What are the differences and similarities between writing fiction and nonfiction?
Writing this book as a nonfiction narrative was an obvious choice. What surprised me was how similar it felt to writing a novel, requiring all the same elements: lively scenes, compelling characters, plot, suspense and resolution. Creating these out of whole cloth, in fiction, is in some ways easier. For this narrative I had to create it from the finite array of events that actually happened. The greater part of valor was choosing what to leave out. It’s not a memoir in the strictest sense, because it’s not really about us, it’s about food production and local economies. The largest emotional events of the year, for us personally, are hardly mentioned, if at all: the death of Steven’s sister; my slow recovery from a crippling accident; our family’s adjustment after Camille moved to college — these were not the domain of the book. Nonfiction requires enormous discipline. You construct the terms of your story, and then you stick to them. “Because it really happened” is the worst reason
