Allison K. Williams's Blog, page 30

The Road to Publication for a Writer of a Certain Age

By Carole Duff

“Memoir is hard to sell,” the webinar presenter said. “The market is glutted. Does anyone want to read another story about loss, trauma, mental illness, mother, father, son, daughter, spouse, friend, lover, rejection, or failure?”

I nodded at her image on my computer screen. Having heard this message many times before, I expected to come away feeling disheartened. But not this time.

“Being passed over by agents and the Big Five Publishers is an opportunity to leverage ...

Writing My Way Off the Floor

By Laura Carraro

When I moved to Manhattan a few years ago, I was dead set on writing a memoir. Convinced that the change of environment would infuse me with talent and inspiration, I imagined myself eating breakfast with a paperback at the local diner, going home to write, and then closing my laptop at night in time to watch the tugboats move down the Hudson River. I would drink bourbon. Pick up smoking.

I started by dragging a desk into my living room. For many weeks I made sure there...

Telling Stories, Writing Stories, in Boccaccio’s Certaldo

By Dinty W. Moore

The Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio wrote his epic Decameron in the 14th century, setting the boisterous tale in the lush Tuscan countryside. This week Netflix (inevitably perhaps) launches the dark comedy as a mini-series full of satirical commentary on greed, lust, paranoia, and human frailty, then and now.

I can relate to some of what is described in the previous paragraph. I have a Netflix subscription, for instance.

And after three years of co-teaching writing...

On Starting: The Street Forest Method

By Jen Hirt

The Author’s Street Forest

The reporter takes in the “street forest” covering about 40 square feet in front of my house in the city—mostly terraced foliage instead of seasonal flowers, flourishing against the brick house, spilling out on to the sidewalk, just feet away from the on-street parking. She points, I identify. Ferns, vinca, phlox, ribbon grass, mint. Next level, elderberry, bush cherry, indigo, monarda, hydrangea, and chocolate vine. Houseplants hide in their shade. In...

The Scene Machine: Creating New Problems

By Heather Sellers

Readers love scenes because they get to engage with the action in real time. Watching moments of high tension play out for those on the page, the reader becomes part of the story. Because they present the crucial moments of change in the story—when someone has to make a decision—scenes are the basic building blocks of dramatic action.

Four Tools to Rivet Readers

Of course, scenes aren’t your only choice, when composing a story, true or invented. Narration builds ou...

How Cooking Sparks My Writing

By Jennifer N. Shannon

In a recent New Yorker article exploring the connection between walking and creativity, author Ferris Jabr notes how “Walking organizes the world around us; writing organizes our thoughts.” It wasn’t until a short while ago that I realized this is true for cooking as well.

I’ve always enjoyed making food, not enough to become a chef, but enough to tinker with recipes until I combine ingredients that work. I come from generations of women who could put anything on ...

Crafting the Lyric Essay—Adding to the Conversation

A Q&A WITH HEIDI CZERWIEC  

By Andrea A. Firth

Poet, essayist and educator Heidi Czerwiec has spent a lot of time talking about how lyric craft is being used in creative nonfiction—a conversation she believes is necessary and useful, and one that could benefit from expansion. Her recently released book Crafting the Lyric Essay: Strike a Chord is both a craft book and collection of essays that discuss and show how the lyric essay functions on the page, the craft techniques and strategies...

The Power of the Sandwich: Story Containers Beyond Chronology

By Ethan Gilsdorf

Cleaning up after dinner the other day, I began to think about containers. Which was the right one for this particular pile of leftovers? Plastic or glass? Round or rectangular? Should I cram all the leftovers into that oddball one I never returned after my neighbor’s cookout (you know, the one whose lid never quite fits). Perhaps a Ziploc bag would be best? Then I thought about that Bento-style lunch box with three stackable compartments (it also has a separate tray for ...

How They Did It: Shifting Time in H is for Hawk

By Allison K Williams

This is the first of our new series, How They Did It, a look at craft techniques in published work. Has a particular passage inspired your own writing craft? Share your close read with us. The Brevity Blog guidelines here.

Writing the past, in fiction or memoir, challenges our ability to shift time smoothly. We can use dingbats to separate sections, start a new chapter or take a blank line.

But nesting past and present, onion-ing layers of meaning so that juxta...

“More Op-Ed-y” for the New York Times

By Lea Page

Three days before my Op-Ed, “What Happens When You Knock on 8000 Doors,” was slated for publication in The New York Times, I reread the edited draft, saw that a line had been changed, and did the writerly equivalent of collapsing on my fainting couch. I panic-texted my writing partner, Blair: It’s exactly what I was afraid would happen. Then I called my husband, Ray.

“How did I not see this before?” I howled when he picked up.

I’m accustomed to writing literary creative n...