Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- March 2, 2018 Edition

> Publishers Weekly is reporting that Barnes & Noble is opening five new prototype stores over the next 14 months, each about half the size of their typical large format. Turns out the first will be in northern NJ -- my stomping grounds!

> Writers who have taken classes at Grub Street or attended Muse & the Marketplace in Boston, will be interested in this Boston Globe interview with founder Eve Bridburg.

> Another interview of interest, this one with Natalie Singer, about her brand new essay collection, California Calling: A Self-Interrogation (Hawthorne Books).

> I'm in the thick of planning bookstore events for my forthcoming memoir, and appreciated this straight-shooting advice from Volumes Bookcafe in Chicago.

> If you're struggling through a revision, these quotes from 15 poets on revision, might help (via The Millions).

> Lee Martin, with another excellent post on writing craft, this time, the power of a pause in a narrative (and, by extension, in life!).

Have a great weekend!

Scratching a Familiar Writing Itch in New Way Keeps Horses on the Page

I've mentioned before that themed calls for submission—announced by literary journals, mainstream websites or magazines, or anthologies—are an excellent way to spur writing and create outside deadlines. For any writer struggling with maintaining a disciplined writing practice, or those overwhelmed by too many writing ideas, or dismayed by not having enough ideas, submission calls can help define writing time and energies.

Peruse the calls at various sites and listservs (some links here), pick one or two that appeal, and…you're off. Writing a piece that addresses the theme, adheres to the required word count, fits the style or tone of the venue, and meets any other criteria noted, are powerful ways of developing writing chops. And of course, meeting the deadline is paramount, especially for those who start but don’t finish writing projects, or just have trouble with deadlines.

The unspoken rule is that you must, of course, have something to say on the topic of the submission call. Such was the case last fall when I noticed a planned anthology on writing about animals. In my 20s and early 30s, I made a living writing about horses. In the last few years, I've been itching to write about horses again, but it's been two decades since I've been around horses on a daily basis, so I've been finding new ways of integrating horses into my writing life, resulting in many personal essays. And here was a chance to combine horses and writing into an essay about, well, horses and writing!

Off went my piece to the anthology, a combination personal essay and advice on one aspect of writing about horses. And a few weeks later, back came the rejection. That's okay, it's part of the writing life. First, you wallow. For minutes, hours, days—depends on your personal rejection wallowing style. Then, you decide: Scrap it? Make a few tweaks and send it right back out? Revise, rethink, rewrite?

I rarely scrap something, though I may let it sit for weeks or months (or longer) before I gin up the interest or energy to revise, or have the time to do so properly. That's okay, too.

With my writing-about-horses piece, I believed it had merit as it was, so I made only a few minor tweaks. The next question was where to send it. "Advice for those writing about animals" is not that common a themed submission call! So I turned to venues that publish all kinds of essays about writing craft and the writing life; in fact, I've begun to maintain a list of such outlets because I want to write and submit more pieces on writing craft.

Then, as often happens, serendipity intervened in the form of an announcement that the literary journal Hunger Mountain (published by the Vermont Center for Fine Arts, which runs a fine MFA program), was seeking new work for its writing craft website series.

And off went my piece again.

Hunger Mountain published it two weeks ago in Ephemeral Artery, the Hunger Mountain Online Companion. Here's an excerpt:

"… On the “A” level horse show circuit where, even in the 1980s, top jumpers were bought and sold for the high six figures, one of the most reassuring relationships I witnessed was between these high-priced performers and their minimum-wage earning grooms…. A fiery Thoroughbred ex-racehorse could be snorting, galloping might in the ring, but transform, once handed by the professional rider to his groom, into a cuddly, frolicking pony….My advice to those who want to write about modern horses at work or play in America: find them with their caretakers. The ones who love them whether they’ve had the fastest jump-off round that day, or if they spooked at the stray plastic bag at the side of the ring, tossing a rider on his duff. That is when you will see the real horse, the one who knows he’s safe and seems to understand when nothing is expected of her except that she exist…"

You can read all of  "When Prose Turns to Horses, Remember the Humans," here. And, for more on the horse-writing connection, see Annie Penfield's essay in the same section, "On Rhythm—In Sentences."

Let me know of your experiences with writing to themed calls for submission. Or writing about animals, or horses, or whatever's going on in your writing life now!

Image (top): Flickr/CreativeCommons-S.Carter

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- February 3, 2017 Edition

>Rejection notes are never fun. But the Baltimore Review has found a way to at least make them helpful. Witness the ending of one I recently received: "...I hope that you enjoyed writing on this theme and that you will soon be able to place the work in another publication. See long lists of other publication possibilities at... " followed by links to four places to find submission opportunities --  New Pages, Creative Writing Opportunities Listserve, Poets & Writers, and The Review Review. 

