The Craft Essay

7 Myths About Writing Creative Nonfiction By Ratika Deshpande

Pictured: Chateau de Montaigne in southwestern France, where the philosopher Michel De Montaigne lived and wrote his groundbreaking work Essays in the late 1500’s creating and popularizing the literary form.

---

Welcome to Everything Essay! Each newsletter features an essay (linked), craft talk and analysis, writing connections (tips, prompts, book recs, podcasts, movies) and more. If you prefer to listen to the post versus reading it, click on the audio above.

Today’s essay is “7 Myths About Writing Creative Nonfiction” by Ratika Deshpande, published by Authors Publish in October, 2025—go ahead and read the essay now (word count: 1,450); it will take about seven minutes.

---

We’re going to talk about the craft essay, specifically about writing creative nonfiction. Let’s look closer at what Ratika says and how she writes about writing.

The Craft at Work

The Title. “7 Myths about Writing Creative Nonfiction,” draws me right in. Ratika is going to do some debunking.

The Opening. Ratika says, “Sometime around the beginning of my twenties, I fell in love with creative nonfiction, so I set to studying the form…” Personally, I came to love CNF later, in my forties and I’m in my sixties now. Despite our age difference, I immediately share a passion with this writer, and I believe I’m going to learn something from her. Again she draws me in.

The Structure. Introduction, Conclusion, with a Numbered List of seven myths in between. To outline what she’s learned about writing CNF, Ratika uses a simple, effective structure—a list. She has distilled each myth down to a few words, numbered and bolded, and included two to three paragraphs of explanation for each. A straight-forward approach, easy to skim and digest.

The Links. In addition to sharing what she’s learned about writing CNF, Ratika supports her ideas with links to several other related essays from a number of different writers and outlets. The linked content enables the reader to take a much deeper dive into the topic—writing CNF.

Personalization. Creative Nonfiction are true stories that employ the craft elements of fiction (e.g., scene, dialogue, characterization, etc) to explore the writer’s experience. As Ratika says: [good] CNF isn’t about the event as much as it is about the way the event is described and reflected upon…The interest comes from your perspective not the event itself.

She tackles common misconceptions that can make a writer feel like an imposter and wonder what they could have to say that others would want to read. She cites examples, like you have to write about sad stuff; you have to be older; you need an interesting life; you have do a lot of research or be an expert, and then she shows the reader published essays that disprove these ideas.

She debunks these myths again with her own craft essay—she’s doesn’t write about sad stuff, she isn’t older or an expert, she doesn’t do research for this piece, and whether her life is interesting, or not, is not relevant.

The Craft Essay

I first encountered Ratika’s writing on Brevity Blog (10/29/24) in her essay, What is an Essay, Exactly?, where she riffs on the idea of what makes an essay from her point of view and experience—another good read. The Craft Essay can take many forms and cover a wide range of topics related to writing and publishing. In fact writing about writing and your life as a writer is a prime way for emerging and experienced writers to develop their voice, get published, build platform, and join the literary communities they’d like to be part of. I’ll be sharing several craft essays throughout the year so you can see the many ways these essays can be done.

The Outlet

Authors Publish Magazine opens today (January 19th) for essays on writing such as craft tips, practical ways to find more time to write, strategies to promote your work and build your author platform, etc.

There are a number of outlets that publish this type of essay. Brevity Blog, where I work as an editor, is an outlet to discuss issues and craft specifically related to memoir and literary nonfiction. We publish an essay every weekday throughout the year and are open year round. Got an idea for the Blog or a question on how it works? Feel free to contact me.

An Opportunity

Later this month, I’m teaching Essays on the Writing Life: How to Write, Publish, and Get Noticed on the Craft Talks platform. In this 75-minute, live webinar, I will take you through the steps of how to write powerful, thoughtful, and fun essays using published examples from key literary outlets as a hands-on guide. You’ll take away a template to follow when writing about writing, essay ideas to explore, and a list of potential outlets and tips for submitting. Learn more and register here.