“So, what do you write about?”
I was 15 minutes early to class. Despite my efforts to stay as nondescript and socially disengaged as possible, Anthropologist Dude was seated next to me this time. There was no avoiding conversation.
Call it “impostor syndrome”, “low self-esteem” or a “cultural trait”, but I don’t particularly enjoy talking about myself. This makes even the tiniest semblance of an artistic public profile very challenging, but that’s another tale for another time. Having to (consciously) repeat something I’ve said before—even if it’s not with the same person—gives me cause for hesitation.
With bloodshot eyes that’d been open for the last 11 hours, I glanced briefly at Anthropologist Dude. Then, in a monotone: “narrative non-fiction and criticism.”
“I see. What do you criticise?” he inquired.
“Mostly culture,” I responded blandly.
“Ah,” he said, a knowing glint in his eye. “Identity and representation and all of that?”
I’d expected this pigeonholing. In fact, it wasn’t the first time this had happened. I locked eyes with him and smiled a tight, condescending smile, a trick I’d learnt from white women. Still holding his gaze, I m̶a̶n̶s̶explained, “Not exactly. Culture makes up our world and society. While identity can be a theme, I also look at popular culture, internet culture, etc. Culture is all around us.”
He was about to say something else, but fortunately the class had begun. Nine out of twelve people were present this time. Ocker Accent fella was absent yet again. I briefly thought about the money he was throwing away. Our teacher recapped the previous class, emphasising the difference between “scenes” (showing) and “summary” (telling): “be conscious of what the difference is, and when and how to use them,” she warned.
Today’s class focused on pitching how-tos, and something called “immersion writing”, a technique that puts a self so wholly into a situation it causes readers to feel like they are experiencing whatever it is themselves. She cited her own memoir to be a good example of that: during the writing process, she had immersed herself into the world of social anxiety, and through memories of her own shyness growing up. Other examples—“extreme” ones, because they were written through the lens of someone other than the writer—that were offered were Helen Garner’s true crime books and a “not-me” book titled The Abyssinian Contortionist by David Carlin.
We were given photocopies of an essay that presented a clear-cut use of this technique. In it, the writer described trying various brands of dog food purely for curiosity’s sake. Our teacher looked at us all intently while we silently read the text, smiling as some expressed their visceral disgust. My expression was deadpan; sadly, I’d immersed myself in a lot of VICE content during my young adulthood.
“I must say, it’s interesting seeing some of your reactions,” our teacher said when we’d all finished reading.
“Being a vegetarian, that was really hard for me to read!” Agnes exclaimed.
“It can’t be true,” the Dungeons and Dragons aspiring Game Master said skeptically.
“Well, the author writes it in such a descriptive way—like they’re experiencing a cuisine they’re trying for the first time. That’s telling,” I offered.
D&D GM side-eyed me. It’s OK! I’m an aloof, anti-social smart-ass and that’s why these sorts of group situations have never worked for me.
But our teacher was on my side. She said the piece was classified under “stunt journalism”, a style where someone deliberately puts themselves through something controversial or uncommon so they can write about it. Thanks, VICE.
We went on to discuss other kinds of immersion writing, autoethnography being one of them. It sounded like a genre I was already doing, except I’ve never had a name for it. These little moments—while not occuring as often as I’d like—had been quite illuminating for my practice, as if I was scratching an itch I didn’t know I had.
Our teacher continued to outline the bits that constituted important points to consider within this genre of writing:
Whatever happens will not be exactly what you expected (reality vs. fantasy)
Don’t try and hide misconceptions; use them to emphasise something else
Narrative tension can come from the contrast between what you expected and what happened (“the clash that happens can make a story!”)
Park your darlings—“instead of killing your darlings, park it in case you can use it somewhere else”
We were asked to spend 15 minutes on a writing exercise—describing a first-time experience—using the immersion technique we’d just learnt about. Afterwards, seized by the paranoia of potentially never having a chance to receive impartial critique from a group of strangers ever again, I volunteered to read what I had written. It was a short paragraph about my first time being on a panel last year. Our teacher smiled encouragingly at me, asking what the event was. I mumbled my response, suddenly gripped by the possibility that I could be perceived as being self-important.
“Wow, the feeling of self-consciousness is translated really well!” she beamed.
Disappointingly, there were no other comments. D&D GM read out what they wrote about their experience being on a jury, and someone else on their time working in a psychiatric ward. Being able to hear other people read their equally raw writing was nice. I made a mental note to find a few like-minded folk to start a writers’ group with.
“The great thing about creative non-fiction is that it’s a blur between fiction and non-fiction,” our teacher enthused. “It doesn’t mean you can make things up though!”
The class proceeded to move on to pitching. Our teacher made a point to underscore the differences between a “story” and a “topic”. For example, “travelling in East Timor” is a topic, whereas “exploring the rise of an eco-tourism industry in the second newest nation in the world” is a story. In our workbook, she had also shared with us her “10 Point Plan”, as illustrated below:
In my very humble opinion, pitching isn’t hard per se, except it’s something you should be willing to learn from and which can take a bit of practice. You have absolutely nothing to lose! Editors are usually inundated with pitches and will very likely forget about your existence after you’ve been rejected. I taught myself to pitch in 2013 and haven’t looked back since; over time, by finding out what works and what doesn’t (mostly through rejections), I’ve learnt to be more concise and clear in expressing my story ideas.********
Noting that we were nearing the end of the 3 hours allocated for the class, we moved on quickly. Our teacher stressed the value of generating shorter work in the process of working on a longer one, because you can derive the material from it later. I thought about the recurring themes that come up in mine and other writers’ work, and how these little pieces come together to form a larger body of work that can hopefully stand the test of time. What record of now can we tentatively imprint onto the future, yet leave a lasting footprint behind?
I saw Marisa again five days later, after a two-week break from our mentorship meetings. Having hung out as friends during our weekend at National Young Writers’ Festival, the prevailing mood was a lot more casual. We talked about a secret fiction piece I’d been flirting with, me expressing cavernous doubt at crafting an imagined story. Every known fear was present: what if the people I based the story off of somehow knew they were in it? It might spell the end of our friendship. And what if I revealed too much of my subconscious for it to ever be understood coherently?
As Marisa reflected the story back at me, it turned out that bits of my subconscious were there anyway, but it was fine. And if I could change minuscule details about my characters, then it’d be a stretch for someone to try and allude it to themselves.
“You see yourself in stories you write,” she said without batting an eyelid.
We looked at another piece in progress, this time a narrative non-fiction piece which could be perceived as too blunt. I was worried that it would hurt my practice. How could I be more diplomatic? Marisa responded, again without missing a beat, that I could interview relevant people who could support my claim(s).
“If you have corroborating voices, then it won’t seem like something “you feel”. It gives pieces more credibility,” she assured.
There’s a reason why I’ve turned to occasionally calling Marisa “auntie”. Some of it is obviously attributed to my lack of older role models who aren’t men, especially as I grow older. But there are other aspects too: geniality, warmth, a deep sense of care in terms of truly wanting to help a less experienced writer get better—so as to hopefully pave the way towards a more robust literary landscape. As Marisa wrote in one of her book-length fiction works in progress, “aunties come in all shapes and forms”; I’ve just happened upon an auntie who is both generous and exacting in her advice.
(********I’ll elaborate on this more in an epilogue-esque newsletter after I’m finished with the course.)
***
This week’s recommendations:
This very useful Twitter thread by Harron Walker on how to pitch non-fiction pieces
Meher Ahmad’s exploration on what it means to define oneself outside of whiteness—“Even as I overcame the obstacles of being a woman of colour and an immigrant, my whole thing was still in reference to them. What happens when I remove them from the equation entirely?”
This interview with Stephanie La Cava in The Creative Independent—“I think it takes a real lack of smugness on the part of a creator, and I think that’s really important: to have an ideal, to capture an experience, but not to say, “This is how you should see things. This is the best, I am the best at making things be seen this way.”
Momtaza Mehri’s very elucidating essay On Noise and Networks—“Framed another way, what happens after we expose our wounds to the very institutions which injure us in the first place?”
Online resources and opportunities for writers: Aerogramme Writers’ Studio, the Submittable newsletter, Young Australian Writers Facebook group