Open Creative Non-Fiction Writing

Hi Nicola,

It’s a testament to good prose when a reader can effortlessly read through a piece like this one. Your prose has always been good, and the last paragraph was just exquisite. It leaves things open ended, which I like. It reminds me a bit of James Joyce’s Dubliners. I’m going to suggest the opposite of what I’ve been saying so far now and urge you to revisit the beginning. Really look at yourself in the third person; describe yourself. Who is this woman? What does she look like? This woman walks into this cemetery. She works at a local coffee shop. Her life so far has been X. She is looking for X. She visits the cemetery now because X. She leaves either finding or not finding X.  You don’t have to tell us why she doesn’t remember her past very well, you only have to hint at it. Why can’t she hold onto places? Is that why she revisits this cemetery time after time? This is the one place where she can remember things, maybe. I really think that you can make this into a short short story—nonfiction and all. But for that to happen, we need to know that this woman ismore than just a „she“, even if she remainds anonymous. We need to be able to look at her from an outsider’s perspective in the beginning, only to be pulled into her perspective later. Right now it starts enmeshed/mired in her perspective. There needs to be some type of change, a slight climax, maybe. Some kind of transformation of her self, or reader’s perception of the woman, from the beginning to the end.

My comments in-line (I had very few): Cnf+week5+NicolaCaroli – JP comments