What do you think?
Rate this book
A Field Guide for Immersion Writing: Memoir, Journalism, and Travel
For centuries writers have used participatory experience as a lens through which to better see the world at large and as a means of exploring the self. Considering various types of participatory writing as different strains of one style―immersion writing―Robin Hemley offers new perspectives and practical advice for writers of this nonfiction genre.
Immersion writing can be broken down into the broad categories of travel writing, immersion memoir, and immersion journalism. Using the work of such authors as Barbara Ehrenreich, Hunter S. Thompson, Ted Conover, A. J. Jacobs, Nellie Bly, Julio Cortazar, and James Agee, Hemley examines these three major types of immersion writing and further identifies the subcategories of the quest, the experiment, the investigation, the infiltration, and the reenactment. Included in the book are helpful exercises, models for immersion writing, and a chapter on one of the most fraught subjects for nonfiction writers―the ethics and legalities of writing about other people.
A Field Guide for Immersion Writing recalibrates and redefines the way writers approach their relationship to their subjects. Suitable for beginners and advanced writers, the book provides an enlightening, provocative, and often amusing look at the ways in which nonfiction writers engage with the world around them.
A Friends Fund Publication.
Immersion writing can be broken down into the broad categories of travel writing, immersion memoir, and immersion journalism. Using the work of such authors as Barbara Ehrenreich, Hunter S. Thompson, Ted Conover, A. J. Jacobs, Nellie Bly, Julio Cortazar, and James Agee, Hemley examines these three major types of immersion writing and further identifies the subcategories of the quest, the experiment, the investigation, the infiltration, and the reenactment. Included in the book are helpful exercises, models for immersion writing, and a chapter on one of the most fraught subjects for nonfiction writers―the ethics and legalities of writing about other people.
A Field Guide for Immersion Writing recalibrates and redefines the way writers approach their relationship to their subjects. Suitable for beginners and advanced writers, the book provides an enlightening, provocative, and often amusing look at the ways in which nonfiction writers engage with the world around them.
A Friends Fund Publication.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 3, 2012
About the author
Robin Hemley
33 books30 followersRobin Hemley has published seven books of nonfiction and fiction. His latest book, Invented Eden, The Elusive, Disputed History of the Tasaday deals with a purported anthropological hoax in the Philippines. James Hamilton Paterson, writing in the London Review of Books, call Invented Eden, "brave and wholly convincing." John Leonard writes in Harpers, "Besides a terrific story, Invented Eden is a savvy caution." Invented Eden was an American Library Association's Editor's Choice book for 2003.
Robin Hemley co-edited the anthology Extreme Fiction:Fabulists and formalists with Michael Martone, and is the author of the memoir, Nola: A Memoir Of Faith, Art And Madness, which won an Independent Press Book Award for Nonfiction. His popular craft book Turning Life Into Fiction, which was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection as well as a Quality Paperback Book Club Selection has sold over 40,000 copies and will soon be reissued by Graywolf Press. He is also the author of the novel, The Last Studebaker and the story collections, The Big Ear and All You Can Eat.
His awards for his fiction include, The Nelson Algren Award from The Chicago Tribune, The George Garrett Award for Fiction from Willow Springs, the Hugh J. Luke Award from Prairie Schooner, two Pushcart Prizes, and many others. He has published his work in many of the best literary magazines in the country, including Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Willow Springs, Boulevard, Witness, ACM, North American Review, and many others. His fiction has been widely anthologized, translated, and heard on NPR's "Selected Shorts" and others. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and has taught at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Western Washington Univeristy, St. Lawrence University, Vermont College, and the University of Utah, and in many Summer writing conferences. He was also the Editor-in-Chief of the Bellingham Review for five years.
Robin Hemley co-edited the anthology Extreme Fiction:Fabulists and formalists with Michael Martone, and is the author of the memoir, Nola: A Memoir Of Faith, Art And Madness, which won an Independent Press Book Award for Nonfiction. His popular craft book Turning Life Into Fiction, which was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection as well as a Quality Paperback Book Club Selection has sold over 40,000 copies and will soon be reissued by Graywolf Press. He is also the author of the novel, The Last Studebaker and the story collections, The Big Ear and All You Can Eat.