>If you're trying to establish a write-every-day habit, you might try 750words.

>Not new, but useful/entertaining: authors whose significant other doesn't read their books. 

>Since last fall, I've been editing the craft essays about nonfiction writing for Cleaver Magazine, and I'm so pleased with the latest two pieces: Vivian Wagner with how poetry writing is changing her nonfiction, and Megan Culhane Galbraith on the way playing with dolls (!) is helping unlock her memoir writing.

>Finally, two fun items: if you're also a middle-of-the-night scribbler, enjoy Sarah Broussard Weaver's post at the Brevity blog. But if days are a problem, try Colin Nissan's cry for help Daily Shouts piece at the New Yorker, "I Work From Home."

Have a great weekend!

Image: Flickr/CreativeCommons-ScanDog

Guest Blogger Melanie Brooks on: Writing Your Story, and Crying if you Want (or Need) To

Besides social media connections, and having graduated from the same MFA program, Melanie Brooks and I share a love of reading memoirs that must have cost their authors an emotional toll—those she covers in her forthcoming book, Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art From Trauma. [We're giving away a copy, too!]

Melanie works as a freelance writer and teaches at Northeastern University and Merrimack College in Massachusetts, and at Nashua Community College in New Hampshire, where she lives with her husband, two children and yellow Lab. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Bustle, The Manifest-Station, Hippocampus, Huffington Post, Modern Loss, Solstice Literary Magazine, Recollectors, Stonecoast Review and Word Riot. Melanie's also working on an almost-completed memoir that explores the lasting impact of living with the ten-year secret of her father’s HIV disease before his death in 1995.

Please welcome Melanie Brooks.

The questions were simple: “What are you writing about and what form is it taking?” So, why was I finding it harder and harder to breathe as the seminar leader meandered her way toward me? As she solicited responses from the other students in the crowded room, why was there a sudden tightness in my chest? It wasn’t as if I didn’t know the answers.

I’d started my MFA at the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast Creative Writing Program with a clear purpose—space and time to finally write into a complex family story I’d carried for over twenty years, a story I recognized was big enough to be a book. But when the leader’s kind gaze finally fell on me, the words caught in my throat. I mumbled something about writing about my dead dad, then a strangled sob hijacked anything else I might say, and a deluge of tears broke through my reserve. I was sitting at the wall-end of a cramped row, with no possibility of discreet escape. For the remainder of the ninety-minute seminar, I struggled to stop my nose from dripping without the benefit of a tissue, and I bit my lip until I tasted blood, to muffle the hiccupping sobs that fought to surface.

Nothing in the introductory materials the program coordinators sent out in the months leading up to that first MFA residency had readied me for this horrifying public moment of absolute composure meltdown. No neon labels were affixed to the pages of the orientation handbook broadcasting: WARNING: Writing about vulnerable material can leave you feeling rawly vulnerable. Be prepared to cry. A lot. At inconvenient times.

So when the inconvenient crying first erupted during that seminar, I thought something was wrong with me. And when it happened again while my workshop group discussed my manuscript, I felt the need to make excuses to put everyone else at ease. “I cry all the time,” I said, even though I don’t. “Just call me The Crier from here on out,” I joked, sidelining my emotions.

The truth was that, during the residency, and in the following months when I sat in front of my computer, mired in the very real anguish of trying to shape my painful memories into words, I felt alone. So alone, I almost quit.

I needed to find someone to tell me what I was feeling was okay. Normal. Expected, even. If someone could tell me those things, then maybe I could marshal up enough courage to keep going.

In what began as a very personal (and totally selfish) quest, I went looking for that someone to guide me back to my laptop, someone to tell me those things I needed to hear about my pain and loneliness and fear. I wrote to authors I admired—those whose memoirs did not shy away from any of the tough stuff— and told them how much I was struggling. I asked them if I could sit down with them and talk about the psychological journeys they had to go on to write their books. 

What I found when I reached out was more than someone. I found eighteen someones. Eighteen acclaimed writers—including Andre Dubus III, Mark Doty, Edwidge Danticat, Abigail Thomas, and Richard Blanco— who all responded to my query and welcomed the opportunity to answer my questions and offer some hard-earned wisdom. Writers who’d been as terrified as I was when they began their memoirs. Who’d written into their own hard stories and made it through. Eighteen writers who’d all experienced, at some point during their processes, the inconvenient crying.

The intimate stories these brilliant and generous memoirists told me about their own struggles to find words for painful and traumatic experiences, their misgivings along the way, their moments of wanting to quit, and their ultimate relief that they did not quit, all encouraged me to keep writing and gave me the steadying I needed.

