Mind the gap
October 31st seems like a good date to talk about stepping into the void: what do you do when faced with a gap in your memory or research? It can seem scary—but you might just find treasure if you take the time to explore what’s missing.
Craft: Fill in the blanks
There is a scene in my manuscript Grudge that puzzles readers, about a Christmas visit my parents made to my home in Toronto. It was the early 2000s. Mom and Dad were recently retired, I was working at Chatelaine magazine. I’d stopped going home for Christmas a few years earlier, tired of the fights that inevitably accompanied the journey east, blaming my absence on the high cost of holiday travel rather than on the emotional toll of the visits. But that year, my first in the tiny house I’d just bought, I imagined things might turn out differently if they visited me instead. Maybe, I thought, we could do Christmas together again, on my turf, in my home. Picturing a relaxed Christmas Eve and a jolly Christmas dinner, I extended an invitation for Mom and Dad to spend the holidays with me that year.
The visit didn’t go well, as I wrote in an early draft:
By the evening of the twenty-sixth, I put on my coat and walked out into a storm to escape to a friend’s house, crying as snot ran down my face. I trudged through snow to the subway station, my eyelashes freezing together as my tears turned to ice in the wind. “I’m never doing this again,” I thought.
The problem? I couldn’t remember any of the specifics of the irritations and arguments that sparked my despair. But those who read the section couldn’t understand how I could not remember something with such dramatic impact. And so the scene felt frustrating, unfinished.
Gaps in memory are a particular problem for memoir writers. But all writers of nonfiction face blanks of some kind: things experts don’t know or that interviewees or witnesses to events can’t remember (or disagree on), details that aren’t documented in other source materials, bits of information that vanish because they weren’t noticed or noted at the time or because those who did notice are no longer with us or are unwilling to share what they know. So how do we fill in those gaps? Can’t we just leverage the “creative” in “creative nonfiction” and imagine our way to a solution?
Some writers do. Author Vivian Gornick, whose memoir Fierce Attachments tops the New York Times list of the 50 best memoirs of the last 50 years has admitted reordering events, creating dialogue and more generally “crafting” her memoir, favouring literary standards over strictly factual ones. Though she says memoir must be based in the writer’s life, she has written that the facts matter less than the insights derived from them:
At the heart of the embroilment lay a single insight: that I could not leave my mother because I had become my mother. This was my bit of wisdom, the story I wanted badly to trace out. The context in which the book is set — our life in the Bronx in the 1950s, alternating with walks taken in Manhattan in the 1980s — that was the situation; the story was the flash of insight. If the book has any strength at all, it is because I remained scrupulously faithful to that story.
A memoir is a tale taken from life — that is, from actual, not imagined, occurrences — related by a first-person narrator who is undeniably the writer. Beyond these bare requirements, it has the same responsibility as the novel or the short story — to shape a piece of experience so that it moves from a tale of private interest to one with meaning for the disinterested reader. What actually happened is only raw material; what the writer makes of what happened is all that matters.
But memoirists aren’t the only ones who have sometimes opted for flexibility with the facts: authors of other forms of nonfiction have also been known—or found—to have reached across a factual gap and filled it in with a bit of imagined fiction. John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, admitted creating dialogue—and placing it in the mouths of real characters. “I call it rounding the corners to make a better narrative,” he said in a New York Times article at the time. It turned out he’d done a bit more than that, even describing himself meeting the eventual murder victim though Berendt didn’t arrive in Savannah until after the man was dead.
My colleague Dean Jobb, author of The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer, is a stickler for the facts, and prides himself on scrupulously documenting his research sources (check out his endnotes sections in Dr. Cream or his earlier book Empire of Deception to see what I mean). If dialogue appears in quote marks in one of Dean’s books, it’s because a contemporary source quoted that person saying those words. If a scene is described as happening on a sunny day, then Dean has checked the weather records to confirm the day was cloudless. But what if you know that two of your characters, Flora Eliza Brooks and a young Dr. Cream, were regularly socializing during the summer of 1876, and you don’t know how they spent their time together? You don’t have to make it up, Dean argues. Do the research to see what was going on in Waterloo that summer, and you can write this:
Despite the heat, there was plenty to occupy a young couple’s time. The Waterloo Red Stockings played the first baseball games that summer in a village where cricket had long been the king of outdoor sports. Brooks and Cream could stroll to one of the outdoor evening concerts staged by Hubbard’s Brass Band. Or they could join the groups of young people who rowed across Waterloo Lake for secluded picnics—and a chance to be free from chaperones. W.W. Cole’s Circus and its clowns, daredevils, and exotic animals arrived on August 4, packed inside thirty-six railroad cars. As many as eight thousand people descended on Waterloo—filling Brooks House and other hotels—to marvel at the elephants and zebras, the chariot races, the bravery of Conklin the lion tamer. No doubt Brooks appreciated having a man on her arm; local women were complaining that tramps and drunks were insulting them on the streets. “We would advise no lady to venture out after dark without a proper escort,” the editor of the Advertiser noted. “There are too many roughs about to make it safe.”
