Creative Nonfiction (Course Guide / Lisa Heise)

"I think that On Writing Well has been successful because readers know they're not learning from a professor of rhetoric, but from someone who actually has struggled with the craft of writing," the author explained. He used a similar approach in Writing with a Word Processor where, he related, "I wanted the reader to become involved with me and my own anxieties and apprehensions and phobias in writing with a new technology. If I make myself vulnerable, and if readers identify with me, they will learn as I do." | From: Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors | Gale Literature Resource Center (Library Database)

William Zinsser was a lifelong journalist and nonfiction writer—he began his career on the New York Herald Tribune in 1946—and was also a teacher, best known for his book On Writing Well, a companion held in affection by three generations of writers, reporters, editors, teachers and students.

This article offers tips in writing family history. The record of one's life and one's family can be a formal memoir or it can be an informal family history. There are many good reasons for writing that have nothing to do with being published. Writing is a powerful search mechanism. It also allows you to work through some of life's hardest knocks. When writing one's own family history, don't try to be a writer, just be oneself. | Writer (Kalmbach Publishing Co.). Jul2006, Vol. 119 Issue 7, p14-17. 4p. | Literary Reference Center Plus (EBSCO) (Library Database)

Presents a personal narrative which explores the author's experience of writing his book "On Writing Well" in the 1970s and making revisions for 35 years. | American Scholar. Spring2009, Vol. 78 Issue 2, p58-68. 11p | MasterFILE Complete (Library Database)

Narrates the window-shopping experience of a man with his eight-year granddaughter during a Christmas season in New York. |
Town & Country. Dec2004, Vol. 158 Issue 5295, | MasterFILE Complete (EBSCO) (Library Database)

One of the saddest sentences I know is “I wish I had asked my mother about that.” Or my father. Or my grandmother. Or my grandfather. As every parent knows, our children are not as fascinated by our fascinating lives as we are. Only when they have children of their own—and feel the first twinges of their own advancing age—do they suddenly want to know more about their family heritage and all its accretions of anecdote and lore. “What exactly were those stories my dad used to tell about coming to America?” “Where exactly was that farm in the Midwest where my mother grew up?” | American Scholar By William Zinsser | May 12, 2015 | Linked from the author's website.