Instead of keeping these conversations to myself, I wrote Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art From Trauma (forthcoming from Beacon Press on February 7). Each chapter is an in-depth narrative profile of my discussion with one of these authors. I share the circumstances of our meetings – from walking dogs with Mark Doty in the Hamptons; lunch with Marianne Leone and her husband, Oscar winner Chris Cooper at their home on Massachusetts’ South Shore; sipping a cup of tea while sprawled across Kate Bornstein’s bed in her New York City apartment - and the amazing insights I gain.

Since my questions are less about craft and more about survival, I tap into some areas of these authors’ processes that they’ve never shared before. I reflect on how each of these exchanges moved me away from the place where my memories were burying me and toward a completed memoir. I was motivated to turn these experiences into Writing Hard Stories by a realization that others facing the daunting journey to write into their long-carried stories, writers who also felt isolated by their particular circumstances, needed those stories and that steadying, too.

Maybe if I’d had the gift of these conversations sooner, before I started my MFA even, I might not have been so thrown by the emotions that surfaced when writing about my experiences, and when, more often than not, doing so felt like reliving those traumatic experiences. On that day of the streaming tears and hiccupping sobs, when all I wanted to do was hightail it out of that seminar room, I might, instead, have been able to turn to the person sitting next to me, shrug my shoulders, and simply say, “You know, this is what they told me would probably happen.”  

Note from Lisa: Melanie would like to send one blog reader a signed copy of Writing Hard Stories. Simply ask her a question here in the comments (and she'll stop by and answer), and you'll be entered. (U.S. postal address is required.) Post your comment by Sunday, Feb. 12.

You can connect with Melanie via Facebook, Twitter, and her website.

Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- January 27, 2017 Edition

> At Women on Writing, Chelsey Clammer's series on submissions this time tackles formatting -- how and why writers are asked to submit their work differently for different venues. And more.

> Helpful interview/craft advice about writing backstory, from Lisa Cron, author of Story Genius, over at Writers in the Storm blog.

> At the Penguin/Random House site, a friend stumbled across this short round-up of (PRH-published) books by authors from, or about, New Jersey. Looks like it's part of their United States of Books series.

>AWP, the largest gathering of writers in North America, takes places in February in Washington, D.C. If you're going, and are interested in writing about any part of it, I'd love to talk about a guest post. Email me! (see side margin)

Have a great weekend!

Image: Flickr/CreativeCommons-1950sUnlimited

Guest Blogger David Galef on: One Solution to a Lot in a Little Space -- The Flash Vignette

In the world of creative nonfiction, where I swim most of the time as a writer, brevity is not only a craft goal, but also closely associated with Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction. What follows, however, is a post adapted from a new fiction craft book, entitled, yes, Brevity: A Flash Fiction Handbook.

Now that we've cleared up any possible confusion, I'm pleased to introduce the book's author, David Galef. David is not only a fellow New Jersey writer and an accomplished author, but also the head of the creative writing program at Montclair State University, where I teach on and off (at the moment, I'm "off"). David would argue—and I agree—that much of what he offers in his new book is equally applicable to narrative nonfiction, as it is to fiction writing. I'm finding it particularly helpful myself, as I'm revising my first two pieces of fiction—one a medium-length short story, and the other a piece of flash which, like this introduction, is crying out for, well, brevity.

Please welcome David Galef

            By definition, flash fiction is rendered in miniature. But what happens when you start cutting down on words? What becomes of plot, character development, and thematic depth? Obviously, some of what you can attain in a longer story is going to have to go. Forget the long landscape description or the three scenes showing the grandmother’s slow decay from Parkinson’s. On the other hand, some treatments are particularly suited for the short run. One well-known form is the vignette.

            The vignette started in fifteenth-century printing as a decorative border of vines around a page, then turned into what the vines enclosed, usually a page with an illustration. We now think of it as an illustrative scene, a literary sketch. The French coined a term for this form, calling it tranche de vie (literally, “slice of life”), and its ingenuity lies in what any cross-section reveals: the hidden depths of an interior view.

            Picture two eight-year-olds playing croquet: those unwieldy mallets, the lawn sloping unfairly, and one ball headed for the bushes. This vignette, just begun, might be called “Game.” It shows the seemingly innocent fun had by two small children on a Sunday afternoon, with more than a hint of pre-tween rivalry. We’ll name the children Ivan and Sandra and make them neighbors. You can hear the smack of mallets on the balls along with some conversation about school. But after the first paragraph, Ivan says something nasty about Sandra’s mother. Sandra responds not by hitting Ivan’s ball with hers but by kicking it. The “game” escalates from there.

            As you can see, “Game” isn’t a story with a proper beginning, middle, and end. It’s a moving picture that becomes a sketch or scene, suggesting something beyond. The term “sketch” is all the more apt when you think of visual art, in which a sketch is the essential lines of a drawing, but not filled in.

