Allison K. Williams's Blog, page 11

How Instagram Led Me to Self-Publishing

By Gayle Kirschenbaum

I never imagined writing a book, let alone self-publishing one. My creative expression was filmmaking. I needed visuals and sound to tell my stories. Along the way, when I had something I wanted to get off my chest, I turned to pen and paper and wrote personal essays—sometimes they got published. But the idea of having enough material to create a book—never mind publish it myself—was so far from my reality and comfort zone.  

I had turned some of my creative energy...

To Write Long, First Write Short

By Laurie Hertzel

Ever since I was old enough to grip a pencil I thought of myself as a writer. In my 20s, I began making my living that way—first as a reporter and columnist at my hometown newspaper, then as a magazine writer. Eventually, a big-city paper came calling. They hired me to edit, but I was sure it would only be a matter of time before I resumed my writing ways.

Nine years later, I looked up and realized that I had not written a sentence, not a word, in almost a decade. I st...

Publishing Outside My Memoir’s Scope Gave Me the Boost I Needed

By Talia Vestri

This past winter I took Katie Bannon’s two-day webinar, Publish Essays from Your Memoir. Her workshop led me to brainstorm 40 ideas for pitching literary and commercial outlets with content inspired by my book-in-progress. I began to see how my memoir, which follows my first marriage in my late twenties, could spawn a reported magazine article on codependency and addiction; a lyric essay about forgiveness in recovery; and a 500-word flash piece on a single scene such as our...

In Praise of Archives! On Finding and Using Archival Material

By Suzanne Cope

There was the archive that was two and a half hours into the Italian countryside, on the second floor of a palazzo that overlooked the quiet piazza in the center of town. There, I read the only publicly available copy of a testimony of one of my book’s protagonists while my husband flew toy airplanes with my children, whose laughter tinkled through the library’s open windows.

Another librarian set me up with a computer and a stack of books in an unused classroom at the U...

The List Essay: A Brevity Blog Round Up

By Andrea A. Firth

Last week I attended a virtual meet up led by Suleika Jaouad and Elizabeth Gilbert—a celebratory pre-launch event for Jaouad’s new release, The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life.  A fun gathering of thousands of readers, writers and creatives that included prompts, kind of like virtual appetizers. Gilbert (the author of Eat, Pray, Love and Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear) got us started. She framed her prompt as if you were writing a letter...

The Rhythm of Writing: How Breaking One Universal Rule Changes Everything

By Patti Jo Amerein

A brilliant editor once told me that another brilliant editor once told her she was falling into the habit of grouping her descriptors into sets of three. Allison K Williams had pointed out that although following this common “rule of threes” may feel rhythmic and comfortable to the writer, it can lead to a monotonous and predictable experience for the reader. Even worse, to the keen reader, it may come across as lazy writing, like the 900th time a character was tall, d...

The 5 C’s to Landing a Literary Agent

by Tracey Hughes Royal

Every writer’s formula to landing an agent is different. It took seven months to discover mine was comprised of five c’s: craft, community, clarity, connections, and coincidence.

Craft

Two years ago, I was wrestling with the last three chapters of a memoir, Rum Cake Fairy Rising. It had suspense, four job layoffs, life in New York City, and an Oprah moment. What’s not to love?

I signed up for a three-day writing class to improve my craft and learned the imp...

Your Memoir as a Movie: Internal vs. External Story

By Michelle Cutler

You’re at a party, listening to a fascinating story, or talking to a friend about a period of your life you just can’t shake, and someone pipes up to say—

“Hey, that would make a great movie!”

It sounds fun, flattering even, but adapting a true story for film or television is every bit as complex as writing a book. Like writing memoir or narrative nonfiction, it might require casting new light on shared cultural influences or wrestling with themes that span years o...

The Evolving Shapes of Chronic Illness Stories

By Molly J. Wick

At age 21, a blood clot travelled from a vein in my leg into my chest. There, it sat, saddled between my lungs, growing until I could convince a doctor that something was wrong. After 39 days in the hospital, I made a full recovery.

Here’s the story I first told of what had happened: 

2007: I had a blood clot in my lung, I recovered, and I moved on. 

Our brains like to make sense of the world, so they can prepare us for what might come next. This is part of my dri...

Quiet Writing: Start with an Everyday Moment

By Andrea A. Firth

Early on in grad school, one of my mentors told me that I was a quiet writer. As one of the oldest in the cohort (I started my MFA program at 51), I was nervous about fitting in, and this comment from one of the faculty I most admired set me on edge. I didn’t know what he meant. I’m not a particularly loud person, but I wouldn’t describe myself as an introvert either. He read the concern on my face and gave me a reassuring smile.

I’d fallen for the essay form and was ...