In an essay for NiemanStoryboard, John J. Lennon — a convicted murderer — shares what he learned about writing, and what writing taught him about himself and about the power of true stories.
EXCERPT
Develop your voice and watch your tone. Strive to be even handed. Hip the reader to our subculture but don’t romanticize it. You’ll lose cred. For personal essays be vulnerable but not phony. (Lopate’s intro in Art of the Personal Essay is excellent). Memoir and personal essay is dangerous writing. When I wrote The Murderer’s Mother, I knew it was time for a personal reckoning. Still, it was hard for me to unpack the murder head on, so I opened the story through my mother’s lens, in the second person, talking to readers who, at first, don’t know I’m the one telling the tale.
Read the full piece at NiemanStoryboard.