Allison K. Williams's Blog

The Essay: Tradition & The Individual Talent

An invitation to (re)visit quotidana.org and fall-in-love (again?) with the classical essay

By Joey Franklin

My son, Nolan, is a Gen Z teenager, but he’s also got more than a decade of classical violin training, so his Spotify algorithm is a little broken. He’s as likely to get a recommendation for JPEGMAFIA as he is Laufey or Gustav Mahler. And he laughs when Spotify notifies him that Beethoven has just dropped a new single (which, of course, hasn’t happened in 200 years, but Spotify d...

Nice Work. Please Finish: Using Storytelling to Define Your Digital Identity

By Michelle Cutler

When clearing out some of my mother’s file cabinets last year, I discovered a folder of my second-grade homework assignments tucked between last century’s tax returns. Flipping through colored crepe paper collages and Halloween ghosts rendered in negative space, I was instantly transported back to simpler times. A crayon-rendered diagram of a corn stalk, accompanied by block letters explaining how pollen travels down the silk to pollinate the egg and produce a single ker...

The Pride, the Pain, the Love, and the Grit: On Writing and Gymnastics

By Lainy Carslaw

Ever since I was old enough to pick up a pen, I knew I wanted to be a writer. I would lock myself in my room, creating stories from my imagination and journal entries about my day. Though, I knew I had something to say, it took me a long time to figure out how to say it.

It wasn’t until I started writing seriously in my 30s that I truly learned what it means to be a writer—to be, create, or achieve anything, of perceived greatness, or reach for a so-called, “dream.” As ...

Get Smart About Your Writing Education

By Allison K Williams

Do you need an MFA to be a published writer? Heck no! But you do need an education. Develop your writing craft, test your queries, analyze proposals, learn about marketing and publicity, build your literary community. The best part? A lot of this information is free.

Some education is time-sensitive. Today at 1PM Eastern, my live-on-Zoom series The Writers Bridge, hosts publicist Shanetta McDonald for Publicity 101 For Authors. Can’t make it live? That’s OK, all o...

A Writing Retreat with Inspiration, Hard Lessons, and Plenty of Cheese

By Meg Robson Mahoney

I settle with my coffee at the front of the house and gaze out the window. The dogwood tree is dropping its cherries, round, red, calling to be swept away. Beyond the windowpane, a hummingbird hovers over pink blossoms on my abelia bush, which needs to be trimmed. But the garden can wait. I’m feeling inspired.

What keeps us going as we write? Willpower or inspiration? I’m good at the persistence part—showing up and slogging along. But inspiration? It comes and goes...

Don’t Ask Readers to Cry for a Stranger (‘Cause They Won’t)

By Allison K Williams

Ever been to a funeral for someone you don’t know? Maybe your spouse’s coworker’s spouse, or your mother’s friend’s cousin. You felt the warm, human need to support the person you know and love, so you gamely showed up with extra Kleenex in your pocket, but the eulogy was full of inside jokes that went over your head while you chuckled along to show team spirit, and you felt vaguely guilty for not crying along, too. At the post-funeral refreshments, you admired the wo...

So, Publishing Your First Book Didn’t Change Your Life….

By Anna McArthur

Hi there, you fancy published author! Congratulations! It’s a huge accomplishment, a realization of a lifelong dream, and a validation of your gifts and grit.

And yet.

After the frenzy of book launch events and marketing pushes and social media campaigns and other author-y adventures, does your day-to-day life look pretty much like it did before your book made its way out into the world?

Same, friend. Same.

I knew intellectually that the first book I published, at ...

Reconstruction: Writing the Unknown As If It’s Real Makes Stronger Scenes

By Allison K Williams

How do you “show” when you just don’t know? First-person POV in both memoir and fiction demands emotional truth—but what happens when the main character doesn’t (or can’t) know what happened, yet you still need a powerful scene?

Memoirists may need family stories, information from people they’re estranged from or who are deceased, or cultural context.

Novelists know the narrator can’t be everywhere, can’t know everything, and might be naive, biased, or flat-out ...

A Heroine’s Journey: When Your Story Doesn’t Fit the Standard Memoir Structure

By Jessica Gigot

I am currently working on a memoir about my experience of early motherhood. My oldest daughter just turned ten and in the midst of unpacking this transformational decade, where I learned to share my life and my body with three other human beings, I am again reminded that the hero’s journey limits revelation specific to female-oriented narratives. I first had this discovery while writing my first memoir, A Little Bit of Land, and found it helpful to revisit the restructurin...

A Place of Healing: Finding the Right Words In an Unright Moment

By Rachel Greenley

I begin my decompression on Thursday afternoons.

By then, the COVID-19 vaccine messages have been written, approved, sent. The NIH grant messages have been written, approved, sent. The Medicaid funding speculation messages have been written, approved, sent. My own writing – my personal projects – have not been written. There is nothing to approve. Nothing to send.

But now it is Thursday afternoon, delicious Thursday afternoon, and I am ready to reclaim my time when...