Allison K. Williams's Blog, page 32

All of Us Liars

By Matt Young

1.

Memory isn’t fact; it is an act of creation. Memories are built and built again from one remembering to the next, each new construction augmented by the sum of our experiences between the remembering.

A simplification: external stimuli trigger the formation of a memory so that we associate the stimuli with an emotion. Then our brain makes a protein bridge between neurons, which is then moved to the hippocampus.

So memories are physical things—not just images floating...

How a Message from a Stranger Helped Me Finish My Memoir

By Buick Audra

Buick Audra by Anna Haas

For the second time in two years, I found myself working to complete a short memoir to accompany an album. Combing through years of texts and emails from people I used to know, I searched for signs of who I’d been in those relationships. The correspondences revealed a more agreeable version of myself who favored exclamation points, but few usable insights.

The album was by my metal band, Friendship Commanders. We called it MASS, a nod to the stat...

Be the Mountain, Not the Thunder

By Bella Mahaya Carter

Years ago, on a solo trip, reeling from rejections in my writing practice, I met a hunched, elderly shopkeeper at Taos Pueblo who winced with pain as she rubbed her neck. I offered her a massage. Her dark eyes twinkled as she nodded and led me to her small back room. The warm air smelled of earth and woodsmoke.

She sat on a chair in front of a stove. I set my hands on her shoulders and kneaded lumpy knots. She closed her eyes and moaned softly.

When I stopped, ...

Be The Mountain, Not the Thunder

By Bella Mahaya Carter

Years ago, on a solo trip, reeling from rejections in my writing practice, I met a hunched, elderly shopkeeper at Taos Pueblo who winced with pain as she rubbed her neck. I offered her a massage. Her dark eyes twinkled as she nodded and led me to her small back room. The warm air smelled of earth and woodsmoke.

She sat on a chair in front of a stove. I set my hands on her shoulders and kneaded lumpy knots. She closed her eyes and moaned softly.

When I stopped, ...

Walking on Air

By Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

When my partner Emily teaches traditional circle dance to a group of newbies, they go through a predictable progression.

First, they stride easily into the class, unaware of their grace.

Next, Emily teaches a few steps. She’s patient, and the movements themselves are simple and repetitive. But students nonetheless trip over their feet, giggle to draw attention away from their awkwardness, scowl or apologize and sometimes give up. The circle jolts and falte...

Write More Powerful Scenes with the Rule of Three

By Heather Sellers

I have found the rule of three to be incredibly helpful when I’m building scenes.

There are just three parts to a powerful scene—the set-up, the climax, and the payoff. Without careful attention to purpose at each turn, scenes can get meandering and flabby.

Set-up: Powerful scenes start with the problem already in motion. Avoid background, “throat-clearing,” and description. Begin with the two main characters already at odds on a clear issue. They each want somethi...

Embracing the Unexpected: A Hybrid Approach to Memoir Structure

By Grace Loh Prasad

What I found hardest about writing my memoir The Translator’s Daughter wasn’t dealing with other people’s reactions, treating myself as a character, or figuring out what to put in and what to leave out. My biggest challenge was structure: how to narrate a decades-long arc when my story doesn’t have an obvious end point. My second biggest challenge was my writing style, which varies from piece to piece. How was I going to assemble various standalone essays into a cohesiv...

How Speculative Memoirs Helped Me Write About My Separation Anxiety

By Matt Homrich-Knieling

My parents aren’t dead, but they’ve died hundreds, probably thousands of times.

This isn’t a clever word-play riddle; it represents my reality of living with separation anxiety. As a child, separation from my parents meant certain catastrophe. It wasn’t just a fear that my parents could die on the way to the grocery store or post office, it was a fear that they had died. And with that came a tormenting mix of terror, desperation, and grief. Again and again.

I...

We Need Platform Yes We Do

By Allison K Williams

Photo courtesy ISHOF

…but it doesn’t have to suck away our writing time or our mental energy.

Nonfiction writers and memoirists need platform. Not clicks. Not likes. Not a zillion followers. A true, effective platform is actually a bridge to our audience.

Useful, book-selling platform happens gradually over years—that’s actually good news. Because you don’t have to cram platform into your life in the six months before you start querying. You get to build connecti...

Mother Lode: Digging For Meaning in Life Stories

By Jackie Plimmer Bayer

One of the hardest concepts to get across to my students in the Life Stories class I taught this past winter, was the distinction between an anecdote and a story.

An anecdote is a tale we tell people we don’t know very well. It stays at the surface and focuses on the who, what, where and when, like a newspaper report of something that happened to us.

A story, on the other hand, contains all the elements of an anecdote, but it goes deeper into the meaning and i...