Allison K. Williams's Blog, page 22

Brevity’s Thanksgiving Greeting

A sincere thank you to the thousands of readers who visit our pages, the dedicated teachers who feature us in their classrooms, and to the talented writers who send their essays to Brevity and to the Brevity Blog, trusting us with the work they have labored over for many weeks or months.

We are thankful as well to our volunteer staff, who are the heart and soul of our literary enterprise. We don’t thank you enough, volunteers, but we truly value what you do and the generosity with which y...

A Few Kind Words

By Andrea A. Firth

Maniouloux, Jean-Luc. Impact 1. Deyrolle, Paris.

On a recent trip to Paris, my husband and I spent a morning wandering through the rooms of the Deyrolle boutique. Often described as a cabinet of curiosities, it’s a remarkable intersection between science and art. Deyrolle exhibits and sells extraordinary flora, fauna, and taxidermy creations. A rhino’s head, a snake’s skeleton, a scaly blond hedgehog, a cabinet full of birds, a case of butterflies. It might sound creepy, ...

The Mystery of Memoir

By Elizabeth Lancaster

Having just relocated with my husband from Australia, and with time on my hands, I signed up for a writing course in New York City to learn about the craft of fiction, specifically short stories. I loved the intensity of this form and the fact that every word counted. I began a few stories and worked on them obsessively. Memoir was not even on my radar.

Then in short order, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, my father died and the complex relationship with m...

All Hail the Write Like!

By Edith-Nicole Cameron

In my daughter’s eighth-grade language arts class, students are regularly tasked with reading a poem or prose selection and then completing a “write-like” assignment. In this exercise, the framework of the newly-encountered poem or prose is used as a template for the student’s original piece. The template serves as scaffolding, grounding and stabilizing the build; providing a bridge from blank page to decent rough draft.

You may no longer be in middle-school, but...

Naming and Claiming Your Earned Wisdom in Your Memoir’s Takeaways

By Jennifer Leigh Selig

Beginning memoir writers typically start by writing specific memories. After months and months, sometimes years, of gathering those memories, they sharpen their storytelling by crafting memories into scenes. They eventually shape those scenes into chapters, and those chapters illustrate a transformational arc, at least in traditional memoirs. And doing all that? Well, it takes time.

In my experience as a memoir teacher over the last decade, I’ve learned it takes...

Going Viral: What to do Before, During and After

By Andrea Tate

After the recent election, I wrote about family conflict and how I was handling it. Before publishing, my editor at HuffPost told me that I would undoubtedly experience strong reactions from family, friends, and strangers. He asked if I was really sure this was what I wanted to say, now.

I took a deep breath of courage and said, Yes, this is something I have to stand up and say.

But did I expect over a million views within 3 days?

No I did not.

Did I expect FOX News to s...

Envy Is

By Liz deBeer

Envy is tinkering with words day after day, and then, in a surge of confidence, submitting your story, anxiously waiting for weeks only to receive a short, impersonal rejection on the same day your writer friend announces winning first (or even second) place in a prestigious contest. You congratulate her enthusiastically, but, deep down, you feel like the mermaid Ariel, wondering, “When’s it my turn? … Wish I could be part of that world.”

Envy is normal, as is its cousin j...

The Little Things: Exploring Sensory Detail to Bring Characters to Life

By Jessica Handler

Stop what you’re doing, and pay attention to your senses. How your fingers feel on the keyboard, or your feet on the floor. What about sound? Is your playlist going (and what’s on it?) or is that a trash truck grinding away on the street? Does your mouth taste like this morning’s coffee or tea, or is there a half-dissolved mint or cherry or lemon or eucalyptus cough drop on your tongue? When you inhale, are you enjoying the scent of that last autumn rose in a pitcher on ...

The Gift of a Good Editor

By Elizabeth Austin

In the early days of my writing career, sending a draft to an editor felt like unzipping my chest and offering up my insides to someone holding a pen instead of a scalpel. I’d hit “send” and imagine the editor on the other end squinting at my words, questioning each sentence. What if they think this is ridiculous? I’d worry. What if they’re not just critical, but brutal? More than anything, I feared feedback that aimed to reduce me somehow—a critique of some essential e...

The Nonfiction Trio: Writer/Narrator/Editor

By Olga Katsovskiy

I recently walked through a beautiful Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. One of the galleries featured a recreation of her art studio: jars of paint and card swatches scattered on a low-rise natural wood table, tiny sculptures and bones decorated the top of a textured cardboard mantelpiece designed to mimic stone. An interview played in a loop on a vintage Da-Lite projector screen, O’Keeffe squinting in the glare of the beige mountains of New Me...