Add These 3 Layers to Boost the Power of Your Creative Non-Fiction

How to weave the literal, metaphoric, and mystical into your writing

“First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is. “— Donovan, “There Is No Mountain” (1967)

I have not been able to see a mountain as simply a mountain since I climbed my first one at age ten. It left an imprint on my consciousness that still wakes me up at night, and I find it suddenly thrust onto my inner screen in times of challenge.

I think of mountains when pursuing goals and mountains when falling from failure. But then, when literally climbing, the mountain somehow vanishes. I am almost completely present to the way my hand is gripping the rock.

Donovan’s 1967 classic was inspired by the Zen Buddhist principle originally articulated by 8th-century monk Qingyuan Weixin, and elaborated on here:

Before I had studied Chan (Zen) for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and rivers as rivers. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and rivers are not rivers. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it’s just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and rivers once again as rivers. — D.T. Suzuki, Essays on Zen Buddhism

We discover that the mystical is arrived at by leaving behind the world of the literal and embracing the possibilities of the metaphoric.

Going beyond the literal

“Aramaic is a Middle Eastern language with three layers of meaning, all reverberating at the same time: literal, metaphorical, and mystical.” — Janet Conner, Writing Down Your Soul, p. 73

In one part of her profoundly beautiful book, Writing Down the Soul, Janet Conner explores the lost meaning in a biblical translation. (Don’t worry, I’m not gonna get all biblical on you here, and nor does Conner. My interest is in the writing principle.) Conner outlines that the bible was translated from Aramaic to Greek to Latin to English. Each translation distorts the meaning of the previous as it takes on the lens of the new language.

Aramaic and English are constructed in different ways, with English leaning far more to the literal and rational. There is a strong value around portraying something with words with a high degree of accuracy.

Even here on this platform, regular advice by some writing columnists favors the kind of articles that get right to the point. But perhaps, in doing so, we lose meaning that can come through widening our lens to see a subject from many angles.

Poetry is a tapestry of meaning

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” ― Jalāl ad-Dīn Mohammad Rūmī

Poetry is the most natural place to look for learning how to weave the threads of the metaphoric and mystical. And perhaps a no better place to go is in the writing of Persian poets Rumi and Hafiz. Persia is a culture built by poets, and everything has many layers of meaning.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about. — Rumi

In Rumi’s poem, the field is literal, metaphoric, and mystical. In the first instance, he is referring to the metaphoric, and in the second the invitation is to also consider the feeling of laying “down in that grass.” But it isn’t simply the human self that is invited to lay in the grass — it is the soul. This phrase invites us to contemplate the mystical.

Bringing it into memoir

“I take a few deep breaths, trying to breathe some dignity back into my spirit.” — Behrouz Boochani, No Friend But the Mountain: Writing from Manus Prison

I recently read the harrowing but stunning memoir by Behrouz Boochani, No Friend But the Mountain. The narrative of his journey from Iran through Indonesia to Australia was a tapestry of the literal, metaphoric, and mystical. For any writer wanting to expand their craft, this memoir is a masterclass.

Memoir is an ideal genre in which to incorporate these elements. The gift of writing a memoir is not only for the reader to discover something from one’s life. It is also in a very big way, for the writer to get in touch with and understand their own life.

If memoir is approached simply through a sequential and literal lens of “this happened and then this happened,” it would miss the opportunity to delve deep into oneself to the mystical source of the experience. It would miss the chance to take the reader to a new place of self-exploration.

Defining the mystical

mystical. adjective 1. having a spiritual meaning or reality that is neither apparent to the senses nor obvious to the intelligence (Merriam-Webster Dictionary) 2. inspiring a sense of spiritual mystery, awe, and fascination (Google dictionary)

The mystical element may be the most elusive as it is the hardest to define. I like to think of it as the opposite of literal. Literal meanings like to narrow it down and provide a clear or neat answer. The mystical opens things up and leaves the reader questioning.

Weaving these elements at each level

Weaving the literal, metaphoric, and mystical can happen at any level within a piece: in a sentence, within a paragraph (as in the opening of this article), or through an entire article. Creative nonfiction is a genre that especially calls for a wider lens — bringing literal as well as metaphoric and even mystical elements to one’s story.

For the past twenty-plus years, I have been developing a personal philosophy of understanding life through nature. It is a work-in-progress and, through publishing on Medium, I have been refining my ideas and voice. In When There is No End in Sight I explore the metaphoric and mystical elements of the desert. I do the same for oceans in What You’ll Find When You Dive Deep in the Ocean of Life.

A simple 5-step process

Here are five tips and questions to ask when writing to bring the literal, metaphoric, and mystical into your work.

1. First, write in vivid detail the literal events of an experience. It’s fun to play with experiences from childhood, as we can then work with later examples in life. Don’t skip over the details, as these will often reveal the metaphor.
2. Go back and highlight any obvious object or subject that could be explored as a metaphor. For example, if you are writing about falling over while learning to ride a bike, you could highlight “falling over” and “learning to ride.”
3. Contemplate on other experiences of “falling over” and “learning to ride” in your life that might not apply to bike riding. Examples could be learning to cook or public speaking. What are the parallels for you in these experiences?
4. How did you grow or change through the experience? Was there something in your experience as a child that you have carried in your consciousness since then that you still feel wonderment, fascination, or awe about? For example, I wrote about “being thrown in the deep end” of the pool when learning how to swim as a child and incorporated those lessons into a piece on how I like to dive deep spiritually in life as an adult. The sense of awe still occurs when I find myself speechless as to what I am discovering.
5. As you work with these themes, you can explore ways to bring in the various stories to your articles, and even more minutely within a paragraph or sentence.

Here’s a couple of articles where I have been experimenting with my own weaving of these threads:

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