Writing About Others Instead of Yourself

     Although biography is one of the most popular forms of nonfiction among readers, it attracts relatively few aspiring writers. Young writers say to themselves, "I want to be a poet…a novelist…a playwright," may even say, "I want to write a memoir," but seldom, "I want to be a biographer."

     Maybe aspiring writers find biography a less attractive form of nonfiction because they like to write about themselves, and, unlike memoir, poetry, fiction and drama, biography seems to offer little chance for self-expression.

Philip Furia in Writing Creative Nonfiction, Carolyn Forche and Philip Gerard, 1998