Allison K. Williams's Blog, page 15

Kayaking Isn’t Like Writing

By Judith Hannan

I had to work to get my kayak into the water the other day. The air had warmed enough, I thought, to melt the ice. But a sheet remained where I launch my boat. Beyond, I saw calm water, a sole swan, bufflehead ducks and a rising sun. I needed to start my day among such beauty so I began to portage, dragging my kayak along the slippery shore until I arrived at open water. I sat, pushed off, sighed.

I love sitting on the water, being on the level of sea birds, staring int...

The Writers Bridge: Resource, Education, Community

By Allison K Williams

Where can you get a discussion of the publishing landscape in 2025, learn what “author platform” means now, and be part of a lively, connected community–for free?

On the Writers Bridge.

In mid-2020, writers were adjusting to both a new Zoom reality and the ever-increasing pressure from agents and publishers to “build platform.” With many of us staying home from necessity, choice, and/or legal imposition, social media was hyping up for authors more than ever be...

Returning to Our (Many) Selves in a Recording Studio

By Michelle Redo

The trees were nearly at peak foliage when my audiobook client Betsy Armstrong arrived from her Nevada desert home to sit in my Maine closet-studio for five days straight in October. Our objective? To catch all the mistakes while recording her memoir, so she won’t have to return for retracks in February. We didn’t want her to have to make a second trip. Especially in February.  

Recording your book and fixing every misspeak as you go is a nice goal, but if you happen to...

If You Can Tell It, You Can Write It

By Tracie Adams

Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.

I first heard this African proverb in the early 1980s from an Anthropology professor. He was droning on about always hearing both sides of the story before making up one’s mind about an important issue. I was a 19-year-old girl on a path of destructive life choices as a means of coping with traumatic sexual abuse that I had been too afraid and too ashamed to talk about.

Something changed after I left...

Reflections on the AWP Conference: Evidence of Us

By Olga Katsovskiy

As writers prepare for the 2025 AWP Conference in Los Angeles, a diverse literary event featuring presentations, readings, lectures, panel discussions, book signings, receptions, and a massive bookfair taking place later this month, the author reflects on her experience at AWP 2024. 

When I set out to my first AWP conference last year, I envisioned attending panels, sitting at the Minerva Rising Press table at the bookfair, and spending the rest of my time alone in my...

So I Wrote a Memoir. But What’s the Point?

By Jennifer Severn

August 2017. Julie, my mother’s younger sister, was the first to read my memoir in draft form. It was not yet published, but I felt it was nearing completion. ‘I can’t wait!’ she’d been telling me for years. ‘Soon,’ I always said. ‘You have to be patient.’

Then one day I realised, with a jolt, she was seventy-nine! What was I thinking! I printed it out, stuffed it in an envelope and posted it to Sydney. A couple of days later she rang me. “It’s arrived!” she said. “Go...

How Hiking the Appalachian Trail Prepared Me for Publishing My Memoir

By Amanda K. Jaros

I thru-hiked the 2,160-mile Appalachian Trail when I was 23, hiking through 14 states, from Georgia to Maine. Twenty years later, I decided to write a memoir based on my experience, spent 18 months assembling a solid draft, then sought, acquired, and worked with a publisher over about four years. The resulting book, In My Boots: A Memoir of Five Million Steps Along the Appalachian Trail,finally appeared in February 2025.

Reflecting on all of that now, a stretch of mor...

Want to Write Powerful Flash? Find Your Image

By Dinty W. Moore

The poet William Carlos Williams once said “No ideas but in things,” a quote that has lingered famously because poets have such pith and surety.

Is it true? No, there are ideas in philosophy textbooks too, but Williams was talking about literature, about writing that grips and holds, about deliberate concision—the whittling down of language that makes a poem a poem.

To demonstrate my own pith and surety, let me take the bold liberty of flipping the Williams quote an...

Today is National Essay Day: So Start Thinking

By Dinty W. Moore

Though much of our focus on the Brevity Blog is the art of memoir writing, the genre we call creative or literary nonfiction is far wider in scope, and it would be a shame for writers to forget our other options.

Memoir, of course, is based on memory, basically an exploration of some aspect of the self and the circumstances that shape us. More urgently, memoir asks questions: How did I get here? Had I made other choices, would I be better off? Can I squeeze some meanin...

Entering the Fourth Dimension: The Importance of Reflection

By Ethan Gilsdorf

We all intuitively sense the reality of our three-dimensional world: Length, width, and depth. These qualities give all things in space their heft, weight, presence.

But theoretical physicists suppose we exist beyond this holy trinity. “It’s not enough to know where an object is in terms of three spatial coordinates,” says one engineering writer. “You also need to know when the object was where.”

Consider the three dimensions of most writing—the sensory and concrete...