The Value of Field Notes to Place Writing
Proof of presence
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Creative non-fiction is often strengthened by the addition of other textual material such as field notes, as well as extracts from poetry, fiction, biography, memoir, and photographs. It all adds up to make a rich rendering of place.
My understanding of Place Writing has developed over the last few years and two phrases have repeatedly cropped up. They’ve bothered me because they seem to be used interchangeably; they are ‘writing place’ and ‘place writing’. Do they really mean the same thing? I think there is a subtle difference. I feel more confident about my thoughts on the latter, so let’s start with the former—‘writing place’—which is the more active phrase. In my view this applies to the physical practice of writing on location; it’s about being-in-place and producing words in place, perhaps in the form of field notes.
Field notes can, when incorporated into a longer work, add textual interest and inject a sense of present-ness into a narrative. And then, they become a means of providing evidence, i.e. proof of the author’s presence in place. In my world, field notes are scribbled on tatty pieces of paper or digitally captured as voice notes and once written up they are destroyed. In their raw state my notes are never sufficiently developed to be reproduced on the printed page—they merely act as memory prompts. And this leads me to yet another question. Is a field note that you see printed in an essay or a book really a field note? It must be the case that it goes through some kind of revision process before appearing in front of the reader. And during that transition doesn’t it change from a field note into something else? I wonder whether there is a name for the ‘something else’. I wish I could provide categorical answers here for you but this line of thinking is very much a work in progress.
Moving on to ‘place writing’; this is a phrase that tends to be all-encompassing as a title that describes a body of work. It can refer to a single book or the genre as a whole, and I think it aims to immerse readers in the spirit of place. If we accept that ‘writing place’ is the generation of work, say in-the-field, then it follows that ‘place writing’ will be a likely outcome. A work of Place Writing is generally the result of first-hand experience and, as a consequence, it is often presented in the first-person.
I rarely use a note-book and pen for site-specific writing even though the idea of it is appealing. Do you make field notes?
What writers do you know who include field notes in their books?
I look forward to chatting with you in the comments!
Notes and links:
The photograph above is my own, taken at Hinchingbrooke Country Park in Cambridgeshire, UK.
I recently reviewed Under the Rock by Benjamin Myers. The author’s field notes seem quite polished to me. What do you think?
For a quick rundown of the difference between creative non-fiction, narrative non-fiction, and literary non-fiction, take a look at my last post.
Thank you for another thoughtful piece Yasmin. You will see me out and about with a pen and notebook! I studied geography at university and got into the habit of using a field notebook to make notes and sketches about the things I see to help with observation. These field notes do sometimes make it into my writing but not highlighted as field notes, merely part of the story and I may improve on what I have written as I edit. These notes help me to remember all the sights, sounds and smells of a place and my impressions. I also like to note down some conversations word for word as soon as they happened and they may make it into a travel piece.
Yasmin, I so enjoy your posts as a reader of course, but also as a practitioner who 'writes place' to/and generate 'place writing'. I appreciate your untangling of that and like the way they become a phrase palindrome sort of, that expresses the process of both together. When I'm writing place in your conception I makes notes and take photos but they rarely make it into the final piece. They are simply memory aids. I was also thinking though about my days as a geologist in the field and the way we were taught to make those field notes and sketches in pencil to be inked in later. So there was something interesting for me in the 'provisional' nature of that which is perhaps why I would rarely think to include the pencil work as final. Anyway, there are few things I like to talk about more than this, so thank you for the invitation to comment.