True or false

As with so many of my brainstorms, this one started with Sean Taylor. He asked those of us who write both fiction and nonfiction to think about the ways in which our writing processes differ.

Nonfiction is my bread and butter. I took my journalism degree into the newspaper world in 1997 and have worked in the news ever since, including my time on the national ethics committee and as president of the St. Louis Society of Professional Journalists.

As you long-time readers know, I was a full-time newspaper reporter for more than 20 years and I covered every beat except sports. I have stood in the snow outside a murder site and waited for an indicted governor at the end of a long dusty road and interviewed President Obama before he was anybody. Sometimes it was the county fair and sometimes it was the vicious beating death of a toddler. I wrote stories that changed the law and stories no one read.

I went freelance in 2018 so I could have the freedom to go to grad school and begin teaching, but I have continued to work for local and regional news organizations, for regional and national magazines and so on, including a few investigative pieces. Freelancing has also given me the freedom to write more personal essays, writing essays and other free-form nonfiction, most of which is published here on Patreon and Medium if it is not picked up by a magazine.

As far as the process goes, nonfiction and fiction use completely different brain cells, at least for me. My newspaper colleagues used to joke that I could sneak in…