Nonfiction

Fiction. From the Latin, fictium. Meaning created. From fingere--to shape or fashion. Therefore nonfiction means not created, unshaped, unfashioned?

Can we write such a thing as true nonfiction?

I often tell those who ask that my favorite kind of writing is nonfiction prose. Personal Essay. Memoir. Reflection. Diary. But even as I reflect on the numerous nonfiction peices I wrote in college as a writing major, were those essays completely unshaped?

Nonfiction is such a difficult genre; though shouldn't it be the easiest? How hard is it to recount a story exactly the way it happened? We do it hundreds of times a day--I tell my husband about the fiasco I experienced at the grocery store, he tells me about an awkward elevator ride at work, my best friend tells me about something the kids in her elementary school class said, my former roommate calls with more nightmare stalking from her exboyfriend--and the stories go on. Nonfiction doesn't have the challenges of fiction. There is no conflict about where the plot should go, how to make the story move forward, which character is the murderer (it's always the butler anyway). With nonfiction, you already know the ending. You lived it; there's nothing to decide.

Right?

Nonfiction is unshaped--pure. Only it isn't. I took Autobiographical Writing my senior year of college, and a friend and fellow writer in the class posted on her Facebook status the night before a major peice was due: Writing a memoir feels a lot like making up things that didn't really happen in my life (Lacy Barker). I can only add that I felt the exact same way. Even if I wasn't making up things exactly, I was certainly attempting to attribute meaning and emotions that I didn't feel at the time of the events. Isn't that shaping?

I know that creative nonfiction has a long history and has certain rules of its own. And I'm not trying to make a moral judgement--whether creating emotions or shaping facts is right or wrong--I'm just a writer. And as such, we often consider ourselves to be shapers or creators as artists. The very words that are synonomous with fiction. 

Can we write such a thing as true nonfiction?