            Here are some guidelines for creating a vignette:

            Focus on a moment. If you start to chronicle any substantial duration stop, and instead deepen the presentation of what’s already there: waiting half an hour for a date to show up, a missed five-minute opportunity to help a stranger.

            Develop only as much as you need to register an impression of either a character or an event or even a mood. One trait indicates a sunny personality; a distorted shadow indicates trouble.

            Think in psychological terms. Your sketch has a meaning beyond its mere existence because of what it represents: an old woman who can’t enjoy a summer afternoon, a boss who won’t take no for an answer. Here are five pointers for this kind of treatment:

            1.         Don’t merely describe. Follow the action. Dramatize.

            2.         Do more with less. One short scene from a day is plenty.

            3.         Be representative. One small portion can stand in for a whole life.

            4.         Go for evocative, concrete details, not abstractions.

            5.         If possible, find a way to give shadows and depth to your sketch. Make it mean more than what it seems on the surface.

            If you're interested in trying a vignette, Here are a few exercises:

            Think of yesterday as a sequence of events. Then choose a common incident, such as lunch, an hour at work, or a car ride. Now describe it, animate it, and dramatize it so that the reader gets a vivid picture of what’s going on, on both an exterior and an interior level.

            For instance: With a smile, I serve plate after plate of the daily special, spaghetti and meatballs, at Abe’s Diner, but I really hate my job. Or: She hitches a ride home with a coworker, a man she’d like to ask out, but she hasn’t got the nerve.

            What incident did you choose, what did it show, and why was it significant? How much of the character did you reveal, and in what ways? Did anything change over the course of the event?

            Try conveying emotion or attitude in miniature. Here are some specific directives: What slice of life—the more ordinary, the better—would you use to show envy at the way your parents treat your brother? How good does your friend think she is at driving versus how inept she really is? Why is that man on the curb accosting passersby by asking the same question over and over?

            When your vignette is complete, you’ll know it, or your readers will. From one angle, it may look like a line segment, a point that travels from A to B. But viewed as a segment cut from the whole, it’s character dealing with event in a way that reveals the line as a lot longer, back into the past or into the future. A good vignette extends far beyond its narrative span; it displays a life.

David Galef has published flash fiction in Agni, Smokelong Quarterly, NANO Fiction, Norton’s Flash Fiction Forward, and in his book My Date with Neanderthal Woman. He is the author of the novels Flesh, Turning Japanese, and How to Cope with Suburban Stress; edited an essay anthology, Second Thoughts: A Focus on Rereading; and co-edited the anthology of fiction, 20 over 40. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Newsday, and  The Village Voice, among other places, and he is a humor columnist for Inside Higher Ed.  Connect with David at his website and via Twitter. 

The Many Hats of a Writing Life. What's one more?

So many writers wear other hats, and I'm not just talking about non-writing careers or day jobs. I mean the different hats they don within the literary world that usually don't come with fat paychecks or profits: editing journals, publishing literary websites, running boutique publishing houses, organizing book festivals, hosting a writing conference.

I'm one of those folks who some days worry my hat rack is about to tip over. Often, I have to remember what my husband said when I headed out to Family-School Association meetings: Just. Say. No. Because I was already on two committees, or had just wrapped up five years of booking assemblies.

So I have said no to otherwise interesting sounding, tempting literary "side jobs" that didn't feel like a good fit, or conflicted with something I was already doing, or when I did not have an extra ten minutes.

But then something comes along, appearing in that sweet, rare spot (that maybe lasts two days) when I (usually incorrectly!) believe I actually do have a bit of "spare" time, which coincides with a piqued interest in the job (hat) in question. That's when I forget everything my husband taught me, my arm shoots up, and I say Yes.

My newest hat is editing craft essays about nonfiction writing for the cool literary site Cleaver Magazine. After I was published in Cleaver in June, I struck up a friendly online exchange with editor Karen Rile. She messaged me one night to see if I'd take on the job, knowing I was interested.

It was my good luck to inherit an inbox with a few good submissions already waiting, and it was even better luck to work first with writer Andrea Jarrell on her piece, doing exactly what I love—exchanging editing ideas with a writer whose work is already excellent.

 Andrea's wonderful piece will resonate with many memoir writers. In "Becoming an Outlaw (How my short fiction became a memoir),"—which is, on its own, a lovely bit of memoir—Andrea brings the writer into her writing process, her mind, and her heart. Along the way, we learn how she managed some of the bigger obstacles of memoir writing: finding the boundaries between narrator and major secondary characters, navigating the possibility of hurting a family member with our story, figuring out why she's writing at all, and how that knowledge helped impose an organizing principle on the manuscript.

I hope you'll take the time to read Andrea's work at Cleaver. And, if you're interested in writing a craft essay, we're open to submissions.