Dean doesn’t know what Brooks and Cream did. But he’s painted a vibrant scene of what their options were, grounded in dozens of specific facts. He doesn’t have to create an imagined scene—though his readers might, based on the facts he’s presented.
So what about memoirists? Can we deal with blanks in our knowledge in the same way? I’d argue that rather than creatively filling the gaps with fictional material, we should admit what we don’t know and lean into what we do know. As I returned to my manuscript, that’s what I did in this first revision:
As the city shut down for Christmas and Boxing Day, and we settled in for forty-eight hours of too much family in too few square feet, the mood soured—or rather, Dad’s mood soured. By the evening of the twenty-sixth, I put on my coat and walked out into a storm to escape to a friend’s house, crying as snot ran down my face. I trudged through snow to the subway station, my eyelashes freezing together as my tears turned to ice in the wind. “I’m never doing this again,” I thought.
Now, I can’t unravel the specifics of that night because there were simply too many holidays like it: sarcasm dripping over dinner, insults exhaled over drinks, barbs finding their marks over dessert. I’d thought that changing the location of our celebration would make a difference. But if anything, being on someone else’s turf triggered Dad’s desire to mark this new territory with the scent of his antagonism. “How can you not remember the details?” a friend asked me later. But the truth is, blurring the specifics was a coping mechanism: if I remembered every unkind word, every insult, I wouldn’t have been able to make myself spend time with my parents—and I feared that cutting Dad out of my life would mean cutting Mom off too.
The irony is, I could have made up the details: Dad is dead, and my mother and siblings don’t remember what we fought about that Christmas. If I claimed to remember, making up a credible-sounding argument, they wouldn’t disagree. But I would know it is fiction—and it would feel like a cheat. Perhaps more importantly, though, I wouldn’t push myself to explore why I couldn’t remember—and asking that question led to an important insight about the dynamics of our family: “forgetting” the details was a coping mechanism in maintaining a relationship with my mother, a relationship I valued enough to keep putting up with my father’s emotional abuse. Still, as I looked at the passage again, it seemed there was room to dive deeper still:
As the city shut down for Christmas and Boxing Day, and we settled in for forty-eight hours of too much family in too few square feet, the mood soured—or rather, Dad’s mood soured. Now, I can’t unravel the specifics of that night because there were simply too many holidays like it: sarcasm dripping over dinner, insults exhaled over drinks, barbs finding their marks over dessert. I’d thought that changing the location of our celebration would make a difference. But if anything, being on someone else’s turf triggered Dad’s desire to mark this new territory with the scent of his antagonism.
By the evening of the twenty-sixth, I put on my coat and walked out into a storm to escape to a friend’s house, crying as snot ran down my face. I trudged through snow to the subway station, my eyelashes freezing together as my tears turned to ice in the wind. “I’m never doing this again,” I thought.
I don’t remember what we fought about. “How can you not remember the details?” a friend asked me later. But the truth is, blurring the specifics was a coping mechanism. The phrase “forgive and forget” suggests an order to these actions: we choose to forgive, and then opt to forget. But in my experience, in situations where not forgiving my father was a threat to my relationship with Mom, who I still loved deeply, this order was more often reversed. It wasn’t an active choice: I simply didn’t dwell on what had happened. I couldn’t erase the memory of crying in the snow, but I could let the details leading up to those icy tears simply float away, carried off like dead leaves down a stream. With the details fading, I didn’t exactly forgive—but since I’d forgotten, I didn’t have to. My relationship with my mother was preserved. And Dad got to ride along for free.
That gap in my memory was an opportunity for deeper insight.
Exercises
Do the work: If you’re teetering on the edge of a knowledge gap in your writing, take a step back and survey your surroundings. Can you bridge that gap by:
Interviewing others who were there, or who might have been told what happened by others who were there?
Are there documentary sources you haven’t consulted?
As in the example from Dean Jobb’s book above, can you paint a scene with the facts you do have (or that you could find) about what might have happened, what else was going on—being clear with your reader in the process?
Writer Clive Thompson argues that, for nonfiction writers at least, “writer’s block” is more often “reporter’s block”:
You’re having trouble writing not because you can’t find the right words, but because you don’t know what you’re trying to say. You don’t have the right facts at hand… If the words aren’t flowing, usually the problem is the research isn’t there. To say something, you have to have something to say.
Check out his article “You don’t have writer’s block. You have ‘reporter’s block.’” on Medium.
Ask “why” instead of “what”: The details you wish you had might simply be impossible to know. So instead of asking “what” ask “why.” Why is this gap here? Is there something interesting to say about why this knowledge has slipped away, is obscured or lost? Meet your readers’ potential frustration—and your own—head-on by saying “I don’t know what happened next” or “The details are lost to history” or something similar—and then go on to explore why that gap is there. My colleague Lorri Neilsen Glenn’s book Following the River emerged as she explored the unknowables about the Red River women in her lineage—women whose lives were undocumented because the keepers of the documents of that time (the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries) viewed women’s lives as unworthy of notice. Faced with so many unknowns, Lorri could have abandoned the project. Instead, she did two things: she broadened her scope beyond just her direct female ancestors, using the fragments she found about other Indigenous and Métis women to enrich her story; and she moved in closer, examining each fragment with a detective’s eye, looking for insights that might be lost to a more cursory view. In Lorri’s hands, the story emerges from those gaps—the question “why” providing illumination along the way.