His awards for his fiction include, The Nelson Algren Award from The Chicago Tribune, The George Garrett Award for Fiction from Willow Springs, the Hugh J. Luke Award from Prairie Schooner, two Pushcart Prizes, and many others. He has published his work in many of the best literary magazines in the country, including Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Willow Springs, Boulevard, Witness, ACM, North American Review, and many others. His fiction has been widely anthologized, translated, and heard on NPR's "Selected Shorts" and others. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and has taught at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Western Washington Univeristy, St. Lawrence University, Vermont College, and the University of Utah, and in many Summer writing conferences. He was also the Editor-in-Chief of the Bellingham Review for five years.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
April 19, 2013
I received this book as a graduation gift from my thesis advisor, John Bennion, after working on my first travel essay collection. As a writer and an anthropologist, this book provides several frameworks that are, I think, useful to think about for a writer trying to navigate the subtle distinctions between memoir, journalism, and travel writing. The writings on ethics are insightful and clearly sprung from concrete, personal experience and lots of thought. Of course (and Hemley admits this), there is overlap in categories, but having categories assigned with subcategories helps me get my mind around the genres. They are just “meant to be useful, not binding” (9).
I’ll get into the break down to summarize my takeaways, but first, how about some gems of wisdom?
• “Nearly every journalist I’ve met has a memoir in his or her drawer” (7).
• “Self matters, and it’s unrealistic…to believe it doesn’t….when I read a work of nonfiction…more often than not, I want to know who’s telling the story and why” (10).
• “To write honestly about the Self more often takes courage and generosity than egoism” (11).
• “It’s one thing to have an experience, but it’s quite another to get a handle on it” (16).
• “The book you write almost never turns out to be the book you set out to write” (22).
• “Just because you’re confused and don’t have a handle on your material doesn’t mean you’re working on a book…Mostly, it means you don’t know yet what you’re writing about or why, and you need to discover what those things are before the writing gels” (39).
• “Any writer writing about the past is recovering the dead, is Orpheus leading Eurydice from Hades” (46).
• “No one wants to read about an easy quest” (50).
• “Who can rescue you from the unchartered and dangerous waters of your own mind?” (56).
• From Faulkner, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past!”
• “A good writer aims for conflict rather than steering clear of it” (77).
• “Immersion projects almost invariably do change you” (89).
• “If you knew what was going to happen in the end, there would be no point in starting. Setting out to prove a point only colors the experience and then skews the results more than your inescapable subjectivity and prejudices already do. You have to leap. You have to be a bit reckless. Maybe more than a bit. Maybe a lot” (92).
• From Barry Hannah, “Write honestly about what you love and put a little music in it” (113).
• “All journeys begin first in the imagination” (117).
• From G. K. Chesterton, “The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set food on one’s own country as a foreign land” (117).
• “I…am much more comfortable with people who don’t know who they are than I am with people who have no doubts. Those people scare me” (123).
• “If it’s mostly the money that interests you, go for an MBA” (138).
• “People don’t exist simply to populate our books” (161).
• “To be a writer out in the world is to be a student of the world” (186).
And now, the categories of immersion writing:
Immersion Memoir: “Takes on some outward task of journey in order to put his/her life in perspective” (11). These writers do not attempt objectivity the way journalists do (48). The object is more to figure out something about the self.
• The Reenactment: “Do-overs,” trying to make the past come alive again, but modifying approach to “suit her own” and new, goals (21). This can be personal or historical (but they “inevitably…merge” (26).
• The Experiment: When someone does something , usually for about a year, to discover something. It usually “relies on chronology” (33).
• The Infiltration: Also popular, you can be a spy or an insider. The insider doesn’t try to hide their real identity or purpose.
• The Investigation: Infiltrators are investigators but not necessarily vice versa. You can investigate without being a spy or insider (42). These writers are somewhere between insider and outsider, which produces a unique tension (43).
• The Quest: written about personal goals. The French word queste apparently came from the word meaning an act of seeking (50).
