – it’s chancy stuff.

Many writers choose creative nonfiction for their blogs, posting updates on their writing lives for devoted fans. Even fiction writers can benefit from a creative nonfiction blog – personal stories connect with readers but allow the author to save the milk for those who buy the cow (sorry for the analogy).

Creative nonfiction (CNF) has a wide market beyond memoir, blogs, and newsletters. Many platforms seek short personal essays just as lustfully as they pursue fiction. In fact, some prefer fact. I was recently published in Chicken Soup for the Soul – What I Learned From My Dog. CSFS was great to work with – they were clear in communication and generous in contributor copies of the book. This publisher is always on the lookout for first-person true stories – the truer, the better.

When seeking publishers for creative nonfiction, it’s also helpful to look at niche markets. Stories about motherhood appeal to one publisher while those concerning writing craft will find a different market. Read the journals, newsletters, and blogs in your area of expertise and find one seeking submissions. Follow their requirements carefully, and send in your best-edited work. Then cross your fingers and keep writing, keep submitting.

Or, collect your essays and publish them yourself. Emily Carter, our recent Carteret Writers VP, has a collection coming out with the newly minted Planck Length Publishing. A Spork in the Road is intimate and compelling, with a sense of place and person that can only be found in creative nonfiction. Congratulations, Emily.

Here are a few other CNF venues:

Carolina Woman Contest (ends 3/31)

Press 53 Flash Nonfiction

Next Chapter Literary Magazine

Carteret-Craven Electric Co-Op Personal Stories

Carteret Writers Blog – submit writing-related posts to carteretwriters@gmail.com

Happy writing!