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December 20, 2021

Stream of Consciousness Nonfiction: Can It Work?

Experiencing

creativity, experience, experiencing, experimental, writing

This will probably be one of the weirdest posts I’ve ever written, but if we don’t try new things how can we challenge ourselves? Without the courage to lose sight of the shore, how can we discover new oceans? This post on whether stream of consciousness nonfiction can work is an example-in-itself.

I decided to give myself a challenge: start writing a post and see how much I can write in the span of thirty minutes. Can stream of consciousness nonfiction work? What will it look like? Is it worth it? Will I stop making silly, self-evident questions and instead proceed with the post itself?

I’ll document my progress as I go along, because I feel this will be the most useful (to you) part of the entire experiment.

stream of consciousness nonfiction
Whenever I don’t have time to think much about an image, I simply add a cat photo. Always works!

Stream of Consciousness Nonfiction: A Paradoxical Kind of Writing

I got the idea for this at 9:50. I began writing a couple of minutes later. It’s now 9:58

Writing stream of consciousness nonfiction entails a certain paradox. Whereas stream of consciousness is all about not thinking too much about what you write (it’s supposed to be a semi-subconscious process), nonfiction is an inherently research-based kind of writing.

Usually, when I write posts for the blog, I am interested in a topic, I might research it a bit if I feel I need to (I usually write about topics I know intimately, so that’s hardly necessary), then I write. Still, I need to present facts, arguments, and a coherent movement from point A to point B.

Can this work in stream of consciousness nonfiction? So far, writing this post, I have felt no real problem being coherent (a quick look at the clock tells me it’s 10:01; it took me three minutes to put together these couple of paragraphs).

But about now I need to start presenting arguments that can be of some use. The first aspect I need to think of (the research question, if you like) is why stream of consciousness nonfiction writing might be something we care about. In which way can it be useful to use?

The Advantages of Stream of Consciousness Nonfiction

It’s 10:03 and I’m already well underway. I now need to start presenting some persuasive arguments. I’d also like some more coffee – and it just took me another thirty seconds to add a link to my coffee post (and write about it!)

Off the top of my head (well, it has to be; that’s what the whole post is about), I can see three benefits in writing stream of consciousness nonfiction:

What about disadvantages? I’m sure we can find a few.

Disadvantages of Stream of Consciousness Nonfiction

The time is now 10:09. I have another 11 minutes left if I want to stay within my self-imposed 30 minutes deadline.

That’s All Folks

It’s 10:16, and I have 4 minutes to slap together a conclusion.

Conclusions are supposed to be about summarizing a post, reflecting on some of the topics, or offering food for thought to last beyond the confines of the text. I don’t have time – or interest – for any of these.

Moreover, stream of consciousness nonfiction writing is probably far less about facts and summaries anyway, and it’s about the experience itself – both for me, as the author, and you, as the reader. Trying to make sense of it in factual, objective terms, is probably doomed to fail.

It’s 10:17, and I have three minutes to add an image and schedule the post. I did it!

Note: Here’s a similar experiment with flash fiction.