Creative Non-Fiction as an Art Form
What sets CNF apart: It’s all about the writer.
As the owner-editor of Indelible Ink, a Creative Non-Fiction publication here on Medium, I get dozens of submissions that don’t come anywhere near the creative part of non-fiction. Because I want to help those writers understand the differences, I spend a lot of time trying to explain it to them. It happened again today. A writer who wants to write for our pub and is willing to keep trying asked me to explain exactly what I mean by Creative Non-Fiction.
I almost didn’t answer. Not in the way she would like. I wasn’t sure I could, to be honest. I’m certainly no expert, and at my own pub I live by the rule that I’ll know it when I see it.
The dictionary definition of non-fiction is: ‘prose writing that is based on facts, real events, and real people, such as biography or history.’ There is no short dictionary definition for Creative Non-Fiction.
The fact that there’s such a thing as an MFA in Creative Non-Fiction is pretty intimidating. Purdue University has a good overview of CNF, designed to introduce their students to the process, but the depth of it may turn off more Medium writers than inspire. And not all of it will apply.