Immersion Journalism: Probably has something to do with the outside world, at least, more so than memoir needs to. “If the journalist leaves herself out of the story, it’s not an immersion piece,” so what is mentioned here is sometimes called “Participatory Journalism” (55). While the vertical pronoun is still there, the focus is not as much on the self. “The immersion journalist tends to wear himself lightly, while the immersion memoirist doesn’t (76).
• The Investigation: Might help to get obsessed about an idea. Most immersion journalism “involves some sort of investigation” (65).
• The Reenactment: Like those books going under cover as other people to expose different societal problems, etc.
• The Quest: A writer “wears herself lightly” and using that experience “as a stand-in for experience or wishes of the multitudes” (76).
• The Experiment: Can get sketchy quick… be ethical, but can bring social issues to life.
• The Infiltration: Similar to memoirist, but “different concerns and results.” You have to earn the trust of the people you work with (83). Any mocking or condescending tone and the book can fail terribly (85). Thank goodness that is no longer in vogue. This seems like it can take a long time.
Travel Writing: Great, but not always glamorous. It used to be when people would go off into far corners of the world and bring back stories of odd practices. Now it is more about “exploring his or her own eccentricities and odd behaviors” (104). It used to mean the audience was an outsider, but things are changing with new technology.
• The Infiltration: All travelers are infiltrators, though superficial tourism is the worst of it
• The Question: Often implies a “spiritual journey, but not always” (117). It can also be about identity, origin, or principle.
• The Reenactment: Someone basically recreates something that has happened to revisit it in a different way. Sometimes it is to prove or disprove a theory (125).
• The Investigation or Forensic Journey: this is kind of like a quest, but a quest implies you want to have a life change, and that is not so much the case for the forensic journey/investigation (132).
• The Experiment: Sometimes you have to have fun.
I’ll get into the break down to summarize my takeaways, but first, how about some gems of wisdom?
• “Nearly every journalist I’ve met has a memoir in his or her drawer” (7).
• “Self matters, and it’s unrealistic…to believe it doesn’t….when I read a work of nonfiction…more often than not, I want to know who’s telling the story and why” (10).
• “To write honestly about the Self more often takes courage and generosity than egoism” (11).
• “It’s one thing to have an experience, but it’s quite another to get a handle on it” (16).
• “The book you write almost never turns out to be the book you set out to write” (22).
• “Just because you’re confused and don’t have a handle on your material doesn’t mean you’re working on a book…Mostly, it means you don’t know yet what you’re writing about or why, and you need to discover what those things are before the writing gels” (39).
• “Any writer writing about the past is recovering the dead, is Orpheus leading Eurydice from Hades” (46).
• “No one wants to read about an easy quest” (50).
• “Who can rescue you from the unchartered and dangerous waters of your own mind?” (56).
• From Faulkner, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past!”
• “A good writer aims for conflict rather than steering clear of it” (77).
• “Immersion projects almost invariably do change you” (89).
• “If you knew what was going to happen in the end, there would be no point in starting. Setting out to prove a point only colors the experience and then skews the results more than your inescapable subjectivity and prejudices already do. You have to leap. You have to be a bit reckless. Maybe more than a bit. Maybe a lot” (92).
• From Barry Hannah, “Write honestly about what you love and put a little music in it” (113).
• “All journeys begin first in the imagination” (117).
• From G. K. Chesterton, “The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set food on one’s own country as a foreign land” (117).
• “I…am much more comfortable with people who don’t know who they are than I am with people who have no doubts. Those people scare me” (123).
• “If it’s mostly the money that interests you, go for an MBA” (138).
• “People don’t exist simply to populate our books” (161).
• “To be a writer out in the world is to be a student of the world” (186).
And now, the categories of immersion writing:
Immersion Memoir: “Takes on some outward task of journey in order to put his/her life in perspective” (11). These writers do not attempt objectivity the way journalists do (48). The object is more to figure out something about the self.
• The Reenactment: “Do-overs,” trying to make the past come alive again, but modifying approach to “suit her own” and new, goals (21). This can be personal or historical (but they “inevitably…merge” (26).
• The Experiment: When someone does something , usually for about a year, to discover something. It usually “relies on chronology” (33).
