Allison K. Williams's Blog, page 67

Write What Scares You (Without Scaring Away Readers)

Writing for readers when your story is “too much.”

By Heather Sellers

“Too overwhelming.” “Too dark.” “Too much.” Early on, I received these comments on my writing from from teachers and from fellow students in workshop. My readers regularly asked me, “How did you even survive?” Survive? I was just living my life and writing about what happened. When I got these kinds of comments, I felt frustrated, hurt, and embarrassed, ashamed of my own life, and ashamed of failing to provide a gripp...

Flash Is the Future

By Matt Weinkam

For the last two years, Literary Cleveland has been running flash fiction and flash nonfiction festivals online via Zoom. During these week-long programs, we hold panel discussions, workshops, and open mics designed to help writers learn about the genres, draft new pieces, share their work, and learn where and how to publish.

Not only have we gotten to work with some of the best flash writers in the country (Venita Blackburn, K-Ming Chang, Kathy Fish, Daisy Hernández, Li...

Memoirs and Research: When Memories Aren’t Enough

By Ronnie Blair

My memory is clear. On a Sunday night when I was a child in the 1960s, my family gathered around our black-and-white TV to watch the much-anticipated moment when the Beatles made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

I sat breathlessly on the floor near the TV screen, not wanting to miss a moment. A few feet away a coal stove provided heat for me and for our tiny two-bedroom rental house. Just to my right was the entrance to the small kitchen where my mother w...

Revision is Remodeling (Not Dusting the Furniture)

HOW TO AVOID TWO COLOSSAL MISSTEPS IN REVISING MEMOIR

By Dinty W. Moore

“Writing is revision,” Tracy Kidder famously suggested, and if the number of times I rewrote this blog post is any indication, he is entirely right.

But being a mentor and writing coach for countless memoirists and essayists over the years has shown me that two colossal missteps keep many of us from realizing the massive benefits that re-visioning – seeing the work through fresh eyes even after completing a first...

Exploring the Possibilities of Artificial Intelligence in Creative Nonfiction Writing

A Q&A WITH OPENAI’S CHATGPT

By Andrea A. Firth

Discussion of OpenAI’s artificial intelligence program, ChatGPT, and its impact on writing, editing, and teaching has been creating quite a buzz. Brevity Blog editor Andrea A. Firth recently had a virtual conversation with ChatGPT about how creative nonfiction writers might use AI.

The conversation has been condensed, because ChatGPT has a penchant for repetition and tends to go on a bit.

Andrea A. Firth: First, thanks for the help wi...

When Our Words Become a Commodity

What happens when we write private conversations?

By Trish McDonald

“Thank you for loving me,” he whispered as I turned up the hem on his velvet Christmas dress. No one had ever thanked me for loving them.

I look at my draft. Should our words be kept private? Am I cheapening them by sharing? Is this a fear other writers have? Do they parse their words to protect loved ones? I can write this, but never that.

“Once I published that book and my words became a commodity, something bro...

Finding the Words

By Leslie Doyle

In eighth grade, our science teacher assigned the classic “drop an egg from the second floor without it breaking” assignment. I was pretty excited about this—I had ideas about Styrofoam or cushions or other large, bouncing materials. My father, a brilliant man who adored puzzles and math and read Scientific American religiously, suggested something else: Jell-O. I liked the weirdness of this and decided to give it a try. We prepared a batch of grape flavor—I can still see t...

Snapshots

By Ed Orzechowski

The man beside me peered through hazy glass into the shuttered building. “There used to be bars on these windows…like a prison,” he said, pointing to rusty brackets along the window frame.

F Building, where Donald Vitkus had grown up half a century ago, was padlocked, the structure decaying. Donald and I were walking the grounds of Belchertown State School, a former institution for the mentally handicapped in western Massachusetts, where at six years old, he had been d...

Publicity Lessons: A Cautionary Tale

By Linda Murphy Marshall

Except for a book I co-authored on the South African “click” language Xhosa, this is my first book, so most of the advice I offer I learned looking through a rearview mirror. I’ve made mistakes.

Even if you can afford a publicity team, they’re not holding your hand 24/7, and their tenure doesn’t extend indefinitely after your book publication. You’re on your own.

* Approach friends or publications willing to include a review or interview, if that’s your goal,...

Swimming Out of the Safe Zone

By Rose Saltman

It’s that time of year again…the comment desk is looking for your evergreen pitches for December/January. Send to [The Guardian] with SUMMER PITCH in the subject line.

This tweet arrived towards the end of October. There was no guidance on word limit—I’d asked—so I decided to punt on a piece that suited the theme and was ready to go. My pitch celebrated the delight of ocean swimming in Australia and cited a 30-year history of doing laps at my local beach, one of Sydney’s...