Images: Hats - Flickr/CreativeCommons-MCroft; Cleaver article illustration - Candice Seplow/Unsplash

Guest Blogger Judy Labensohn on Why She's Writing a Hybrid Memoir

One of my occasional freelance assignments is with Brain, Child magazine, editing personal essays and short stories. That's how my path first crossed with Judy Labensohn, who wrote a moving and clear-eyed essay about spending time in her daughter's shoes before sending her off to military service. 

Judy is founder of The Writing Gym and The Writing Pad in Israel, venues for local residents, tourists, and visiting writers who write in English. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in Kenyon Review, Kenyon Review Online, Southwest Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Creative Nonfiction, among others. She is a 2013 Pushcart Prize nominee. Judy is now at work on the final stages of The Mourning After: A Hybrid Memoir. 

Please welcome Judy Labensohn.

I'm writing a hybrid memoir because the continent of the inner life is a multifarious entity and demands multifarious means of expression. My memoir is a soul quest.

I'm writing a hybrid memoir because a fragmented self seeking salvation needs a fragmented genre.

I'm writing a hybrid memoir because the narrative "voice of experience," understanding, and maturity--while important, and one I use--bores me for the full length of a book. Like all people, I house a cacophony of voices. Why limit the memoir to one?

I'm writing a hybrid memoir because The Narrative I, like the real, physical I, demands many genres and types of texts and written documents to express the complexity, richness, and variability of the human condition.

I'm writing a hybrid memoir because I am a hybrid: part American, part Israeli, part Jewish, part nonbeliever, happy/ sad, serious/ funny, strong/weak--and I have come to learn that dualism confines.

I'm writing a hybrid memoir because between the front cover and the back cover a memoir can do anything. It can contain legal documents, fictional speculations, letters sent to real people, unsent letters to imaginary people, letters from real people, newspaper articles, short fiction, newspaper columns, revised versions of remembered scenes, revisions of revised versions of remembered scenes, a mother's letter, Biblical quotes, etc. etc. etc. 

I'm writing a hybrid memoir because finding the appropriate structure in which to fit all the pieces is a challenge, and fun.

The hybrid memoir is like a soup into which all the genres and categories of texts are thrown. The pieces blend together to communicate what it's like to lose a baby brother in Cleveland, Ohio, 1951 during National Brotherhood Week in a family where nobody is licensed to speak of death, so a certified rabbi comes to the house and says, Your brother died. Now repeat after me. The Lord is my shepherd.

The hybrid memoir is like a cholent—a big pot into which you throw the family secrets surrounding this death. The pot simmers not for a day, like a real cholent, but for years. After twenty, forty, sixty years you're still eating this burnt stew, hoping soon you will reach the bottom, sensing there is no bottom.

The fragmented memoir may mirror our fragmented lives in the 21st century, as David Shields suggests in Reality Hunger: A Manifesto or it may be a cop-out for writers who have shpilkes and cannot sit still for eight hours a day in order to write one long narrative with a mature understanding voice.

The hybrid memoir may be the literary equivalent of a collage writ large and I like collages. 

For sure the hybrid memoir is an oxymoron because, as Patricia Hampl, Michael Steinberg and many others agree, memoir itself is a mongrel, hybrid form.

The only person for whom the designation is critical is the worker at Barnes and Noble who asks her boss: Where should I shelve this book? Biography? Nonfiction? Fiction? Essays?  

Besides writing tips, Judy serves up fresh
figs and other fruit at
The Writing Pad.

To quote Ben Marcus: "Once upon a time there will be readers who won't care what imaginative writing is called and will read it for its passion, its force of intellect and for its formal originality." ("The Genre Artist," Believer Magazine, July, 2003)

I'm writing a hybrid memoir because it feels like the most honest, truthful and accurate way to deal with unresolved childhood grief and to share this process with the reader, whose soul is, no doubt, also confused, as described in  W.S. Merwin's "To the Soul":

Is anyone there
if so
are you real
either way are you
one or several
if the latter
are you all at once
or do you
take turns not answering...(see the full poem here)

Note from Lisa:  Judy will be stopping by here over the next week, to answer any questions left in the comments section - so ask!

Visit Judy at Write in Israel.

Author Interview: Mimi Schwartz, on the second edition of Writing True: The Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction

New Jersey, the Garden State, has a perpetually abundant crop of writers in every season, and some, like Mimi Schwartz, also write books that other writers in every corner of the country, look to for writing advice. The second edition of Writing True: The Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction (written with co-author Sondra Peel) is now available. I caught up with Mimi a few days before our paths intersected at an essay conference in Manhattan last weekend, and she agreed to answer my questions.

Q.  In its first edition, your book is a staple on the shelf of many essayists and memoir writers. Was there anything particularly challenging about creating the second edition?  Anything you especially wanted to expand upon or respond to given changes in the literary world since 2006?

