Transcription of VLOG from September 16, 2017:

“A friend of mine is taking a memoir writing class and additionally I was speaking with my sister this week about genres; fiction, non-fiction, screenwriting, drama, that kind of stuff, genres.  But within non-fiction—memoir writing.  That’s a non-fiction format, because it’s your words, your truth, you’re not making things up.  It can be creative non-fiction if it is written narratively.  But I was thinking about the format of oral history that is being created via vlogs: video logs versus the blog, which is writing.

So, vlogs—oral history—is a non-fiction format I think, and I think it’s interesting, of course, because if you transcribe the video then it becomes written, but it’s non-fiction.  Anyhow, I think that’s a really great sub-genre of non-fiction in that’s it new to our times; social media.  Vlogging is what blogging was twenty years ago, at the advent of the internet.  Like, starting a blog, and putting up an online journal and all that kind of stuff was new, but then it became YouTube.  Oh my goodness, let’s record a video.

Now, all the videos I’ve recorded in the last…mostly it’s just been this year 2017.  But I did do one last summer after watching Grace and Frankie that showed that Frankie did vlogs, and she encouraged Grace to try it for a big reveal, because when you’re talking to yourself out loud there is that illusion of clarity because you’re trying to be coherent in case somebody else watches it.  So, anyhow, I think it’s fascinating , the idea that this is a sub-genre of non-fiction and transcription of what I say orally could be a really neat non-fiction project.

But anyhow, that being said, because I’m trying to get into a Masters of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing, that’s why I’m thinking of genres and whether a transcription of this could count as an assignment (ha, ha), because it helps me.  And I’ve actually done some transcription, or certainly a synopsis of all my videos so I can remember which video came up with which idea.  Because I do find that I say something fairly revealing.  My last vlog was on, um, today is Saturday, and I think I did it on…Wednesday maybe?  Anyhow, I got a little emotional thinking about asking my mom to edit.  Anyhow, she was fine with it, she was, like, yeah, fine, sure.  And she sent them back the same day, and it’s all good.  But to get in the MFA program I am primarily a fiction writer.  But I need to pick three genres.  I’ve written adult fiction, I’ve written children’s fiction, and I need a third, so non-fiction.  And certainly I have written non-fiction, I do actually have a blog that I started in 2011.  But I’ve also started this oral history, as of this year.”