Allison K. Williams's Blog, page 43

Vulnerability When Writing Memoir: The Expected and the Unexpected

By Irene Stern Frielich

I was sure I had thought it through. And in fact, I had. The problem was, I hadn’t felt it through.

Five years ago, when I started writing my father’s story, I had no idea it would transform into a memoir. I wanted to document what I knew of my father’s life as a Jewish boy during the Nazi period in Germany and in the Netherlands. He had shared very little of his story with me in person and he died in 1994, when I was a young adult.

I was able to piece togethe...

An Attempt at a Lyric Introduction to the Forthcoming Crafting the Lyric Essay: Strike a Chord

The essay that follows shamelessly rips off language from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ezra Pound, and William Wordsworth

By Heidi Czerwiec

It is the honourable characteristic of the Essay that its materials are to be found in every subject which can interest the human mind. The evidence of this fact is to be sought, not in the writings of Critics, but in those of Essayists themselves.

This is why the best craft writing comes from its practitioners.

During the first summer that author...

Astounded—Discovering More of My Story

By Margaret S. Mandell

Pay attention, wrote Mary Oliver. Be astounded / Tell about it.

It had been months since I submitted my manuscript to the publisher for developmental editing, proofreading, cover design, and interior layout. I knew the manuscript would ping-pong back and forth through these stages of production, and I was determined to reread it out loud each time, practicing for what would become an audiobook recording in my voice. I was sure I knew my own story.

With each rer...

The River of Story Always Flows Forward

By Dinty W. Moore

I have always recoiled at the idea that stories are written with a theme. The word “theme” seems retroactive, something awarded to the writer by an English professor somewhere, not an essential part of the writing process. Even more troubling to me as a teacher is when students say, “The meaning the author wants us to grasp is ….” — as if a story, poem, or memoir is simply a puzzle to be solved.

The word that works for me when discussing the greater, richer aspects of...

Looking at an Eclipse: A Braided Essay About Braided Essays

By Lilly Dancyger

The first time I wrote a braided essay, I had no idea that was what I was doing. I’m not sure if I’d even heard the term “braided essay” in 2017, when I started writing about my cousin Sabina’s murder for the first time. She was killed in 2010, three weeks before her twenty-first birthday. For seven years, I didn’t write a word about her, or what had happened to her. I wrote about just about everything else in my life—this was the height of the “it happened to me” era of ...

A Little Letter from an AI Rebutter

By Rebecca Evans

I am an AI Rebutter.

I am a Long-Hand-Writer Endorser.

I pen pages each morning in a journal, jot a list of tasks to (almost) complete, scaffold essays and poems across composition notebooks. In separate journals, I copy beautiful lines from artists I love, wishing to transfer talent by osmosis.

For me, magic begins within this first planting.

I lean into an unfolding. Instead of writing towards an idea or theme or popular topic, I follow the words where they l...

Meaningful, Memorable… and Brief

By Heather Sellers

I teach a course in the craft of brief forms—micro memoir, flash fiction, prose poetry. The course fills quickly: We love brevity. In the age of emoji and SMS, where shortcuts allow and even compel us to communicate simply, broadly, and quickly, we are, as readers, craving stories that are short, yes, but also richly rendered, with figurative language, arresting imagery, innovative formal invention, and depth.

Brief works can be incredibly rewarding to read but madden...

Brevity’s Latest Craft Essays: “Why Trans Flash?” and “Against Being Good”

Yesterday, Brevity launched its special issue on Transgender, Gender-Nonconforming, and Gender Expansive experience. The issue includes new essays by contemporary writers as well as craft essays by our guest editors, Krys Malcolm Belc and Silas Hansen. Below, we’d like to present two brief excepts of our craft selection from the special issue. You can find full versions of these essays along with many other craft meditations in Brevity’s Craft Section or through our Teaching Resources page.

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Brevity’s 75th Issue: Transgender, Gender-Nonconforming, and Gender-Expansive Experience

Announcing Brevity’s 75th issue, available to read on our site as of this morning! This themed special issue features essays by writers Lee Anderson, Nic Anstett, Kay Ulanday Barrett, KB Brookins, Rivka Clifton, Mac Crane, Atlas Desmond, Melissa Faliveno, Eric LeMay, Katherine Scott Nelson, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore and Ocean Wei, as well as two craft essays by guest editors Krys Malcolm Belc and Silas Hansen. These 14 brief essays and meditations form a constellation of contemporary perspecti...

How Did It Really Happen?

By Tamara Dean

A “vivid and continuous dream” wrote the late John Gardner, author of The Art of Fiction and On Becoming a Novelist, is the type of narrative that readers find captivating and memorable. But a “vivid and continuous dream” is the subjective result of an author’s efforts. How do we craft such an ever-dazzling trance?

With honesty. Commit to seeking the truth doggedly, unimpeded by judgment or fear. Writing more honestly isn’t about a moral fidelity to the truth, although th...