Allison K. Williams's Blog, page 91
February 21, 2022
Honesty and Bravery in Creative Nonfiction Workshop Commentary
By Laura Johnsrude
I love workshopping creative nonfiction pieces with other writers, around a small table, in a small room. (Ah, remember those small rooms?) I enjoy focusing on craft and style and I’m delighted when revision choices slap me in the face.
Nothing will annoy me so quickly, though, as around-the-circle workshop commentary being derailed by an earnest participant’s “you’re so brave,” or “I admire your honesty.” No matter that the speaker is heartfelt, moved by the po...
February 18, 2022
A Review of Allison K Williams’ Seven Drafts
By Debbie Hagan
Imagine sitting at your computer for hours, working on your memoir, confident that you’ve made real progress, then a gremlin sneaks in and whispers in your ear: That isn’t a story. What a terrible beginning. You’re wasting your time. No one will read this.
You could give up or you could turn to Allison K Williams’ Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro from Blank Page to Book.
When I thumb through my copy’s dog-eared pages, I’ll most always find that Williams has some...
February 17, 2022
Don’t Change the Shirt
By Janice McCrum
Before I add the cream, I do the test, even though the best-before date says it’s expired. Under the kitchen skylight I give the tall container a shake, then a smell. I know it’s still fresh. Any hint of sourness and I dump it.
“Wouldn’t it be easier and—safer—just to trust the date and throw it out?” asks my daughter.
My mental math confirms that the cream is indeed a few days past the best before date. My eyes meet hers, those big no-nonsense young mother eyes.
...February 16, 2022
Shelf Life
By Sarah M. Wells
Today, I began a book a writer friend of mine wrote over a decade ago (he published it 12 years ago, so probably it was written even more years earlier). I bought it in 2012 at the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing, where we met (I think for the first time?) and walked with Brian Doyle past tennis courts along thinly shaded asphalt paths in search of the auditorium. We took the long way (we were lost).
I have been meaning to read Quotidiana by Patrick Madden ever s...
February 15, 2022
Cringing, Crying, and Celebrating
By Morgan Baker
I recently reread my memoir-in-progress, about my oldest daughter leaving for college and my subsequent collapse in despair. My daughter is now 11 years out of college and has been married for four. I am older too, and have recovered from that depression. But as I read it, I squirmed in my chair with anxiety.
I have restructured, revised, and refined this manuscript more times than I can count. I’ve worked on the focus/purpose of the story, and added more details. I sta...
February 14, 2022
Writing is Detestable, and You’ll Never Make Any Money At It
—excerpted from Work Hard, Not Smart: How to Make a Messy Literary Life, by Alexis Paige
Every so often I forget that the life I want is already mine. When I was eight, my younger brother and I left the Sonoran Desert in winter for mysterious reasons and Eastern climes, wearing only faded tees and worn corduroy, for it was still the ’70s somewhere in 1983. Our destination was Ye-Olde New England, which would become the damp, wooly kingdom of my late childhood and adolescence. My parents h...
February 11, 2022
The Unspoken in Writing Family Histories
By Sharon DeBartolo Carmack
Premarital sex. Abandonment. Divorce. A love child. Mental illness. Domestic abuse. Betrayal. Alcoholism. Suicide and other tragic deaths.
Many of these subjects lurk, often unspoken, in our family histories. Yet those of us who want to write our family histories need to decide how to handle these skeletons. I dealt with all of these situations in my family history, If We Can Winter This: Essays and Genealogies, The Gordon Family of County Leitrim, Irela...
I’m Ready to Admit I Haven’t Read The Year of Magical Thinking
By Catherine Lanser
I consider myself a creative nonfiction writer. I’ve been reading and studying the form for more than 10 years, but until recently, I was hiding a secret. I had never read much Joan Didion.
My Good Reads list says I started reading The Year of Magical Thinking in 2009 but quit after a few pages. It didn’t seem to have anything to do with me. Her dense writing made me feel self-conscious, as if I wasn’t good enough, the same way a woman I used to volunteer for di...
February 10, 2022
Lighting the Path: Getting the Best from Your Beta Readers
By Heidi Croot
They’ll respond with a quick “yes” because they’ll want to please you.
Then the inevitable panic will bloom in their eyes. A vigorous throat clearing across the phone line. A dust-up of confusion in their email.
“Um, what is a beta reader supposed to do exactly?”
Of the eighteen people I asked to test-read my memoir manuscript—fellow writers, psychotherapists, friends, and family members (including my aunts and uncle who appear frequently in its pages…read about th...
February 9, 2022
A Review of Hippocampus Magazine’s Getting to the Truth
By Lindsey Anthony-Bacchione
The Editors of Hippocampus Magazine’s Getting to the Truth: The Craft and Practice of Creative Nonfiction had me hooked from the very beginning when it asks readers which type of Imposter Syndrome they most identify with. Having earned two writing degrees and worked as a freelance story analyst for over ten years in the film industry, I found myself with one foot in The Perfectionist column and one in The Soloist column with a small puddle of self-sabotage...