• The Infiltration: Also popular, you can be a spy or an insider. The insider doesn’t try to hide their real identity or purpose.
• The Investigation: Infiltrators are investigators but not necessarily vice versa. You can investigate without being a spy or insider (42). These writers are somewhere between insider and outsider, which produces a unique tension (43).
• The Quest: written about personal goals. The French word queste apparently came from the word meaning an act of seeking (50).
Immersion Journalism: Probably has something to do with the outside world, at least, more so than memoir needs to. “If the journalist leaves herself out of the story, it’s not an immersion piece,” so what is mentioned here is sometimes called “Participatory Journalism” (55). While the vertical pronoun is still there, the focus is not as much on the self. “The immersion journalist tends to wear himself lightly, while the immersion memoirist doesn’t (76).
• The Investigation: Might help to get obsessed about an idea. Most immersion journalism “involves some sort of investigation” (65).
• The Reenactment: Like those books going under cover as other people to expose different societal problems, etc.
• The Quest: A writer “wears herself lightly” and using that experience “as a stand-in for experience or wishes of the multitudes” (76).
• The Experiment: Can get sketchy quick… be ethical, but can bring social issues to life.
• The Infiltration: Similar to memoirist, but “different concerns and results.” You have to earn the trust of the people you work with (83). Any mocking or condescending tone and the book can fail terribly (85). Thank goodness that is no longer in vogue. This seems like it can take a long time.
Travel Writing: Great, but not always glamorous. It used to be when people would go off into far corners of the world and bring back stories of odd practices. Now it is more about “exploring his or her own eccentricities and odd behaviors” (104). It used to mean the audience was an outsider, but things are changing with new technology.
• The Infiltration: All travelers are infiltrators, though superficial tourism is the worst of it
• The Question: Often implies a “spiritual journey, but not always” (117). It can also be about identity, origin, or principle.
• The Reenactment: Someone basically recreates something that has happened to revisit it in a different way. Sometimes it is to prove or disprove a theory (125).
• The Investigation or Forensic Journey: this is kind of like a quest, but a quest implies you want to have a life change, and that is not so much the case for the forensic journey/investigation (132).
• The Experiment: Sometimes you have to have fun.
July 6, 2021
This is the third time I have read this book--yes, it is that interesting! The book kicks off with a kind of defense of the memoir. He does this by taking on the New York Times stance (ie, if you aren't Princess Diana's former butler or Henry Kissinger, then you probably shouldn't be writing a memoir...). This might be a bit dated, though I don't follow the NYTimes on this subject. All I can say is that my examples were given to me by a friend who is a public intellectual and wanted to write a memoir but was told by his agent the above. "You are not Henry Kissinger--stick to what you are good at." What a shame.
Reading Hemley, part of me allowed me to think more about what a memoir can be or should be. What is oversharing? What can give a memoir universal appeal? How can a writer avoid this things disparaged by critics... not that they have to, people can do whatever they want.,... but his engaging introduction did have me thinking about my own reading habits and preferences.
Hemley doesn't bring up different kinds of readers per se--and let's face it, no writer can please everyone and despite what the American MFA programs might suggest, there is no one size fits all for "good writing." Not everyone likes character-driven work... Believe it or not, that is true. Some people like books with a lot of telling and skim the portions that are "in scene..." I swear, I am not making this up.
The book is a deep dive into one particular mode or style of writing.... the old fashioned immersive travel literary form, with its more modern derivatives of immersive memoir and immersive journalism.
I learned so much from this book. And indeed, I am keeping it out on my night stand for a 4th reading. Part of why I loved it so much is that his writing is playful and fun... I also happened to be interested in the same books he is... also love the Philippines.
I had never really thought there is something called schtick lit... but I admit, so many of my favorite books are "quests," "re-enactments" and "Investigations..." off the top of my head, Travels with Herodotus, In Xanadu, Orchid Thief, Animal Vegetable Mineral, Driving Mr Albert, A Journey Around my Room,,,,, these are all favorites... and now I know why. I also know what I want to *try* to infuse into my own writing.
