April 22nd, 2010 / 2:23 pm
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Blake Butler
Uncategorized
Creative Nonfiction via Blog
Creative Nonfiction is putting together an anthology of blog posts from the past six months that give body to the form as form. They are looking for nominations for inclusion. Here is more info & how:
Recently, the NY Times’ Paper Cuts blog ran an interesting piece about whether or not a blog could rise to the level of literature (http://tiny.cc/thr48). Their answer, ultimately, was no, but the editors at Creative Nonfiction (www.creativenonfiction.org) are trying to remove this “less-than” tag many ascribe to the form. For the past three years we’ve been featuring blog posts in our publications, and we are currently seeking narrative blog posts to reprint in our next issue (#39: Summer Reading; forthcoming July 2010).
What we’re looking for: Vibrant new voices with interesting, true stories to tell. Posts must be able to stand alone, 2000 words or fewer, and posted between November 1, 2009 and March 31, 2010. Deadline for nominations is 12 pm EST, Monday, April 26, 2010.
To nominate a blog post or for more info, go here: http://www.creativenonfiction.org/blog/blog_nomination.html
Glad someone is doing this. Help them make it hard.
Tags: blogging, creative nonfiction, Paper Cuts
The thing is that blog writing is meant to be intertextual. Blog posts shouldn’t stand alone. They should link. They should make reference to the comment section. These things can’t be put in a book.
This is just another attempt to legitimize something that is good enough, great, already. Don’t be scared.
The thing is that blog writing is meant to be intertextual. Blog posts shouldn’t stand alone. They should link. They should make reference to the comment section. These things can’t be put in a book.
This is just another attempt to legitimize something that is good enough, great, already. Don’t be scared.
I’ll nominate something by Lily Hoang.
I’ll nominate something by Lily Hoang.
Agree.
Agree.
I emailed the guy who sent me this and told him that blogs are about context and interlinking posts and that it is the whole of the blog that becomes literature. He was very receptive. I think this is an evolving but very valuable and interesting project.
I emailed the guy who sent me this and told him that blogs are about context and interlinking posts and that it is the whole of the blog that becomes literature. He was very receptive. I think this is an evolving but very valuable and interesting project.
I agree that it’s interesting, and I am glad they’re doing it. Is there a TShirt that says “Blog = Borg” yet?
I agree that it’s interesting, and I am glad they’re doing it. Is there a TShirt that says “Blog = Borg” yet?
i don’t think i think linking is integral to the thing. or at least to all of it. it surely is a magical part of the function, but i think i think writing can still be interior even in the position of supposedly being ‘networked’
i don’t think i think linking is integral to the thing. or at least to all of it. it surely is a magical part of the function, but i think i think writing can still be interior even in the position of supposedly being ‘networked’
There should be!
There should be!
What counts as a blog post though? Literally anything that is posted on a blog?
What counts as a blog post though? Literally anything that is posted on a blog?
what counts as a blog? is htmlgiant a blog? is the rumpus?
what counts as a blog? is htmlgiant a blog? is the rumpus?
That too.
That too.
I guess this will make for a compelling book.
I guess this will make for a compelling book.
AM I A BLOG? ARE OTHERS BLOGS?
AM I A BLOG? ARE OTHERS BLOGS?
It sounds to me like they want personal narrative and are not interested in critical essays.
It sounds to me like they want personal narrative and are not interested in critical essays.
What bugs me about Creative Nonfiction is that they’re constantly screaming about their cutting-edge-ness and their enlivening of the nonfiction genre, but the magazine and their other publications are so fundamentally conservative they make the American Scholar look like the last hope of the avant garde.
If you look at what they actually choose to publish and champion, you’ll see that “Creative Nonfiction” is a parade of semi-reported personal essays that recycle the same three or four tropes over and over (“the braided essay,” anyone?) by way of mostly lame-ish language.
The real action in nonfiction is happening elsewhere. Even the essays in the Missouri Review are more adventuresome. For narrative nonfiction, Esquire and GQ and the New Yorker just cream CNF. For work that champions the lyrical, look no farther than the Iowa Review or Columbia or any number of the little magazines out of Brooklyn. For old-school anything-goes-ness, check out Patrick Madden’s Quotidiana, or even Harper’s (where DFW’s and Wells Towers’s nonfiction stuff was first championed in a serious way), and don’t forget the Rumpus. (!)
The blogs CNF picks are most often turgid. The stories they publish, ditto (mostly.)
The one exception to this parade of crappiness in the CNF Empire (and, let’s be honest, it’s all just a vanity project that aims to up the profile of Lee Gutkind, right?) is Dinty Moore’s Brevity Magazine, which is consistently sharp, sharply made, the stories sharply chosen, the writing surprising and crisp and sometimes even new. And Moore himself is game for all kinds of adventure, from Google Maps stories to old-fashioned narrative.