What I’m reading
I just finished Matrix, the latest from novelist Lauren Groff, about 12th-century poet Marie de France. As reviewer Kathryn Harrison put it in the New York Times: “Marie is a perfect vessel for a writer with robust vision: So little is known about her that Groff can proceed untroubled by questions of historical accuracy.” And while Harrison is correct—this is a book of extraordinary imagination—it is also a work deeply grounded in fact, as Groff has clearly expended great effort in researching the most minute details of 12th-century life. It’s a compelling read, a book about female ambition and pushing at the boundaries imposed by society. Highly recommended.
Other good stuff
Listen: I’ve long been an admirer of nonfiction writer Mary Roach. As a beginning magazine writer, I used to relish her health features in the now-defunct magazine Hippocrates: she invariably found an intriguing way into her stories, with scenes that allowed for humour and insight. I recall one in particular, about the common cold, which included scenes from a cold research program that, if I recall correctly, featured volunteers isolated at a facility in the British moors. Roach has since gone on to become a leading nonfiction writer, with books such as Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, and most recently, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law. The Longform podcast recently featured Roach in a one-hour episode, including a discussion of how she came to write her first book, Stiff: an agent approached her after reading her columns on Salon.com, and suggested that she look at which columns had been most-read and consider writing a book on one of those topics. When Roach discovered that her most popular columns had been about cadavers, she hesitated: who would want to read a book about cadavers? As she worked on the book, her worries continued to grow: was her tone too undignified, disrespectful? Turns out her tone was just right, and the book’s popularity grew mostly through word-of-mouth in the first six months or so after its publication, when it made its way onto The New York Times bestseller list. The Longform podcast is a terrific conversation, with Roach sharing insights on research, writing and the book biz that are sure to be of interest to any nonfiction enthusiast.
Book industry stuff
It’s still all about the supply chain As someone with a book out this fall, these supply chain stories are a bit nauseating. Here’s the latest from the New York Times. (If you are looking for Toufah, the book I co-authored with Toufah Jallow: It’s out in the US, and your best bet is your local indie bookstore or Barnes & Noble online—Amazon.com’s stock is mostly through third-party sellers with longer delivery times. The Canadian hardcover edition will be released here in Canada on February 1, 2021 and can be ordered from your local indie bookstore, Indigo or Amazon.ca. And don’t forget that you can pre-order, which should put you at the front of the queue when the book comes out in Canada!)
A new social media platform for book lovers? I hate the term “disruptor” as much as the next cynical Twitter user, and so will admit to skepticism when I clicked on this Forbes piece about a new social media platform for authors and readers. Still, I was interested enough to sign up for the beta version—I’m waitlisted, so I’ll let you know what I think if/when I get a chance to try it out.
Courses, community & stuff
Find your community, part 1: If you’re interested in finding out more about the limited-residency MFA in Creative Nonfiction at the University of King’s College, we’ve got three free information sessions coming up in the next week. While we’ve targeted the sessions to particular geographic areas, you can sign up for the one that best suits your schedule. Find out more on the King’s website.
Find your community, part 2: The Creative Nonfiction Collective is offering a webinar for members later in November called “Writing Partnerships: Find Your Perfect Match.” The session will cover how writers can work together, from mentoring, to one-to-one writing partnerships, writing groups and more. CNFC is a great organization with reasonable membership fees: $50 CDN annually ($25 for students), which entitles you to free access to their webinars and discounted fees for their annual conference.
Find your community, part 3: Chelene Knight, author, agent and owner of Breathing Space Creative, is launching a new program, The Forever Writers Club. I sat in on a session Chelene hosted introducing the club, which will focus on creating good writing processes, wellness and self-care for writers, and understanding the publishing industry. The subscription-based program features lots of webinars, online meetings and coaching, and the fee reflects that, but I’m certain Chelene, a committed advocate for writers, will be a terrific leader in creating a supportive and productive community.
Obligatory photo of Buddy (and me this time too)
Buddy says “Nicola Davison at Snickerdoodle Photography did a great job of getting my good side—though to be honest, that’s easy when you’re as handsome as I am!”
The stuff at the bottom
I’m a writer, editor and teacher. This is my personal e-newsletter on the craft of writing nonfiction, sprinkled with occasional feminism and social justice. You can find out more about me on my website at kimpittaway.com. You can also find me on Facebook and Twitter. I’m the executive director of the MFA in Creative Nonfiction limited residency program at the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. If you’re interested in writing a nonfiction book, you should check our program out!
And finally
Share your online course and community recommendations, links to cool things writers and other creative folks are doing and whatever else strikes you in the comments section of the web version of this post.