Allison K. Williams's Blog, page 5

Stuck on Synopsis? Write a Syn-NOPE-sis

By Allison K Williams

Ugh, synopses. How on earth are we supposed to capture the story, mood and creative vision of our book in 750 words or less? And do we hafta?

A synopsis is the key scenes of your memoir or novel, summarized in terms of action, reaction and impact, written in the order they appear in the book. Unlike the query letter, a synopsis includes all major plot twists and the ending. Agents often require a synopsis to accompany a query; book proposals for memoir and nonficti...

Learning to Fail (The Right Way)

By Mary Hannah Terzino

Earlier this year I visited a clever exhibition at our local arts center called “We Hope You Fail Better,” by Brad and Kristi Montague. The Montagues are children’s picture book creators who want exhibition visitors to embrace the inevitable failures that happen when we stick our necks out to try to make something, or to make something happen.

The exhibit included a wall of Post-It notes where visitors, many of them children, recorded some of their failures. Two o...

How to Thrive as a Writing Groupie

By L.A. Young

This is garbage, I sigh, shaking my head. Nothing I can do about it now. I don’t have time to do a rewrite before uploading.

I perform this ritual twice a month, before reading my piece out loud to a group of other writing addicts, so that they can give me their feedback. The process is repeated with each of us, like some sort of literary AA meeting.

I have been in the same writing group for almost 4 years. I nicknamed this one “the Good,” while the two previous groups ...

I Didn’t Publish a Word About My Divorce for a Year

And It Was the Best Thing I Could Have Done for My Memoir

By Heather Sweeney

My writing career began with a blog. At the time, I was a military spouse and stay-at-home mom in need of a hobby while the Navy sent my then-husband all over the world. I was still blogging when, a couple years later, I found myself facing divorce, wondering if I should turn my blog about military life into a divorce blog. But now, over a decade later with a divorce memoir about to be published, I realize that...

As in Recovery, Consistency is Key in Writing

By Elizabeth Jannuzzi

I’ve been sober for 14 and a half years. And for all those years—besides a vacation or two and an illness here or there—I’ve attended the same Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, what we in recovery call “a home group.” We’ve switched locations a few times and during COVID, we moved to Zoom. Otherwise, it’s been the same people choosing to connect Wednesdays at 8 p.m., week after week. 

Well, some of the same people. About 20 people have been there the entire time I have...

Willie Nelson and the Three G’s of Literary Citizenship

By Áine Greaney

Recently, I watched a short video in which Willie Nelson and his wife shared their three family rules:

1) Don’t be an a**hole.

2) Don’t be an a**hole.

3) Don’t be an a**hole.

Now, with more than one family musician and a Dad who spearheaded the Farm Aid project, let’s assume that this Nelson guidance trifecta extends through the world of arts.  

It certainly fits the world and ethos of literary citizenship. It may be useful to ask ourselves: In my career, wou...

First the Playlist: Tips for Planning Your Own DIY Writing Retreat

By Nina Gaby

Lake Cottage

I offer some gentle thoughts as you bravely forge ahead with your DIY Retreat, refusing to get dragged off-project by partners, kids, pets, leaking dishwashers, MSNBC.

Me? I rented a lake cottage because my biggest excuse for not writing is that I don’t have a view of a large body of water. Having that, I did feel guilty about leaving the partner and the pet behind.

So:

• First the playlist. Weeks before my retreat I planted seeds, not with words but with ...

What My Writing Needed Was Failure

By Diana Friedman

In 1971, my mother published her first book—a Dell Pocketbook guide to employment for female liberal arts graduates. I spent my childhood watching her hunch over her typewriter, pitch agents, celebrate acceptances, revel in the arrival of her galleys. When she was assigned a television script in my junior year of high school, I helped her write an episode of Knot’s Landing. I never once questioned that I, too, would become a writer.

But when my high school teacher slap...

I’m the Word “Just” in a Piece of Writing, and I Just Want You to Give Me a Chance

By Kerry Elson 

Hey. It’s just me, the nemesis of creative writing teachers everywhere. You know … “just.”

Teachers tell you to just delete me, cross me out, excise me from your short story, essay, poem, creative nonfiction slice-of-life documentary storytelling article. Because apparently, I’m just … unnecessary? And a sentence without me is just … stronger? But they’re just wrong. Just so, so wrong.

Just.

Just.

Just.

Just wanted to put extras of myself in this piece becaus...

Sacred Lakes, Woo Woo, and Flopping in the Mud: A Brevity Blog Round Up on Liberating Our Prose

By Heidi Croot

Stuck in a rut, syntax predictable, metaphors tired—my creative spark cries for rekindling.  

I reach for my marked-up copy of Jack Grapes’ Method Writing, a craft book on how to liberate originality.

Sorry, he reminds me, but innate talent won’t help. Most writers have talent. All it can do is make you look competent. The mind relies on talent, whereas genius emerges from the body—as athletes know “when out of desperation their bodies surpass anything they could have ...