Hello Everyone,
Let me clarify – I LOVE the ‘all is fiction’ rule. It has kept my groups and my writers safe, adventurous and free for 16 years already! And it has prevented us from descending into ‘therapy’ on many occasions.
However, these days I’m finding there’s more and more writing in my groups that I’d categorize as memoir / personal essay or perhaps creative nonfiction. These forms of writing don’t just ‘like’, they actually demand a first person, ideally ‘authentic’ voice, where it’s no longer ‘the character’ in the work, it really is the writer at hand, referring to her/his own life.
So I’m just curious. Does anyone have any recommendations as to best practices around responses to these kinds of writing? Both for myself as workshop leader, and guidance I should give writers in my group about <em>their</em> responses to these kinds of works?
Many thanks in advance for any suggestions!
Hi Matthew — I’m excited that you started this conversation! I also love the “all is fiction” practice and love learning how others hold space around it. I feel like this practice is one that really embodies the AWA method: simple at face value, but there’s a lot of nuance in how the workshop leader can weave it in, invite writers to try it out, call on it to create safe space, etc. I’m always learning something new about it.
In my workshops, one way I use the “all is fiction” practice to help deepen writers’ awareness of their speaker. Some folks aren’t aware of this language of a “speaker” on the page, and the “all is fiction” practice is the first time they’ll encounter it. I introduce the practice in two ways: first, I share that it protects us as a group (like you said — it’s so powerful for steering the group away from therapy). And then, I share that the practice is also for our personal practice — that the gift of fiction is one we can give ourselves, to get distance and appreciate the choices happening on the page, to have room to recognize characters or events that are unfolding, and to notice the space the speaker holds on the page, even (and especially) if you’re writing in the “I” and know the speaker is yourself.
In a way, I find the practice to be most helpful in essay/memoir writing, because it helps make the speaker a more concrete thing for writers. And before they even have to explore it in their own work, they’re practicing this relationship to the speaker in how they notice it in the writing of others, by listening and responding in the workshop. So when they do decide to develop or revise a piece later, the concept of a speaker is far less abstract and is attached to concrete prompts and creative choices (e.g., tone, voice, language, tense, perspective, etc.).
I keep the “all is fiction” practice going from generative workshops all the way through deep revision and coaching work. I invite folks to notice the choices their speaker is making, what their speaker does and does not say/believe/want/admit/etc. As writers go deeper, I love the way this practice can help them question assumptions they might be making about the material or the speaker… this is often where rich ideas and good tension live in creative nonfiction, but writers can miss it in early writing/raw material. I find in prompt writing, the “I” can be a passive or even unconscious choice. The “I” is them, they roll through the memories on the page, and unless provoked, it’s easy to leave that “I” just as it is, in whatever space it held when it first showed up. I devote a whole module in my revision workshop (Staying True) to not taking the speaker for granted (building from the space of fiction/creative distance), because it’s just been that essential to me.
This leads to all sorts of interesting things that we can respond to, using the fiction practice for creative nonfiction… some of my favorites: Who is implicated in/by the material, and how? Does the speaker implicate themselves? If not, does that reveal something about what’s at heart (or what’s hidden) in the piece? What does the speaker embrace, declare, or want? What do they avoid? Where do they obsess? And for all of these: how? How does that come through on the page?
I find that range of questions is tough for writers to dig into if they’re fully in the “I”/”this is me” mode as they respond to the writing. They need a way to witness themselves (or each other), and the fiction practice gives them that space. Also worth mentioning is the value of HOW questions instead of WHY — that also helps keep the writer and the group focused on what’s actively happening on the page, rather than drifting into assumptions about motives behind the material, sources of the memories, etc. These things can help shift the feel of the process from analysis to curiosity… and to me, they’re all built from the magic of “treat it all as fiction.”
Ok, that’s a lot… please take or leave what calls to you here. This practice might be the one that makes me most passionate about the method, so I tend to wax poetic once I get going. Thanks so much for asking about this. I’m excited to learn about other people’s experiences and ideas!
