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Research Your Life | The Center for Fiction

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One of the most important exercises Annie Dillard had us do when I was her student in literary nonfiction as an undergrad was to research your own life. You want to write about your life, she said, approximately. How much do you know about your life? Do you know the major industries of your hometown? When was the town settled? Do you know the seasons, the flora and fauna, the population size, the climate… on and on she went, rattling off points for us to check. And off we went, to research our hometowns. We did not know much, we discovered. I was from a small town in Maine, Cape Elizabeth, on the southern coast, and I felt I did creditably well at the basics without looking: I knew the population was approximately 8,000. I knew there were farms amid suburban stretches, ocean on three sides, two light houses, and abandoned naval installations that I had played inside of as a child. I knew my town was rich, or, parts of it were, and that many of the richest families commuted to work in P

One of the most important exercises Annie Dillard had us do when I was her student in literary nonfiction as an undergrad was to research your own life. You want to write about your life , she said, approximately. How much do you know about your life? Do you know the major industries of your hometown? When was the town settled? Do you know the seasons, the flora and fauna, the population size, the climate … on and on she went, rattling off points for us to check. And off we went, to research our hometowns. We did not know much, we discovered. I was from a small town in Maine, Cape Elizabeth, o

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