I’ve always
enjoyed reading nonfiction. Some of my favorite childhood memories are of lazy
afternoons spent sprawled on the floor in front of my family’s set of encyclopedias,
letting fate decide which random topic I would learn about next. Perhaps it
seems only natural, then, that I would be drawn to writing nonfiction, too.
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| Photo courtesy of Ziko/Wikimedia Commons |
But there was
another, more shameful, reason for my choice. As a beginning writer, I thought
writing nonfiction would be safer. I knew that writing good fiction requires
the author to be vulnerable, to bare a part of the soul. To share our
imaginations with readers, after all, invites them to take a peek at the inner
workings of our minds—and allows them to judge us for it! Terrifying, right?
I was, at
least initially, not nearly so bold. I thought nonfiction would be the easy way
out. After all, nonfiction is just facts, right? Boy, did I have a lot to
learn!
For years,
I worked on draft after draft of the manuscript that eventually became Emmanuel’s Dream, a true story about an inspiring
man from Ghana who was born with a deformed leg. I’d done all the research and
written a competent biography, but I kept getting feedback that there was just “something
missing.”
At one
point, my well-meaning and incredibly supportive husband said something along
the lines of, “Why are you [an able-bodied white woman from Wisconsin] writing
this story anyway? Maybe it’s time to move on to something you know more about.”
I had to wonder if maybe he was right. What did I have in common with Emmanuel? Why was I writing this story in
the first place?
It turns
out these were just the questions I needed to ask to come up with an approach
that finally worked. You see, I’d had all the facts lined up in a satisfying order,
but what was missing was… me.
I’d been
so focused on writing the facts that I’d carefully removed all of my own feelings
about it. But isn’t authentic human emotion just another kind of truth?
And isn’t it, perhaps, the most important kind of truth we can share with
one another?
When I
finally sat down and got clear about my “why” for telling that story, the “how”
to best tell it revealed itself almost immediately. For me, it isn’t really
a story about having a disability or even Emmanuel himself. It’s about being
left out and overlooked, feeling frustrated by injustice and inequality, and wanting
to make the world a better place.
Those are
all things I felt deeply as a child, and things I can still relate to as an
adult. The book reveals as much about me, I think, as it does about Emmanuel.
So much for being the easy way out!
Since then, I’ve grown much more
comfortable sharing myself with readers, and I use the same approach for every
book I write. Curiosity about a subject isn’t enough: I need to know why I’m curious about it.
In my teen how-to
guide, Be a Changemaker: How to Start Something that Matters,
for example, my “why” was the intense yearning to change the world that I had
felt as a young person and the frustration and disappointment of not
knowing how to begin. That “why” helped me shape both the structure and
content of the book.
In my middle-grade series, Two Truths and a Lie (co-authored with
Ammi-Joan Paquette), my “why” is the pleasant memory of exploring encyclopedias
and discovering new and surprising things. I want readers to revel in their
curiosity and delight in newfound knowledge, just like me.
These days, the first question I
ask myself when considering a new project is, “Why?” The answers help me choose
which ideas to pursue and then guide me through the entire process from initial
research to publication and beyond.
Writing books like this allows
readers to get a glimpse of who I really am while also learning about the topic
at hand. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to realize that revealing myself to
readers in this way, while daunting, is actually one of the most rewarding aspects
of being an author.
My favorite fan letters say
things like: “It was the first time I ever saw myself in a book,” and “Thank
you for showing me it’s okay to be like this,” and “It feels like you wrote
this just for me!”
What could possibly be better
than that?
When I began my writing career I had
never dreamed a nonfiction author could connect with readers in this way. But don’t
we all write—and read, for that matter—to connect with someone else? I believe
we do, which means that the best books have to do just that: allow for connection.
But connection requires authenticity and vulnerability. So all authors, whether
of fiction or nonfiction, owe it to our readers to dig deep… terrifying or not.
Laurie Ann Thompson writes for young people to help them understand
the world we live in so they can make it a better place for all, as seen in her
award-winning nonfiction books including Emmanuel’s Dream, a
picture book biography of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah, which was the recipient of the
Schneider Family Book Award and was named an ALA Notable Book and a CCBC
Choice, among other accolades. She lives near Seattle with her family and their
elderly pets. Learn more at lauriethompson.com or @lauriethompson.
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