Allison K. Williams's Blog, page 4

Stop! Avert Your Eyes from That Beautiful New Draft (For Now)!

By Margaret Anne Mary Moore        

Seeing my Google Doc’s “Last Opened” timestamp, I cringed. Though my essay-in-progress was a piece I was excited about, seven months had passed since my last revision. At that time, I put a few bullet points in virtual sticky notes with the directions I planned on taking—“More emotion needed; more about assistive technology”—but there wasn’t much to go on. Had I waited too long?

The essay, later published in America Magazine, describes my experience f...

How to Write a Memoir When You Aren’t the Main Character

By Marcia Heath

A few years ago, I set out to write a biography about a couple of genius surfer dudes living a dream life in the Caribbean. It was a curious choice that mystified both my friends and me, a recovering executive and non-surfer in Maine. Why was I drawn to the story of Bula, a little giant of a surf shop in Aruba? All I really knew was that I was 100 percent unfulfilled and desperate to write a book, something I’d attempted many times before. Like many writers in waiting, I’d ...

You Are a Writer Swirling in Despair

By Laura Rink

Your current writing project has stalled. A project you won’t abandon. A project that must progress, and soon. You stare at the page. You scroll through the manuscript. You flip through your notes. No solutions appear. You swirl in despair. Now what?

Continue swirling in despair. This is an option—sometimes you need to wallow. Groan loudly. Drop your head in your hands. Lay on the floor. Visit this despair but do not live there. Set a timer—boundaries are important with unwelco...

Memoir as Reliquary: Making Your Story Matter

By Allison K Williams

What makes a place, or a thing, matter? In The Late Scholar, Jill Paton Walsh’s continuation of Dorothy L. Sayers’ Golden Age detective novels, Peter Wimsey sees a book once owned by Alfred the Great. The scholar showing it to him doesn’t feel like that adds much significance:

“Well, I don’t get reverent about relics,” said Mary Fowey. “I’m an atheist and a scholar.”

“You don’t get a shiver down the spine at the thought of who might have held this book?” asked...

Flickerings at the Bijou Theater: Flash Essays and Illumination

By Sue William Silverman

In third grade, I lived on the island of St. Thomas and often visited the duty-free jewelry shop in Beretta Center. Not to buy, but to admire. Once, standing by a display cabinet shimmering with diamonds, emeralds, rubies, I overheard a tourist say the word “bijou.” I didn’t know what it meant, but I never forgot the lovely soft “j” that launched the quick second syllable. The beauty of the word lingered. The images, the cool texture of those diamonds and rubies, l...

Are You Too Young to Teach Memoir?

By Michele Cantos Garcia

“I’m 70 and single again,” the glamorous actor-turned-writer read tenderly from her notes. It was her first time in a memoir class—and my first time teaching it—but she already had a solid grasp of what made an engaging hook and a juicy plot. Plus, she had something you can’t teach: a lifetime of experiences and enough distance to understand them.

As a young-ish memoirist (I’m 34) writing about my family’s immigration-related separation in the 90s, I hesitated t...

What Stillness Taught Me About Story

By Mary Monoky

I didn’t set out to write a story. I set out to survive.

After decades of illness, raising four children, and uncertainty, I moved seven hundred miles from suburban Philadelphia to a small town in the South. My oldest son had just gotten married and asked me to come. Not out of obligation—out of love. It was a quiet, astonishing invitation: “I want you here.”

In that new town, with my body still fragile and my identity in flux, I returned to school. I finished a Master...

“Sh*t Happened” Isn’t Enough: Crafting Compelling Memoir from Dramatic Action

By Allison K Williams

Recently, I heard a panel of distinguished agents and publishing-house editors discussing trends in publishing, social media, and where authors fit in the literary machine.

When it was question time, I asked, “What topics and types of book aren’t selling? What do you generally not want to see any more of?”

“Cancer memoirs.”

“Death of a parent memoirs. Death of a child memoirs.”

“Addiction and recovery.”

The problem was not, they went on to explain, that...

It’s a Long Road to Publishing, and Most Writers Aren’t Prepared for the Journey

By Eva Langston

Like many writers, I’ve wanted to be an author ever since I was a child. So, nineteen years ago, at the age of twenty-five, I wrote my first novel.

The manuscript was terrible, and I knew it was terrible, but I didn’t know how to fix it. So I started studying in an MFA program, thinking this would teach me how to be a better writer.

And it did. I wrote some great short stories that were published in literary journals. But, after graduating with my MFA in Fiction Writi...

Every Other Word an F-Bomb: When Writers Mistake Profanity for Voice

By Bethany Bruno

I once participated in a collaborative writing exercise where we each contributed a short passage to build a shared story. The setting was the rural South in the early 1900s: dusty porches, hymnals, women stirring pots while watching the horizon for news. One writer turned in a single page that read like a drunk voicemail. Every other word was “fuck” or “shit.” The voice didn’t match the setting, didn’t reveal character, didn’t move the story. It broke the entire spell. Th...