Seems easy enough, no? 

Well, the twist is we have to write it in the style of Baldwin’s, “Notes from a Native Son” wherein he writes about a moment with a kind of double perspective. He writes about an incident in scene, going moment by moment, but there are moments in this particular scene where he writes from the vantage of already having lived it and drawn conclusions. It sounds obvious. Nonfiction writers write about things that have happened in the past, but Baldwin is doing something else here, I think. The difficult part about nonfiction writing isn’t getting the particulars of an event down; that’s just recall (and I have pretty excellent recall). The difficulty in this kind of writing is answering the question, “So what?” It’s drawing conclusions and extracting meaning from the jumble of memories and perceptions, and you can’t just write a “moral of the story” paragraph. That’s dull. You have to… I don’t even know. Let the big picture ideas emerge by themselves? (This is what is most difficult for me, so when I find out how to do it, I’ll tell you). Anyway, Baldwin does this flawlessly in his essay. He’s writing about racial tensions in Harlem, the folly of hate and anger through his recognizance of his father after his death.

Doing something like that is a challenge in itself. 

But I can’t recall a time I was out of control of myself, so I’m screwed. I can’t just make up something; that’s lying in nonfiction. 

Whatever I write is going to be weak, and that does not sit well with me.