A. Lots of interesting things have been happening to creative nonfiction—and our second edition reflects that. We have a new chapter, "Exploring the New Media," that explores the many online possibilities from blogs, to digital storytelling, to graphic memoir. We talk more about up-and-coming forms such as the lyric essay, the braided essay, and the personalized op ed essay you find in the Sunday Review of the New York Times. And we added a section on the role of humor. Part 2, our anthology, keeps the favorites of the first edition—and now includes some promising young writers, some classics by George Orwell and E.B. White, and several essay dealing with timely topics in exciting new formats.

Q.  In the preface, you write that nonfiction writers "begin with a question or puzzlement, and with the help of memory, research, reading, interviews, speculation, imagining – whatever it takes – we attempt to capture the complexity of our subject."  It's interesting that the list only begins with memory, and then cites other avenues of exploration that sadly it seems many writers skip over.

A. “Research,” if done well, certainly enriches a narrative -- whether writing about a childhood memory from third grade or about what happened yesterday. But so does memory and imagination. That is why we have a chapter on “The Role of Research” – and also have a new essay by Lisa Knopp called “Perhapsing” that shows how speculation, even daydreaming, can legitimately enhance true stories.

Q.  You offer several options for gathering information. With information at our fingertips all day long (Google, Wikipedia, websites), have writers paradoxically gotten lazier about the kinds of rich experiential "research" that could make huge contributions to their work – trips out into the physical world to observe, interview, revisit a place, soak up creative energy, information, nuance?  

A. Both forms of research—the ones we read and the ones we feel—are essential for the authenticity of an experience. So yes, I agree with you. Check out Google but also get out there and look, listen, smell, taste, and touch.

 Q.  What advice do you give a writer who, after engaging in research and/or interviews, finds their memory is flawed, either in a significant way, and/or in more minor ways?

A. What to do about discrepancies of memory depends on the story we are telling. Sometimes I let the reader know there’s another point of view, as in “I remember this, but my mother says that….” Sometimes, as in my marriage memoir, Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed, I use dialogue—or a footnote—to let the other person have a say. And sometimes I decide it doesn’t matter. As Geoffrey and Tobias Wolff told their mother when she said both their memoirs were incorrect, “Okay. Then write your own story!” We discuss the struggle and various solutions in Writing True.

Q. Your book offers writing exercises, including some lengthy and multi-step ones that I imagine can catapult a writer to a whole list of possible new pieces. For the writer working on his/her own, how might you suggest incorporating writing exercises into everyday writing practice?  And what makes a really good writing exercise?

A. A good writing exercise is one that makes us want to write more. Often we don’t know that right away.  It may be a day, a week, a year later, that we have more to say. That’s why we recommend a notebook—either by hand or on a computer—and devote one chapter to “The Power of the Notebook.” We also discuss free online exercises for getting started.  Try them all, for our belief is: If you don’t have anything on paper, you have nothing to work with!

Q.  I love the chapter "Ten Ways to a Draft," with outside-the-norm ideas for moving toward the writing -- freelisting, map making, time lines, memory chains, clustering, among others. I bet some of these will seem surprising to writers whose inclination is always to go first (or to remain at all times) at the keyboard. How do you see these activities helping writers? Are they mostly intended for those who are stuck? Or do they have value for any writer of nonfiction?

A. I’ve done many of these exercises more than once—and am always surprised by how they trigger new ideas, memories, and details. Clustering, for example, is one I use for new ideas and to help me get unstuck. I put an emotionally loaded word in the middle of the page, free associate as it proscribes, and suddenly there is new energy for writing on.

Q. The chapter, "Workshopping a Draft," is loaded with good advice, and I was especially pleased with the emphasis on the role of listening, both when one's own work is being discussed and when someone else's piece is being reviewed. What is the principle benefit of the workshop, and how can listening skills help a writer got the most out of one?

A. We know stories well in our head, but key details often never reach the page. Workshops, if well run, can help a writer connect the dots between what is intended and what the readers receive. Responses, using our guidelines, lead to discoveries and new insights that make revisions more meaningful.

Q.  In the book, you self-identify as an "underwriter" whose first drafts "tend to be skimpy," but get fleshed out once down on paper "following the clues of first words."  Can you explain how that works for you?  Has your approach changed at all over time, as you've written and published more and more work?

A. My style stays the same. I like to find the story first and then flesh it out—a classic underwriter. What has changed is what I tell myself after I have a draft. I know to coach myself to add detail (and I can cut it back later) and I know to ask at the end “Have a let myself off the hook too easily? Do I need to go deeper?” The answer is almost always, “Yes!”

