Allison K. Williams's Blog, page 57

What Can Happen When You Share Your Writing With a Therapist

By Rachel Weinhaus 

When I started therapy in 2019, my therapist asked what I did for a living. I dreaded the question. It would require a lengthy explanation of why I was not a real writer but rather a walking litany of rejection.  

I took a deep breath and said, “I’m sort of a writer.”  

I knew that even if I’d answered without hesitation or qualification—“I’m a writer”—I’d still have to endure the following:  

“What kind of writing do you do?”  

“Screenwriting.”  

“Wow. H...

Olive Oyl and the Golden Trophy

By Mary Hannah Terzino

I’m putting together my first query letter for publishers I hope will be interested in my book manuscript. I hired a consultant who is not an agent, an optimistic hard worker who has cooed over my book, helped reorganize it, produced almost two dozen publisher names, and now advises on the query.

“You’ve won things,” she reminds me. “It doesn’t matter if you think they’re minor. Put them in.”

So I do, the flash fiction prize (I write both the AC of creative no...

I’m Writing to Help Our Planet

By Whitney Brown

My favorite thing to write is a travel essay.

That’s because travel writers never take a trip just once. We get to live every excursion over and over: once as we travel, twice as we write, again and again as we revise. At every step, we wring more from our experiences.

But I often wonder how, on a climate-changed planet, I can justify writing about my trips. 

So I bring climate themes into my essays. I feel good about openly addressing the issue.

And yet, on my...

I Have the Beat

By Jan Pezarro

 “A few beats missing here.”

In the first year of my MFA program, after 40 years in business and on my way to fulfill a long-held ambition to write a book, my mentor added this comment to my submission. I was pretty sure she wasn’t referring to golden or purple beets, but neither did I know exactly what she meant by “beats.”

My knowledge gap of storycraft tools and techniques was formidable. Lectures on structure, place, scene, and character sent me repeatedly to the i...

Write Whatever the Heck You Want

by Allison Williams

Last weekend, I tweeted some writing advice: I’d watched the beginning of a movie; a detail that seemed off yanked me out of the story; and that’s why our first ten pages are so important when submitting to agents and editors.

“Opening pages must build trust,” I wrote. “Trust that you can authoritatively tell this story, that it’s compelling, that no weird little detail will yank them out of the mental movie of your book playing in their head.” I pointed out that ear...

Bingeing on Biographies

By Kat Meads

Amused to see me clutching yet another Brontë biography, a pal of mine remarked: “Still hoping that story will come out differently?”

(In my case, the alternate story would be: Emily lives on, spared sister Charlotte’s “improving”/meddling with her work, and successfully publishes a Wuthering Heights follow-up, its plot as thick with revenge, fog, lust and ghosts as its predecessor.)

My pal was teasing, joking. However. It’s a valid question. What motivates serial biogra...

What Substack Taught Me About Nimbleness, Improvisation, and the Absolute Necessity of Mistakes

Part II of II

By Jeannine Ouellette

I’ve built a writing and teaching practice, and, indeed, an entire life, on the power of nimbleness, improvisation, and the power of embracing mistakes. Naturally, I gravitate to others who espouse this philosophy, like improvisational violinist and computer artist Stephen Nachmanovitch, who explores these concepts in his classic Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art:

The literature on creativity is full of tales of breakthrough experiences. The...

What Substack Taught Me About Nimbleness, Improvisation, and the Absolute Necessity of Mistakes

Part I of II

By Jeannine Ouellette

I recently launched a Substack newsletter, Writing in the Dark, based on the premise that writing is a metaphor for life. The idea is, everything we do is related to writing because writers today must, first and foremost, keep language capable of telling the truth and continue creating even (or especially) through uncertain times.

Writing in the Dark became a Substack bestseller within weeks of launching—attracting attention from Electric Literature...

Making it Behave

By Sandra Hager Eliason

I woke up mad at Writing.

Writing Personified. Anthropomorphized.

Writing, this companion and friend who has traveled with me, accompanied me for coffee, shared my most intimate thoughts and wildest dreams, has lured me into a relationship it refuses to consummate. It flirted with me, took me on a few dates after we became better acquainted, then nothing. And now I am stuck with a presence that consumes me but will not love me back in the same passionate way I...

How I Edited My Late Brother’s Memoir

By Donna Papacosta

When we were kids growing up in Astoria, New York, I was a reader. Mom plunked down the carton of milk at breakfast, and I’d obsessively read the type. My brother was not a words guy. Unless a book was related to baseball, he wasn’t interested.

Years later, I became a professional communicator, writing and editing for a living. My brother, meanwhile, had a very short career as a bank robber, following stints in restaurant management and car sales.

I don’t think Joh...