A craft book that also is a book about a certain kind of reader... a certain mode of writing that is deeply engaging to readers... and why this is. Five stars, this is my #1 favorite writing craft book.
Putting this article here so I don't lose it
https://scroll.in/article/999215/deco...
Reading Hemley, part of me allowed me to think more about what a memoir can be or should be. What is oversharing? What can give a memoir universal appeal? How can a writer avoid this things disparaged by critics... not that they have to, people can do whatever they want.,... but his engaging introduction did have me thinking about my own reading habits and preferences.
Hemley doesn't bring up different kinds of readers per se--and let's face it, no writer can please everyone and despite what the American MFA programs might suggest, there is no one size fits all for "good writing." Not everyone likes character-driven work... Believe it or not, that is true. Some people like books with a lot of telling and skim the portions that are "in scene..." I swear, I am not making this up.
The book is a deep dive into one particular mode or style of writing.... the old fashioned immersive travel literary form, with its more modern derivatives of immersive memoir and immersive journalism.
I learned so much from this book. And indeed, I am keeping it out on my night stand for a 4th reading. Part of why I loved it so much is that his writing is playful and fun... I also happened to be interested in the same books he is... also love the Philippines.
I had never really thought there is something called schtick lit... but I admit, so many of my favorite books are "quests," "re-enactments" and "Investigations..." off the top of my head, Travels with Herodotus, In Xanadu, Orchid Thief, Animal Vegetable Mineral, Driving Mr Albert, A Journey Around my Room,,,,, these are all favorites... and now I know why. I also know what I want to *try* to infuse into my own writing.
A craft book that also is a book about a certain kind of reader... a certain mode of writing that is deeply engaging to readers... and why this is. Five stars, this is my #1 favorite writing craft book.
Putting this article here so I don't lose it
https://scroll.in/article/999215/deco...
January 11, 2018
As I was preparing for last year's trip to England, I started looking for travel-related books. One of the books that caught my eye was A Field Guide for Immersion Writing and even though it wasn't a travel guide/memoir, I decided to read it.
The book is divided into five chapters (six sections, if you count the introduction). The introduction introduces the concept of immersion writing, chapter one talks about the immersion memoir, chapter two is about immersion journalism, chapter three about travel writing, chapter four about ethics and legal considerations, and chapter five about story (book and magazine) proposals. Each chapter ends with exercises for the reader.
Personally, the introduction felt a little scatter-shot and I briefly considered abandoning the book, but I was hooked in the first chapter. The definition of the immersion memoir, which I really liked, is that “the immersion memoirist is interested in self-revelation or evaluation while using the outside world as his/her vehicle.” Basically, you’re looking at yourself by looking at outside events.
The first three chapters basically go through the different types of immersion writing in these similar but not identical genres. No matter if you’re a memoirist, travel writer, or journalist, if you’re doing immersion writing, you can divide immersion writing into five categories:
1. Re-enactment
2. Experiment
3. Infiltration
4. Investigation (for memoirs, this is more for biographies than autobiographies)
5. Quest
Through this book, I’ve realised that a lot of books that I’ve read are immersion writing, and I enjoy most of it. Of course, there are a lot more books that I haven’t read and I could see my TBR list growing as I read (hopefully I can get to them soon).
If you’re interested in what this genre of writing is about and you’re looking for books to read (or you want to write a book yourself), you should definitely read this.
This review was first posted at Inside the mind of a Bibliophile
The book is divided into five chapters (six sections, if you count the introduction). The introduction introduces the concept of immersion writing, chapter one talks about the immersion memoir, chapter two is about immersion journalism, chapter three about travel writing, chapter four about ethics and legal considerations, and chapter five about story (book and magazine) proposals. Each chapter ends with exercises for the reader.
Personally, the introduction felt a little scatter-shot and I briefly considered abandoning the book, but I was hooked in the first chapter. The definition of the immersion memoir, which I really liked, is that “the immersion memoirist is interested in self-revelation or evaluation while using the outside world as his/her vehicle.” Basically, you’re looking at yourself by looking at outside events.
