Welcome to Robert C. Belyk’s website

On this website, you can browse through a list of my recently published works, learn about the Pacific’s greatest shipwrecks, and check out some of BC’s top haunts.

 

Some thoughts on creative nonfiction

Some readers have trouble with the notion of “creative nonfiction,” a concept now very much in vogue. Every text written in English, they will argue, is creative, as the author has a choice of what words and syntax he uses. But while this is true, it is not very helpful in sorting through that vast category we call nonfiction. Author and editor Lee Gutkind offers a concise definition of creative nonfiction:

“Dramatic, true stories using scenes, dialogue, close, detailed descriptions and other techniques usually employed by poets and fiction writers about important subjects—from politics, to economics, to sports, to the arts and sciences, to racial relations, and family relations.”

While creative nonfiction may employ many of the same techniques as fiction, including changing voices and points of view, it continues to hold truth as sacrosanct. This, then, is the starting point for me as a writer.