Allison K. Williams's Blog, page 108

Emotional Subcontractors: Working with Adverbs

Everyone hates on adverbs.

I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops.

Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Again and again in careless writing, strong verbs are weakened by redundant adverbs.

William Zinsser, On Writing Well

But adverbs are still needed in your writing. Like plumbers, you don’t want them randomly hanging around, but when a pipe is clogged or a sentence struggling for meaning, you gotta call them in.

When to ...

Giving Up the Ghost

By Cynthia DiTiberio

A couple years ago, when the first copy of one of the books I had written arrived from the publisher in the mail, I held it proudly, seeing all the words I had carefully pieced together beautifully designed on the page. I then flipped to the back of the book, to unearth my name from its contracted place in the acknowledgements.

You see, it was both my book, and not my book at all.

I am a ghostwriter. The books I write don’t really belong to me. Though I have som...

Of Supplication and Enlightenment: 21 Reasons Why I Write

By Mary Hannah Terzino

This is not yet the essay on why I write. This is the foreword, in which I draw back a metaphorical curtain to reveal how this particular piece of writing came into being.  It’s the part where I tell you that the form of my piece is as meaningful to me as its substance. It’s the part where I tell you that its simple structure reflects two major influences in my life.

The first is the religion I was raised in, which includes in its services “The Petitions of the ...

Don’t Let Him Rob You Twice

By Alizabeth Worley

The atmosphere in which I fell in love with writing—and with essays—was toxic.

My high school English teacher was a ghost writer, literally sitting down at the computer where a student had been working, then writing or rewriting a whole poem or essay or story. Every year, he won dozens of awards under his students’ names.

As a high school student, this literary surrogacy was debilitating. I did not feel like I was a good writer, not really, because he had overwri...

The Art of Letter Writing

By Meg Keeshan McGovern

A handwritten letter from an old friend came in the mail along with a hand-blown glass paper weight housing a decoupage of bachelor buttons. It was packed in a beautiful box with a purple ribbon. This friend knew my love for letters and flowers in an old-fashioned sort of way. The first line of her letter said, “I felt that such an auspicious event deserved an actual handwritten note.” She expressed the reality that handwritten notes are not as common as they once ...

These ARE My Real Friends

I’ve always had a simple test to show if someone is my “real” friend: Would I drive across state lines in the middle of the night to bail them out of jail?

Now that I live in an absolute monarchy where I’m not even sure if bail is a thing, the equation is a little more complicated. I’ve also spent the past ten years actively making more virtual friends—reviewing books, sharing publishing information, commenting on posts, boosting tweets. That’s a lot more bond money at stake.

But Allis...

A Writer’s Pact with Readers

By Chelsey Drysdale

I’ve been thinking about the pact between a memoirist and her discerning readers, including those about whom she writes, an unspoken agreement that what is on the page comes from a genuine place of curiosity, exploration, and a valiant attempt at reflective self-awareness. Trust is at stake. Is the writer narrating her own story without a self-serving agenda? From my experience as a reader, the answer is yes in almost every case—but not always. This is not to say m...

HippoCamp Scholarships

HippoCamp: A Conference for Creative Nonfiction Writers is happening this year, and they’re offering several full scholarships, including a Writers of Color Scholarship and the Jean Snow Memorial Scholarship for a writer of color who will also be a first-time conference attendee.

Here is a link to the scholarship page for more details: https://hippocamp21.hippocampusmagazine.com/about/scholarships

On Being Edited: Do You Hear What I Hear?

By Andrea Isiminger

It’s only 50 words out of 500. Am I really going to insist? I wrestled with the question and once again reviewed the changes the editorial assistant suggested. Some edits I was grateful for; others I’d tweaked to make my own. But when she tidied up that final paragraph, my heart broke.

The last three lines of this essay were unconventional. I suppose they resembled poetry more than prose, but to me nothing appeared out of place. Each line contained a rhythm that amp...

Teaching Brevity: Brian Doyle’s “Imagining Foxes”

By Amie Souza Reilly

Brian Doyle’s essay “Imagining Foxes” remembers the afternoon he and his siblings spent playing in a tiny patch of cedar forest. However, the importance of that day does not come from what they witness in the woods, but from what they don’t actually see at all. His is an essay about finding meaning in absence.

In the beginning, Doyle lists all they observed, and readers, like the Doyle children, forget that the “forest” is only twelve blocks long. This is the way h...