The first three chapters basically go through the different types of immersion writing in these similar but not identical genres. No matter if you’re a memoirist, travel writer, or journalist, if you’re doing immersion writing, you can divide immersion writing into five categories:
1. Re-enactment
2. Experiment
3. Infiltration
4. Investigation (for memoirs, this is more for biographies than autobiographies)
5. Quest
Through this book, I’ve realised that a lot of books that I’ve read are immersion writing, and I enjoy most of it. Of course, there are a lot more books that I haven’t read and I could see my TBR list growing as I read (hopefully I can get to them soon).
If you’re interested in what this genre of writing is about and you’re looking for books to read (or you want to write a book yourself), you should definitely read this.
This review was first posted at Inside the mind of a Bibliophile
June 11, 2022
If you're curious about memoirs, journalism, and travel dairy nuisances, this is a good field guide for you. it's suitable for all these areas, brimming with examples, and layered with exercises and wisdom from someone int the field.
From that perspective, it was good, even though I'm not personally invested in any of those fields, it gave me insight to all that goes into these stories and paths.
From that perspective, it was good, even though I'm not personally invested in any of those fields, it gave me insight to all that goes into these stories and paths.
November 8, 2014
In this guide, Robing Hemley references an extensive history of his own as well as many other (sometimes lesser known) writers' experience with immersion writing. He cites a wide range of examples, explains them in depth, and often helps the reader understand the ideas by offering his personal experience and examples. Hemley ensures that this book instructs as much as it explains by offering exercises at the end of each section, complete with tasks an questions to guide a writer through an immersion project.
For some writers, though, this guide does not apply. Hemley emphasizes immersion journalism, which, in his case, demands time and expenses that most rational people do not have. As we can see from his book, Invented Eden, his ideals for immersion journalism exceed what most people are willing to do. If you are that person, then you should definitely follow the advice Hemley gives. If you are not, and prefer rumination, close observation and extrapolation and imagination in your nonfiction, then I suggest you spend more time watching the world around you or exploring further your mind.
I have one main quibble with this book: it states the obvious. Many of the ideas Hemley discusses are apparent to anyone who has a little experience with nonfiction. The unique thing he does here is give these ideas names. I was a bit dissatisfied with this book simply because I don't care about giving these ideas names, and I prefer not spending my time reading exposition about topics I already understand.
For some writers, though, this guide does not apply. Hemley emphasizes immersion journalism, which, in his case, demands time and expenses that most rational people do not have. As we can see from his book, Invented Eden, his ideals for immersion journalism exceed what most people are willing to do. If you are that person, then you should definitely follow the advice Hemley gives. If you are not, and prefer rumination, close observation and extrapolation and imagination in your nonfiction, then I suggest you spend more time watching the world around you or exploring further your mind.
I have one main quibble with this book: it states the obvious. Many of the ideas Hemley discusses are apparent to anyone who has a little experience with nonfiction. The unique thing he does here is give these ideas names. I was a bit dissatisfied with this book simply because I don't care about giving these ideas names, and I prefer not spending my time reading exposition about topics I already understand.
March 2, 2013
Robin Hemley runs the Creative Nonfiction program at the University of Iowa. In A Field Guide for Immersion Writing he differentiates among three types of immersion writing (a phrase I'd never heard before). He classifies these as memoir, journalism, and travel writing, but the operative difference is writing in which the author's presence is either 1) primary or equal to the story, or 2) takes a back seat to the story. Hemley is a good writer, which should be good news to his prospective students, since not all teachers of writing are. He's also a writer himself (beyond writing about writing), so much of what he tells us in the book is from personal, practical experience. He also--very effectively--offers the perspective of other writers and uses examples from their work. He has an easy, straightforward style that makes the reader feel as if he's sitting across the table from her, offering thoughtful advice. Did the book "sing" to me? Not particularly. Did it deliver on what it promised: to serve as a useful aide and guide to people who want to write in this genre? Absolutely. Thumbs up, as they say.
Read
January 23, 2013Ah, a how to book that offers so much great advice that any writer who wants to add memoir to her list can improve her changes of being published. Hemley has offered wise, easy to follow, clear directions about memoir in particular.
