3 Non-Fiction Writers Who Inspire Me to Write
Although I love to write fiction it’s non-fiction where I tend to be able to make some financial income from my writing. This takes a few different forms but mainly blogs, copywriting, editing, social media captions, and similar content needs that many businesses have.
Every now and then I get the opportunity to write non-fiction and creative non-fiction essays for different publications, and if I’m honest, it’s these forms that I find the most enjoyment in when it comes to writing for myself.
Distinct from fiction, non-fiction can open doors into our own heads in unique ways, and help us share some of what we struggle with, with each other.
What Is Non-Fiction?
I wrote previously about genre-bending books, and I think there is a lot of this that happens across non-fiction, especially where personal experiences and memories are included and blended with more critical or journalistic aspects.
As a general rule, some of the key criteria of non-fiction work include:
Events and stories described must be true.
Non-fiction must include facts that can be proven outside of the text.
Writers can choose which facts to include, exclude, or amplify, but they must be true.
Non-fiction should inform or explain ideas on a particular topic, usually linked to the author’s own areas of professional interest.
Non-fiction that meets the above criteria falls into a sub-category called Informative Non-Fiction. It usually includes interviews, articles, and other data that serve the overall aim of the book. This type of non-fiction tends to be textbooks and academic books.
The more popular non-fiction that I (and most other readers) enjoy reading for leisure is Literary Non-Fiction. This style of writing tends to read more like fiction, with the writer sharing personal anecdotes, experience, thoughts, and ideas. These stories are usually presented with strong elements of fiction, including ‘characters’, scene-setting, dialogue, and plot. Writers can use literary non-fiction to explain and inform, but in many instances, it is also used to share more personal experiences and narratives, in amusing, enjoyable, and insightful ways.
There are a few writers that fall into this category that I find myself turning to repeatedly, who for me, have nailed the non-fiction genre:
Rebecca Solnit
“We think we tell stories, but stories often tell us, tell us to love or hate, to see or be seen. Often, too often, stories saddle us, ride us, whip us onward, tell us what to do, and we do it without questioning. The task of learning to be free requires learning to hear them, to question them, to pause and hear silence, to name them, and then become a story-teller.”
― Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby
Solnit has written a number of non-fiction books, ranging from politics to history, feminism to memoir. Her arguably most popular book, Men Explain Things To Me, was the first of her work that I read and from there I was hooked!
Solnit’s work inspires me for the ways she draws in multiple complex themes and topics and masterly weaves them together, but not in a way that might deter or isolate the reader. I love the way she builds connections, and stacks some of the bigger questions about life through prose that draws you in and keeps you hooked.
Annie Dillard
“One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.”
― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
Dillard, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, has work published in a number of genres including poetry, fiction, and literary non-fiction. I’ve read two of her collections of short literary non-fiction essays and fell in love with the quiet ways she describes different events and experiences through enigmatic prose.
Total Eclipse is the essay that drew me into her work. An eclipse is a powerful event but Dillard’s writing is equally powerful in re-creating the subtle horror a missing sun can wield over us, if only for a moment. She firmly places you on the hilltop with her and in the blink of reading this essay, I recalled all the other times I’ve witnessed a partial or total eclipse - memories that had been locked away for years.
Steven Pressfield
“Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember one rule of thumb: the more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.”
― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles
Pressfield has written numerous fiction books, but it is his 2002 non-fiction work The War Of Art that is worth seeking out, especially for writers.
It probably makes sense that this particular non-fiction book inspires me to write, as that is its core purpose for existing - but I will say that it does it in an impeccably light-hearted and incredibly motivating way. It’s only a slim book, likely deliberate so you can’t use it as procrastination crux, filled with lots of pitchy air-punch worthy sentences to encourage you to unlock the creative inside.
(I will add that while keeping this book on my desk to return to in moments of need, I can’t honestly recommend his second book, Do The Work. Stick with this one, it has everything you need.)
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I want to flag that these writers speak to me because our experiences are pretty aligned, and their life trajectories run on lines that I easily identify with. A goal of mine for the next few years is to uncover new non-fiction writers whose own paths in life aren’t similar to mine.
While all writing helps us to feel connected as humans, I do believe that non-fiction is a place where we can begin to feel seen in deeper ways but also uncover the nuances hidden within our life experiences.
When I am pondering on the different questions (or battles) of life and writing, non-fiction is a genre that always seems to see me through.
