Creative nonfiction

Creative nonfiction has a wide-ranging scope. For Jammie’s Jottings, this will be mainly focussed on family history narrative. This will range from stories about my great-grandmother, Emma, and other ancestors, to my memories of life in the sixties, seventies, and eighties.

After my mum, the glorious Sylvia, passed on, I spent a long time carrying on her research into our family tree. The biggest challenge was to find her grandmother, which by sheer dogged perseverance (and a bit of luck in linking up some facts), I did. We know nothing about her apart from what I found out via various census entries and the history of when and where she lived. This provided a fascinating opportunity to be creative with nonfiction and combines my love of history, research, and writing.

I then decided that why not turn some of my own memories into creative nonfiction. I’d already done this with The Waves Got Higher, a fictionalised piece based on my memory of where my sister and I were at the time of the Guildford bombings. It is true, but it is also a story.