Nonfiction and Timing

I was part of a formal debate league in high school. The community was pretty small. Close-knit, kinda. And very dramatic. My debate partner and I were the only two guys in the midst of a (small) sea of ladies.

Debate was great. Attempting to form and maintain basic friendships with some of the other debaters was laborious. No matter how well you know the other debaters, there's always that underlying knowledge that you'll be trading brutal argumentation the next weekend.

Immediately after I graduated, I wrote a short, (almost) nonfiction essay detailing some of the drama that was carried along on the shoulders of teenage angst and formal debates. Reading it now, it has far more depth of feeling than anything I could currently produce about that time period. I think I remember a professor once saying to me, "it's important to have enough distance when writing nonfiction. But it's also important to be close."

I put my pen (fingers) to paper (keyboard) a few days ago, and the death of my grandfather came out. He died in 2004. Is nearly six years enough distance? I think I'm still too close to tell.