He gives the author permission to include the subjective in the factual presentation of events, but he cautions that to do so requires an honesty that provides life and verve to the telling.
I loved this book. Most useful. A fast read full of information that I highlighted for future reference. I hope that his suggestions, which I took to heart, will help me find an agent/publisher for my own manuscript.
Along that line, I must confess that no agent to whom I have written so far recognizes the category of 'immersion' though. Cutting edge, I think Hemley's descriptor is still cutting edge.
But if you are writing about your own travel or about your own life, you might be well served to read Hemley first
He gives the author permission to include the subjective in the factual presentation of events, but he cautions that to do so requires an honesty that provides life and verve to the telling.
I loved this book. Most useful. A fast read full of information that I highlighted for future reference. I hope that his suggestions, which I took to heart, will help me find an agent/publisher for my own manuscript.
Along that line, I must confess that no agent to whom I have written so far recognizes the category of 'immersion' though. Cutting edge, I think Hemley's descriptor is still cutting edge.
But if you are writing about your own travel or about your own life, you might be well served to read Hemley first
August 23, 2013
This book is designed to make writers think about their craft in a new way, and it did that for me. Most of the book is about various ways of investigating, traveling, and discovering things to write about, and it left me with a strong wanderlust. The writer shares stories of his own life and writing experiences, along with those of others he has researched and interviewed. He offers advice not just on how to approach a story, but on how to immerse yourself in it, and even how to get it published.
If you're ever interested in writing books or magazine articles about real life experiences, I strongly suggest reading this book. It gave me some definite insight into the experiences of real writers who have traveled the world. It's also written with a fluid prose that reads almost like a novel, instead of like a text book. Definitely a good read.
If you're ever interested in writing books or magazine articles about real life experiences, I strongly suggest reading this book. It gave me some definite insight into the experiences of real writers who have traveled the world. It's also written with a fluid prose that reads almost like a novel, instead of like a text book. Definitely a good read.
October 26, 2012
I can forgive the author his occasional boastfulness, as to write one necessarily must have a larger-than-normal ego. The book was an honest discussion of how these genres are accomplished, how they can be done well, and the ethical considerations of this sort of non-fiction. I appreciated the exercises, and love that I came away from this book not only with Hemley's ideas, but new ideas of my own. He is a genuine teacher and thought-provoker.
I wasn't expecting the chapters on ethics or book/magazine proposals, but this book wouldn't have been complete without delving into the philosophical and practical aspects of immersion writing.
I wasn't expecting the chapters on ethics or book/magazine proposals, but this book wouldn't have been complete without delving into the philosophical and practical aspects of immersion writing.
July 3, 2012
For a how-to-write book--which can fall into the same trap as self-help guides--this was actually useful, mainly because immersion writing has a lot of conventions, which is what makes the genre fun after all. Hemley distinguishes and defines these conventions in a very clear manner; he also of course gives lots of anecdotes from his own experience in writing such pieces. For the budding writer, this is a good tool for the belt. I think the overall message is this: it's a fairly simple art that just takes passion to make it sing.
May 23, 2018
In this guide for immersion writing, I love how the author weaves in tales from his youth and past experiences to guide readers on how to turn our own travels into tales worth retelling and reliving. I also enjoy when writers make references to contemporary writers who are not necessarily literary giants but are very accomplished and graceful writers nonetheless. If you want to turn your next travelogue into a magazine article, this book will give you tips on how to polish your writing, as well as how to go about getting published.
January 30, 2014
Like, like, like. Robin taught at a writers' conference I attended in 2012 at Vermont College of Fine Arts. I didn't have the good fortune of workshopping with him, as I was in attendance in a fiction group. But I bought his book and just finished it. I have a new book in progress, a book about beer, and I wanted to give it a flavor or immersion. So it was tremendously helpful.
June 6, 2014
Definitely a good book and insightful into my writing style. Particularly this statement "If your goal is an outward exploration or the world, then you're most likely an immersion journalist". One note, the author could have talked a bit less about everything that he wrote.
April 20, 2013
Loved this book and how it makes the case for inserting yourself and your writing perspective into travel, journalism, and memoir experiences!
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews