Innehållsförteckning för Fall 2014 från Creative Nonfiction

BETWEEN THE LINES ANY AUTHOR starting out today is likely to hear the same advice from agents, publishers, and even well-meaning writer friends. That advice? Build your “platform.” As a recent MFA graduate who’s wading into the world of publishing, I’ve been counseled to start a blog, scare up a couple thousand Facebook friends, consider Twitter. This pressure to promote myself, in addition to writing a book and working full-time, could break my will, make me consider giving up writing altogether. Except that my full-time job is at an ad agency, and for the last six of the almost twenty years I’ve been in this business, I’ve worked at a company that specializes in digital media. So I feel lucky to recognize this advice about “platform building” for what it…

CATHERINE MUSEMECHE is the author of Small: Life and Death on the Front Lines of Pediatric Surgery, published by Dartmouth College Press/University Press of New England. She is a pediatric surgeon and lives in Austin, Texas. “Lessons” is an excerpt of Small. “HAVE YOU EVER DONE ANYTHING TO KILL A KID?” Dr. R., the head of the pediatric surgery program, asked me shortly after I had started. Dr. R. was a slightly stooped, gray-haired man with bushy, unruly eyebrows. The bow tie he wore signaled that he was an absolute expert on every topic in surgery. He rocked back and forth on the balls of his wingtips and looked me in the eye. He was dead serious. “No, sir. Not that I’m aware of,” I answered. “Well then, you’re a…

WRITER AT WORK “GETTING PUBLISHED WON’T MAKE YOU HAPPY,” cautions the author of Page after Page, a handbook designed to motivate would-be writers to write. In trying to drive home the therapeutic benefits of the writing process, I shared this warning with my writing students—but I have to admit I didn’t believe it myself. The author, Heather Sellers, must simply be trying to discourage competition, I reasoned. How could getting published not make me happy? It’s what I’ve been striving for much of my adult life: recognition of my literary talents and, as such, indirect acknowledgment of my personal worth, my contributions to the literary world as a thoughtful person. Everyone who dares to claim the title of writer dreams of the day … PATRICIA A. NUGENT is the author…

Experiments in nonfiction MY FATHER’S NAME is Tommy Lee Sanders. That’s the actual name printed on his birth certificate. He did his best to go by Tom for the majority of his adult life. My father, in 1966, jumped off a third-story hotel balcony with the intention of diving headfirst into a pool. The problem was, the supports were loose and gave way as he stood atop the iron railing and pushed off. He lost his purchase, couldn’t soar out far enough. When he hit, he snapped both wrists on the pool’s concrete edge. A fair amount of beer was involved. He flew off to Vietnam less than a week later. I’ve seen a picture of him in his olive drabs, his bright white casts standing out in stark contrast.…

CAROL FISHER SALLER is a senior manuscript editor in the Books Division of the University of Chicago Press and editor of The Chicago Manual of Style’s online Q&A. She is the author of The Subversive Copyeditor: Advice from Chicago (or, How to Negotiate Good Relationships with Your Writers, Your Colleagues, and Yourself) and, more recently, a young-adult novel, Eddie’s War. TO A COPYEDITOR, MISTAKES ARE EVERYTHING. How many professions are devoted exclusively to finding and eliminating human error? It’s not only what copyeditors do; it’s all we do. We are correctors. Like maggots, we feed on the boogers and rot left behind by writers. Line by line, word by word, we poke and tweak and chew over their words, and if they’re lucky, we give them back something clean and…

TINY TRUTHS from this 2winners of the daily #cnftweet contest Can you tell a true story in a single tweet? To join in the fun, follow us @cnfonline and tag your entries with #cnftweet. Your micro-essay could appear in the next issue of CNF! katbethell Big storm is coming in and the sky is black and the fireflies are out, thinking it’s night. 7 Jul 14 amalchik Four editors read the textbook before me. I correct commas and tenses. The six-year-olds will have to get it right the first time. 9 Oct 13 AdamThomasTed My daughter thinks my mother walks like Georges Hautecourt. I know my mother walks like a woman I threw a brick at 25 years ago. 19 Apr 14 VWagner Forgetting my live-and-let-live mouse trap, I didn’t…