I love Emily’s response and agree wholeheartedly. I feel like nothing else needs to be said but here is something that happened to me a few weeks ago. I have started a memoir group with people who have been writing with me for years and know the ‘fiction’ rule. It surprised me when one participant asked if we could give up the fiction of treating all like fiction when we were indeed writing memoir. I gave her my reasons for not wanted to do that, to give us space to work in the really hard places and she was unconvinced. A further complication is, within my group, 3 people are sisters, one is their best childhood friend and another 2 are also sisters. They feel like they already know each other’s stories. So Jenn (not her real name) went over my head, not being happy with my response. She put up her hand in the zoom room and presented the idea that this was not fiction at all and why call it that. I was surprised but this is how it came down. Everyone asked to maintain the fiction aspect. They like the distance it gives them. This group will continue to work together and I think it is helping keep us focused on the writing…not the person.
Firstly, to respond to Emily, wow oh wow! I cannot thank you enough for this, and I’m SO happy I asked a question that made you ‘wax poetic’ on the subject. Lucky me! And my apologies for such a slow answer but, truth be told, in the meantime I’ve already put references to ‘the speaker’ into practice in my current workshop, and have found it super-useful already – as you say, especially for people working on creative nonfiction / essay style pieces.
Next step will be to try and incorporate more of what you state in this sentence (that I absolutely adore!): “I invite folks to notice the choices their speaker is making, what their speaker does and does not say/believe/want/admit/etc.”
But now that I’m writing this I’m discovering I essentially want to just re-quote so much of what you wrote back to you, which would be entirely pointless… so I’ll just leave it at a gigantically enormous THANK YOU!!!
This is so helpful. Emily, may I share your POV with my memoir writing group? Best, Johanna
I’m so sorry I’m just catching up on this thread! Does anyone else feel like the order/awareness of time just doesn’t exist at this point in the pandemic? Oh my goodness.
Vicki, thanks for sharing those stories… I forgot how prickly it can be sometimes when writers in the room know each other. Matthew, I’m so glad my thoughts resonated even a little! I love these kinds of discussions in the AWA community… it’s so helpful to reconnect with what makes the method tick.
Johanna, sure, happy to have my thoughts shared with your group!
I’m about to register for the retreat and would love to keep chatting about these things if any of you are planning to join in on that! I know time zones might be tricky to line up, but it would be fun to say hello “in person.”
Leaning on the method/focussing on the writing – is the best way I can respond to those who might want to ditch the practice.
Since we’re all about the writing/the story, “who” it’s about is irrelevant.
This practice is so ingrained that I’ve come to speak of myself in the third person!
I absolutely agree Deepam. One thing I like to do when people argue, or are confused about the memoir rule with fiction, is to say that we are no longer those younger versions of ourselves, so they are in fact “characters” or “protagonists” in the stories. They aren’t US. Also, of course in the training, Maureen does a brilliant job of informing us of how dangerous it is when we start conflating the writer with the “I” voice in the piece, or the main character. That’s when we start sliding from talking about the work as a piece of literature, to talking about it as that person’s life history, and then we’re dangerously close to responding to the work as therapy rather than as a conversation about story and craft.
Great question and fantastic comments. I lead workshops with survivors of sexual violence, IPV, and DV. Because many of the participants in these workshops have in the past been told that what they have reported/said isn’t true, I do not use the word “fiction” but say that all of the writing is treated as story. This also helps people new to the AWA method internalize that we focus on the writing, not the writer – something that can be difficult to grasp initially. For these groups I also reinforce that we are not writing testimony, and that nothing and no one is going to be questioned. We are in the workshops as writers, and we are there to write and to listen, and to share what is strong and what stays with us. I hope this is helpful.
Thank you Deepam, Admin4site, and Mary. I love hearing these slightly nuanced, different perspectives on how to support and strengthen the “mode” of writing at the core of our AWA work!