Nanny Tells All, and other ways to complement your income

There are a lot of stories about nannies—stories written by, about, and for nannies. The Nanny Textbook. And Nanny Makes Three. You’ll Never Nanny in This Town Again. Most of the nanny stories that I’ve heard of are about the family a nanny works for and usually lives with. And most of the parents are busy, rich people who don’t just hire nannies; they hire housekeepers, cooks, drivers, and so on.

Nanny tell-alls get published mainly for one reason: people who read books enjoy stories about the excessively rich and inappropriate just as much as people who read tabloids and watch Access Hollywood do. It’s fascinating to glimpse the world behind the curtain, so to speak: how the rich spend their free time, what their personal habits and hang-ups include. Notably, these stories aren’t primarily literary. They don’t have to be, and not just because their target audience cares more about juicy details than artistry. They don’t have to be literary because the details are so juicy, the lifestyles so bizarre. Adding simile and metaphor on top of that is like too much frosting on a cake—truth really is stranger than fiction.

That’s why, for all its shock value, the nanny tell-all generally falls short. Readers of one nanny story have read them all, for all intents and purposes. Of course the Hollywood actress lies to the cameras about all the time she spends with her kids; of course nannies go underappreciated and unseen. That’s the nature of the job, and there is no foreseeable end in sight, as long as people are willing to work under the current conditions as a nanny, and as long as employers pay no consequences for overworking and undervaluing them.

I guess the same thing probably goes for au pair stories in a way: they’re all basically the same. Let me qualify: they all basically end the same. Unlike a nanny, an au pair principally works in a foreign country for a contracted amount of time. At the end of the contract, an au pair says goodbye to the family she’s grown to love, probably goodbye forever, and goes back to her country. (We’re mostly females.)

The French definition of au pair is “on par” or “equal treatment.” This is mostly true in practice, depending on where you’re from. In my case, I found an au pair job in Italy very quickly because I’m a native English speaker. My Italian host family wanted their children to learn English, and she made my job as comfortable and fair as possible, under the circumstances that come with teaching and caring for three small children. The same probably goes for an au pair in the States, which is rare but not unheard of. A rich family might hire an American girl who is fluent in French or Spanish, so their children can have the distinction of learning a foreign language. The word governess comes to mind. Her job is principally teaching, tutoring, and tending to the children’s immediate needs, not cleaning house or picking up the dry cleaning.

I can’t name an au pair story off the top of my head. I don’t know if a published one exists. But I know one thing: I sure wouldn’t want to read one. Why would I? I lived it.

Writing my own au pair story has made me think critically about people and events that still carry strong emotional ties. Imagine your favorite place in the world, the one place that makes you really, completely happy. Then imagine analyzing and evaluating it on paper. Could you write a pros and cons list of that place, or start to pick apart the pieces of that place like you were writing a book report? Could you face the real facts about that place and the people in it? Au pairing—Italy—was that place for me.

But creative nonfiction as I know it isn’t concerned with poking holes in genuine happiness, and it's not just a tell-all machine. It’s concerned with facing the truth about the holes that already exist in things—in people, in experiences—and figuring out how you feel about them. So in your mind, you go back to that place that makes you the happiest in the whole world. Sometimes those holes lurk on the periphery of the picture, and sometimes they’re right in front of you, so close that at first you couldn’t see them. You probably already noticed something was just not quite right the first moment you went there. So if you’re going to go there, leave a trail of breadcrumbs to get back by. Don’t stay there too long, dwelling on the negatives. Hold on to your first, completely happy moments about that place. Guard them like they were your own children. At the end of the day, all that truth and revelation is nothing if you don’t still have that great, happy part of you.

I think my au pair story sticks pretty close to the norm. Girl goes abroad, girl meets family, girl loves family, girl goes home. Sure, things that put nanny stories on the map also happened to me. The children’s bathroom was bigger than my bedroom; I worked long hours; other parents found out my host family had a babysitter and brought their kids over for me to watch, and they never offered to pay me. Have you ever been screamed at by six small children in a foreign language? It still stings even when you can’t understand what it means.

Have you ever left a place you loved, and thought about that place every day since? Have you ever been more homesick for a place you were only visiting than for your own home? I suspect at one time or another, everyone has. And that is why I think that an au pair story, unlike the currently successful nanny expose, can survive in the genre of nonfiction. Because as lame as it sounds, it’s more than just a juicy story, it’s how those shocking moments affected a real life. That, and a little artistry doesn't hurt, either.

In recognition of aspiring artists who had "normal" childhoods

As a student of creative nonfiction, I've had the opportunity to read dozens of memoirs, personal essays, and works of literary journalism. I've read some exceptional nonfiction during the course of my MFA work, and definitely recommend many of the titles, but that's another list.

For now I want to explore what I consider to be a growing problem for aspiring artists--especially nonfiction writers--wanting to be published by the top magazines and publishing houses. Students of contemporary creative nonfiction are familiar with the trend for in-your-face, gritty memoirs and essays. There's a reason that Augusten Burroughs' Running With Scissors and James Frey's A Million Little Pieces earned contracts with Doubleday and Picador and got noticed by the New York Times; publishers tune in to what readers want. (Fraudulent as it may be, it's no surprise Frey's memoir got noticed by Oprah; drama, like sex, sells.)

Which leaves a surprisingly large demographic of us aspiring nonfiction writers in a dilemma. I'm talking about those of us who had "normal" childhoods, in the most mainstream definition of the word: people who grew up in average middle-class families that worked hard and went to church every Sunday. I'm talking about people who never dealt with gangs, drugs, or negligent parents, to name a few. People, in other words, who read books like A Million Little Pieces and realized they have nothing good to write about.

Sitting through my first Master's writing workshop, this observation materialized into all-out fear for my future. During that week, we read and critiqued essays involving death, sexual abuse, and growing up with alcoholic parents. My own piece, featuring events as a day camp counselor, looked pointless next to the others. It was not the first time my fortunate childhood made me feel self-conscious, but it was the first time I resented having it. Why was my life so boring, my day-to-day experiences so normal? It was only the first of four workshops, and I had already written up my most notable life experiences for this one! What was I going to write about for the rest of them?

Some will say (and have) that people with "normal" childhoods don't become writers; they become CPAs and doctors and assimilate nicely into society. Others say, in the words of one of my favorite quotes, that a writer has all the material he needs by the time he turns eleven, "normal" childhood or not. In my opinion, a good writer has to assimilate into society to a point while still cultivating his or her opinions and ideas. Nonfiction writers especially depend on encounters with other people to contextualize their own personal stories.

So they (we) shouldn't give up hope of one day seeing our work published. More importantly, we who come from "normal" childhoods should not settle for writing grit for the sake of grit. I think that there's a need for (pardon the term) average, everyday stories just like there's a need for the gruesome, horrific, and devastating. Because a good writer recognizes the gruesome, horrific, and devastating in everyday life; those are the stories that will resonate and endure with readers beyond the market trend.