Allison K. Williams's Blog, page 47

Buried Under a Pile of Not Good Enough

by Amy Suardi

Whenever I hear an author advise, Finish what you start, I slink backward. I just spent 4 years writing a memoir that I eventually abandoned. Then I started a micro-memoir collection, thinking short form was better for me. But when it was time to review what I had written to write an introduction, I was crestfallen: this was all I could do?

Your skills just need to catch up with your vision, a wise voice said. But I was so discouraged by my paltry product that I just wande...

Technology Holds My New Writing Secret. No, It’s Not AI.

By Karen DeBonis

During the years I struggled to keep up with the demands of working motherhood, I often lamented to my mother about my exhaustion and worries. “Karen, write it down,” she replied. Mom journaled regularly until her death at 86. I tried to follow her lead. Several times over the years, I opened a new notebook or bought myself a fancy journal and entered three or four barely legible entries.

“Is Matthew hyperactive?” I scribbled. “How will I survive until he’s old enough t...

A Brevity Thanksgiving

A sincere giving of thanks to the thousands of readers who visit our pages, the dedicated teachers who feature us in the classroom, and all of 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...

In Praise of “Ain’t”

By Richard Goodman

Reading a column by Roy Blount, Jr.—such a delightful fellow—on regional speech inspired me to write a few laudatory words about “ain’t,” smugly labeled nonstandard in my dictionary. As a boy growing up in southeastern Virginia sixty years ago, I was taught in school that “ain’t” wasn’t proper. “You should say ‘isn’t’ instead,” my teachers insisted. Most—if not all of us—did say “ain’t,” though. It was as natural as rain. I think the teachers’ insistence that we not use ...

Time Well Spent (at Sea): A Live Report

Following in the wake of Dinty W. Moore’s Blog Post last week.

By Amy Goldmacher

I write to you from somewhere southwest of the Azores in the Atlantic Ocean, bearing 238.71 degrees at 19 knots.

I’m on a ship! This is my 10th cruise in 9 years with 3 different cruise companies. This cruise is the largest I’ve experienced, with 3,660 passengers from all over the world, as far as I can tell from the languages and accents I’m overhearing.

This is the first time I’m cruising without my...

Write A Letter, Develop Your Voice

By Ann MacDonald

In The Art of Memoir, Mary Karr writes, “Each great memoir lives or dies based 100 percent on voice.” But how do you create a distinct and captivating voice?

Like many aspiring memoir writers, I’ve struggled more with this question than with any other aspect of nonfiction craft.

In Telling True Stories, Susan Orlean describes how pace, word choice, and sentence length all help create voice. With this in mind, I tried to develop my voice by focusing on words and sente...

Writing about Race (Without Fear)

By John Streamas

More than a century ago, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that the greatest issue facing the United States in the twentieth century would be the problem of the color line. I think most people of color would agree that the color line remains the greatest issue in the current century. So when the time comes to discuss it, what can we as writers say?

Aside from urging writers not to be racist, I won’t presume to dictate an answer. But I can suggest an important guideline: Be careful...

A Collaboration of Bodies: How Publishing in an Anthology Can Expand Your Literary Community

By Nina B. Lichtenstein

I was thrilled when my essay, “Belly,” was accepted to the anthology Awakenings: Stories of Body & Consciousness, edited by Diane Gottlieb. 49 writers contributed to the final version of Awakenings. This made me both excited—so much body writing, the theme of my memoir— and feeling like a very small fish in a big sea of talented writers.

We were all encouraged to spread the word of our forthcoming publication, with a professional marketing sheet from the publishe...

A Micromemoir Fail

By Suzette Mullen

Seven years after my divorce, I was part of a beautiful tableau: my wife and I, my ex-husband and his wife, and my two sons and their partners together for cocktails on the beach. This moment represented the post-divorce life I’d desired, and which had, in my view, been long—too long—in the making.

I wrote a “tiny love story” about it—a 100-word essay I planned to submit to the New York Times. Damn, I was proud of this piece. I shared it with my sons and some colleague...

Time Well Spent (at Sea)

By Dinty W. Moore

I am not a cruise person. Or to be more specific, I have never been on a cruise, have never imagined myself on a cruise, and have always assumed I would live my life just fine here on firm land. My contrariness is probably misguided—it often is—but I am nothing if not stubbornly contrary.

Yet I’ll be crossing the Atlantic with 25 or so other writers in early 2024, aboard the Queen Mary II, and like my essay hero Michel de Montaigne, I suppose I would do well to explore...