Q.  Your book includes an anthology of excellent published works by an interesting group of CNF writers. I love what you write in the introduction: "We suggest reading a work once for pleasure and once as a writer looking at craft. It helps to star favorite parts, make comments in the margins…and ask the same questions you ask when reading works-in-progress – about theme, characterization, narrative thrust, pacing, scene development, foreshadowing, use of dialogue and so on."  This, to me, is the heart of reading as a writer. How would you describe the role of reading for writers? Particularly maybe for the writer who claims that they avoid reading too much in their genre, afraid it will unduly influence their work?

A. Reading others gives you permission to try out new ideas and forms. I found the structure for my book, Good Neighbors, Bad Times, Echoes of My Father’s Village after reading Alison Owings' series of dramatic interviews in Frauen, Women of the Third Reich. Her use of multiple points of view was just what I needed—even though her 30 three-page vignettes became full-length chapters in my book of visits with Christians and Jews from my father’s village, all remembering the past.  I do stay away from reading on the same subject before I have my thoughts on paper. I want to know what I think before I learn what others think.

Q.  In a chapter new to the second edition, "Exploring New Media," you offer some cool exercises that might help a CNF writer leap to new ways of telling their stories using online tools. Some writers can blog (or maintain an active Tumblr or Twitter feed) and still produce publishable longer work, while others find the more they write online, the less they have to say in longer form essays or memoir. Any advice?

A. It always comes down to what works for you. Jenny Spinner, who has a blog that we discuss in Writing True, found it was a great platform for writing a book. For others, too much online writing can discourage the Muse; it becomes another form of writer procrastination, like cleaning the refrigerator or the closets.

Q.  What kind of feedback do you get from readers of Writing True?

A. What makes Writing True the most gratifying is when writers who used it in a class stop me at conferences like AWP and ask me to autograph their copy. A textbook? Sondra Perl, my co-author, and I wanted to write a textbook that wasn’t a textbook, and whenever that happens, I think: We did it!

What We Talk About When We Talk About The Storm

Gathering, we swap stories. In New Jersey (and I'm guessing surrounding eastern seaboard states), much of tomorrow's holiday table exchanges will be about our experience during and after superstorm Sandy.  I can't help but think how much we communicate underneath the surface talk:

Because when we talk about the storm and its challenges and aftermath, what we are really talking about is something else entirely. When we complain about being unprepared for how long power was off, the high cost of generators, the downside of TV/phone/internet bundling, we are talking about vulnerability, loss of control, the underbelly of modernity. When we cite crippled mass transit systems, we are talking about anxiety, isolation. The stories about discarding ruined food are stories about guilt and money; the stories about fighting with spouses over not having batteries or working flashlights are stories of blame.

The stories themselves are about more than, often something other than, their topline narratives. This is the goal of memoir, the personal essay, and nonfiction narratives: to illuminate what’s percolating under the surface, what drives the unfolding event, and what it tells us about ourselves.

This is why people read creative nonfiction in the first place.

The renowned spiritual thinker Henri Nouwen wrote, “That which is the most personal, is the most universal.” Readers must be able to find, in any nonfiction work about a personal experience, that which is universal – but the only way through to the universal is by way of the personal.

The excerpt is from an article of mine at the blog of The Writers Circle, titled "What We Talk About When We Talk About the Storm." I invite you to click over and read the full piece, which explores this craft aspect of writing creative nonfiction, how CNF writers must constantly excavate the real story from under the one we talk about.

The One.

Every writer has at least one. Some, I think, realize it at the moment they reach the last line of the finished draft of a particular piece of writing:  a realization leaps up -- this is it, the one. Others only see it only in retrospect.

I'm talking about a breakthrough piece, a piece of writing which embodies a clear jump from one level of craft and skill to another one, a level a good distance up the slippery hill that is our writing climb.

Last week, a writer with whom I have been working on and off for about three years, had hers. I suspected it was coming, was watching for it, hoping for her it wouldn't be much longer; and then I knew. I knew it from the first page; it was the latest draft (number six, I believe) of a long nonfiction narrative she's been working hard at for about seven months. 

This was her breakthrough piece.  

Everything had come together - narrative arc, character development, pacing, rhythm, language, voice, dialogue, detail, description. There was a confidence on the page, a conviction, a assured hand, that had not been there before.

Let me be clear – this is a talented, hard working writer anyway, and her work is already good. Yet she was, shall we say, working her B game, maybe B+.  I knew there was an A game in her. And then, in this particular draft, she stepped up, dramatically; she'd found her sweet spot and I could tell it wasn't a fluke. The piece was at once both powerful and carefully planned, and yet appeared effortless, organic. 

Bam.

We talked about it, and I was not surprised to hear that she already knew there was something different, something important about this revision. We talked about the wonder of the moment when a writer realizes how much more she can do on the page.

Oh, I can do that?  Yes, I can do that. I can do that.  I have an A game.