If I had my hand on the levers of power in Pittsburgh, I’d rename the magazine NonFiction (creative is a hack word, and it’s embarrassing when people call good work “creative”), and I’d make Moore the editor, and I’d get some of that Drue Heinz money and solicit the big dogs and send them somewhere like the New Yorker does, and I’d do the same with the lesser-known badasses (fiction writers and poets, especially, because these are usually the people who write the better nonfiction, anyway), and just set them loose on the world, with only two pieces of instruction: 1. Be super-ambitious, and 2. Make something like we’ve never seen before, and if you can’t, make something like we’ve seen before, but better. Then give them the resources to do it. And, please, no more of this “braided essay” shit.
What bugs me about Creative Nonfiction is that they’re constantly screaming about their cutting-edge-ness and their enlivening of the nonfiction genre, but the magazine and their other publications are so fundamentally conservative they make the American Scholar look like the last hope of the avant garde.
If you look at what they actually choose to publish and champion, you’ll see that “Creative Nonfiction” is a parade of semi-reported personal essays that recycle the same three or four tropes over and over (“the braided essay,” anyone?) by way of mostly lame-ish language.
The real action in nonfiction is happening elsewhere. Even the essays in the Missouri Review are more adventuresome. For narrative nonfiction, Esquire and GQ and the New Yorker just cream CNF. For work that champions the lyrical, look no farther than the Iowa Review or Columbia or any number of the little magazines out of Brooklyn. For old-school anything-goes-ness, check out Patrick Madden’s Quotidiana, or even Harper’s (where DFW’s and Wells Towers’s nonfiction stuff was first championed in a serious way), and don’t forget the Rumpus. (!)
The blogs CNF picks are most often turgid. The stories they publish, ditto (mostly.)
The one exception to this parade of crappiness in the CNF Empire (and, let’s be honest, it’s all just a vanity project that aims to up the profile of Lee Gutkind, right?) is Dinty Moore’s Brevity Magazine, which is consistently sharp, sharply made, the stories sharply chosen, the writing surprising and crisp and sometimes even new. And Moore himself is game for all kinds of adventure, from Google Maps stories to old-fashioned narrative.
If I had my hand on the levers of power in Pittsburgh, I’d rename the magazine NonFiction (creative is a hack word, and it’s embarrassing when people call good work “creative”), and I’d make Moore the editor, and I’d get some of that Drue Heinz money and solicit the big dogs and send them somewhere like the New Yorker does, and I’d do the same with the lesser-known badasses (fiction writers and poets, especially, because these are usually the people who write the better nonfiction, anyway), and just set them loose on the world, with only two pieces of instruction: 1. Be super-ambitious, and 2. Make something like we’ve never seen before, and if you can’t, make something like we’ve seen before, but better. Then give them the resources to do it. And, please, no more of this “braided essay” shit.
Right, but what I mean is I could write an essay that read like a New Yorker essay and post in on my blog, does that make it a “blog” post for the purposes of a collection?
Or does it actually have to read like what we think of as blog writing?
I always think a big part of blog writing is the hyperlinking and the way blog posts comment on each other. You lose all that in a book form.
Right, but what I mean is I could write an essay that read like a New Yorker essay and post in on my blog, does that make it a “blog” post for the purposes of a collection?
Or does it actually have to read like what we think of as blog writing?
I always think a big part of blog writing is the hyperlinking and the way blog posts comment on each other. You lose all that in a book form.
But if you could write an essay that read like a first-rate New Yorker essay, wouldn’t you want to do more with it than post it on your blog, anyway?
I agree with what you’re saying about blog posts, by the way. I just don’t think the CNF folks get it.
But if you could write an essay that read like a first-rate New Yorker essay, wouldn’t you want to do more with it than post it on your blog, anyway?
I agree with what you’re saying about blog posts, by the way. I just don’t think the CNF folks get it.
I love this comment.
Also, I hate the word “vibrant” as in “vibrant new voices.”
I love this comment.
Also, I hate the word “vibrant” as in “vibrant new voices.”
You don’t have to lose it in book form.
http://otherelectricities.com/vp/index.html
You don’t have to lose it in book form.
http://otherelectricities.com/vp/index.html
This is all very interesting. I agree that the linking, commenting, etc etc are integral parts of blogging.
I don’t have a problem with trying to “translate” blog material to book form. But I see the endeavor as needing a way to integrate linking, hyperlinking, comment threads, etc. when they’re there. It could get very complex.
Someone recently said in a comment thread here (at HTML GIANT) that they imagine twenty years from now people will be writing theses about Tao Lin and his GChat Realism buddies. (Sorry, I’m inserting Tao Lin into this thread!) I imagine that in twenty years, people will be writing theses on (some) blogging “as literature”.
This is all very interesting. I agree that the linking, commenting, etc etc are integral parts of blogging.
I don’t have a problem with trying to “translate” blog material to book form. But I see the endeavor as needing a way to integrate linking, hyperlinking, comment threads, etc. when they’re there. It could get very complex.
Someone recently said in a comment thread here (at HTML GIANT) that they imagine twenty years from now people will be writing theses about Tao Lin and his GChat Realism buddies. (Sorry, I’m inserting Tao Lin into this thread!) I imagine that in twenty years, people will be writing theses on (some) blogging “as literature”.