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Technology and Creative Nonfiction

 

Note: This section of my project is for the purpose of meeting the requirements of English 808 only. It will not be a part of the final web page that will be made available to my creative nonfiction students.

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Last month on Facebook, I revealed to my “friends” that I am bipolar. I did this on the evening of the day that the news broke that John and Alicia Nash died in a car crash. A pivotal period of their lives was chronicled in the movie A Beautiful Mind. Nash was a schizophrenic and Noble Prize winning mathematician based at Princeton. His ability, with the support of his wife, to maintain a robust academic life while simultaneously managing a mental illness has always inspired me. So I “came out,” so to speak. Why not? Those with mental illness should not have to hide in the closet anymore. Many of us, like Nash, lead productive lives even as we struggle with our brain diseases. Anyway, I reasoned, I am working on the manuscript of a book that includes an essay in which I reveal that I am bipolar and in which I describe how my dogs help me manage my condition.

 

As I reviewed the syllabus for English 808, I began to reflect on how I blend literacy and technology. My recent Facebook decision came to mind. I received some “likes” in response to my post, but not many. I wondered why. Did my readers consider the information too personal? Did the subject of mental illness make them feel uncomfortable? Did they think I was being too narcissistic? Thinking back to other posts of mine, it seems the ones that have received the most “likes” are the ones that have something to do with my dogs. Maybe my post about being bipolar was too serious. Maybe among the 138 people whom I can connect with on Facebook, pictures of dogs and cats and kids are OK, and maybe statements about mushing and picnics and vacations are OK, but serious stuff just isn’t right for the forum. I wanted to scream, “But I’m a creative nonfiction writer! Exposing the raw truth of my life through writing is what I do!” Maybe I should have sent a warning message to those who sent me friend requests. Maybe I should have explained how a creative nonfiction writer views Facebook. At least this creative nonfiction writer.

 

In doing research for my 808 final project, I read several articles about how technology and creative nonfiction intersect. Two were particularly helpful. In the Journal of Media Practice, Gilly Smith of the University of Brighton writes about requiring her television, radio, and creative writing students to blog. She states: “They, of course, were horrified; like most people they had always thought of blogging as an online Speaker’s Corner, new technology’s vox populi providing fresh meat for newshounds, a cyberspace where anyone can comment on your innermost thoughts, see through you, hate you or love you, stalk you or ignore you. It is a place where most of them would never be seen dead.” Nonetheless, Smith made her students blog daily about their creative processes. In the end, they found that the feedback they received from their readers helped them focus their sprouting ideas into doable, and successful, projects. Likewise Towles Kintz writes in the journal Creative Nonfiction that blogging “enables us to create personas, pseudo-selves who can expose our real personality traits with less trepidation; email, which allows us to write what we would not, or could not, bravely say face-to-face, emboldens the avatar. Both electronic avenues can enable one’s literary persona to emerge.”

I realize now that I see Facebook as a blog site. A location for my “literary persona to emerge.” It is also for me, like Smith’s students, a place to test ideas that I’m writing about the old-fashioned way—via Word or with pen and paper. The type of response, or lack thereof, that I received to my post (read: mini blog) about being bipolar indicates to me that should my friends purchase my book, many will be uncomfortable with what I reveal about my brain disease, for the essay is intimately graphic. And it’s a mosaic essay. So even its structure is disturbing. I’m going to include it in my book anyway. And I’m going to continue to embrace technology by using Facebook as a place for mini blogs about topics I want to play with in essays and in poems. After all, if my readers don’t like my doing so, they can use technology to quickly and irrevocably “unfriend” me.

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