Last week, in Part I, I ended on something of a cliff hanger. I suggested that it is our duty as writers of creative nonfiction to take an intelligent attitude toward our subject matter. The question I posed in closing was "How do we take this intelligent attitude?"

Before we get into talking about technique, however, it might be a good idea to address the question of why. After all, beginning writers are often resistant to personal reflectivity (especially when it means engaging with what they perceive as “negative” subject matter). A few of the more common “justifications” one might hear for avoiding reflectivity are, as follows:

One topic that keeps coming up in our class is the need for reflection in personal narrative and memoir. These genres don’t simply tell us a story. Rather, they tell us a story and use it as the vehicle for introspection and thoughtfulness. In many ways, this differs from what we expect to see in fiction (where the mantra “show, don’t tell” warns against editorializing, sermon, polemic, and anything else that might break the fictional dream). In most fiction, it’s considered bad craft if the author steps in and explains the underpinnings of the scene. But nonfiction is not fiction, and though it may borrow some of fiction’s approaches, it doesn't move in the same direction or with the same trajectory, as Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola make clear in their book Tell It Slant: “In contrast [to the short story’s narrative trajectory], a more essaylike narrative might have a stronger vertical line to it, the reflective voice that comments upon the scenes it re-creates . . . . This reflective voice runs underneath the horizontal line, creating a sense of movement that delves below the surface of narrative.”

I’ll be honest, I hate the word “reflection”; it sounds like something I’d teach to my composition students after asking them to write about the moments that have allegedly changed their lives and broadened their horizons. It feels artificial, clumsy, inorganic. I prefer the word “interrogation” (despite the images it calls up of secret police and blindfolded suspects) because I think, more often than not, in good nonfiction we are simply asking questions of our past and about what it means to be human (usually questions that are, and should remain, unanswerable), as opposed to cogitating on what we've supposedly learned.

Either way—reflection or interrogation—this unique opportunity for “open thought” stems from the demands of the form itself.