Through creative nonfiction, I have walked down a path of telling my own personal story. In my memoir, I have blended the techniques of creative nonfiction and poetry and have challenged my craft in doing so. Essentially, the story is one of a mother and a daughter, both struggling in physical and mental capacities.

 

Poet Nick Flynn and his harrowing memoir Another Bullshit Night in Suck City helped lay out the framework for my own writing. Like Flynn, I follow a nonlinear timeline and unfold my story in fragments. In doing so, an element of mystery and surprise remains alive throughout. With the influence of Running With Scissors, Girl, Interrupted, and Party Monster, I cultivated a tone that incorporated shock and familiarity with distressing subject matter. 

 

Augusten Burroughs’ more than bizarre childhood helped guide my own unveiling of my past. Susanna Kayson’s Girl, Interrupted inspired more cerebral pieces along with mental illness while James St. James’s Party Monster helped me work through the topic of illegal substances and social status. Cheryl Strayed’s Wild helped shape my strength, and the depiction of her relationship with her mother worked as springboards to unpack my own relationship with mine.

 

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Robert Lowell’s Life Studies, Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, and Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation also played vital roles for inspiration for themes of mental illness, prescription drugs, and musings on the good and the bad. Through the styles of creative nonfiction, autobiography, and confessional poetry, I have compiled a manuscript using personal experience as a main inspiration.

 

presented here are excerpts from my manuscript

"paper cup constellations."