That's delicious, and a little bit terrifying. Because next, of course, comes the idea of maintaining that A game. But that's another writing life story.

A breakthrough, meanwhile, requires savoring. 

Guest Blogger Jenn Brisendine on Directing Scenes of Dialogue

A perk of contributing to a collected work is making contact with the other contributing writers. One way I like to explore those new connections is to invite fellow contributors to write a guest post here, and at the same time (let's face it, for every perk, there's a payout) bring attention to the book to which we've contributed. So for the next couple of weeks, I'll periodically feature a post from another writer whose work also appears in Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing, edited by Carole Smallwood (The Key Publishing House/Canada).

 Please welcome Jenn Brisendine

I love the theatre. I spent more on hours onstage and backstage in college than reading all the works assigned in my English major. When I taught high school literature and writing, I also directed school plays. One semester I designed and taught a fiction writing elective, and many student actors signed up. Teaching them how to craft natural, dramatic dialogue was exciting—we likened their story characters to actors in a play, and I encouraged them to first “direct” the sound and appearance of the scene on an imaginary stage, complete with props, actions, and cues.

When I write dialogue now—fiction or creative nonfiction—I don’t just compose the conversation; I "direct" the dialogue as a theatre director coaches a scene for emotion and meaning. The director listens for emphasis of certain words, but also suggests pauses, inflections, vocalizations, movement, and nonverbal action. Similarly, a writer can control a scene of dialogue in ways that enhance its significance and mood.

We writers have great devices at our disposal, including punctuation, pauses, and action tags. Punctuation is a tiny tool that wields great impact on dialogue:

“I’m leaving, and you are too.”  (With a comma, there’s barely a pause.)

“I’m leaving. And you are too.” (Now it’s a period, and a much stronger break.)

“I’m leaving? And you are too?”  (The meaning has changed.)

“I’m leaving! And you are too!”  (Wow! Use exclamation marks sparingly!)

“I’m leaving. And you…”  (Trailing off indicates uncertainty or distractedness.)

“I’m leaving. And you–-”     (The speaker is interrupted.)

Pacing the scene with pauses adjusts the sound of the dialogue to your reader’s ear:

“Would you sit down?” He hesitated. “I have something to tell you.”

 

With action tags, you can pace the scene, adjust the mental sound of it, and let slip a tidbit of characterization:

“Would you sit down?” He sipped the bourbon and waited for the burn to fade. “I have something to tell you.”

I often write important scenes in play format first, to focus on the characters’ words:

Barney: If you’d sit down for ten seconds, maybe I’d know what you’re talking about.

Alicia: Why should I believe a word out of you?

Barney: Because I’m your husband. Or did you forget that in New York too?

Alicia: That’s not fair.

Barney: No, you’re not fair. Didn’t anyone ever teach you to take turns? You got to do the leaving last time. This time, you stay here. I’m going.

Then I add stage directions to pace the beats of the scene, so the “actors” can emphasize or punctuate the spoken words:

Barney: (watching Alicia for several seconds from his place by the bedroom door) If you’d sit down for ten seconds, maybe I’d know what you’re talking about.

Alicia: (folds two shirts and places them in the suitcase before speaking) Why should I believe a word out of you?

Barney: Because I’m your husband. Or did you forget that in New York too?

Alicia: (stops moving, stares straight ahead) That’s not fair.

Barney: No, you’re not fair. Didn’t anyone ever teach you to take turns? You got to do the leaving last time. (opens door, stops) This time, you stay here. I’m going.

This helps me frame a mental stage performance of the scene. Finally, I can rewrite the scene in fiction format:

Barney watched Alicia yank clothes off hangers. “If you’d sit down for ten seconds, maybe I’d know what you’re talking about.”

She folded two shirts and placed them in the suitcase before speaking. “Why should I believe a word out of you?”

“Because I’m your husband. Or did you forget that in New York too?”

Alicia didn’t move. “That’s not fair.”

“No, you’re not fair. Didn’t anyone ever teach you to take turns? You got to do the leaving last time.” He yanked the door open. “This time, you stay here. I’m going.”

In my mind’s theatre, not only can I see and hear the beats of the scene, I can feel the tension between characters that is generated by the pacing. Ultimately, what we crave in dialogue is that tension; mentally directing the scene before composing it allows the writer to heighten emotion, emphasize conflict, and deepen characterization all at once.

Jenn Brisendine’s essays have appeared in many print and online venues, including Rosebud, The Pedestrian, LiteraryMama, and the anthology The Maternal Is Political (Seal Press); she is also a contributor to Many Genres, One Craft: Lessons in Writing Popular Fiction. A former high school English teacher, she currently works as a freelance editor and writer. Jenn lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, two sons, and a petite 100-pound Great Dane. At her blog, she reviews great writing guides and discusses the quest for balance in the writing life.