How to Maintain Your Writing Momentum After You Finish Your MFA

By Nancy L. Glass

In January 2023, I completed my MFA in Writing at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Leading up to graduation, I was already wondering how I would maintain momentum in my writing without monthly writing deadlines.

I have been working on a collection of CNF essays about my experiences as a pediatric hospice physician.  Some essays have been published, but the book is not yet finished.  I feel pressured to complete the collection, since I graduated at the ripe age of…gasp…seventy!  Who knows how many years of productive writing time I might have in front of me?

What follows are strategies that propelled me forward post-graduation.  I hope these might be helpful for other recent graduates and emerging writers too.

Writing Practice

Everything you read in writing magazines or online suggests that the writer must establish a daily writing habit.  Although many follow a morning writing habit, that doesn’t work for me.  I’m not “fueled” until I’ve had multiple cups of coffee.  For me, the quiet house after my husband has gone to bed offers optimal conditions.  But it doesn’t happen every night.  I write in spurts and when inspired, or to self-imposed goals and submission deadlines.  Try to figure out your best time and set a goal for the days and times you can commit.

Reading

Just Do It.  I’m usually reading several books at a time, as “reading monogamy” is not for me.  Late to the Audible habit, I now listen to many novels and selected nonfiction books.  Sometimes I use a hybrid technique:  I’ll listen in the car, then read the next chapters on hard copy at home.  I keep journals and magazines—more honestly, a veritable NEST of New Yorkers—beside my bed, to encourage me to read AT LEAST ONE STORY before I fall asleep.  Brevity stories are also terrific for this.  Trust me, reading before bed beats doom-scrolling every time. 

Stay Connected to Your Writing Program

Maintain relationships with faculty members, alums, and current students.  Attend on-line readings and lectures and support your community’s members—faculty, students, and alums—when they share good news about publications.   Writing is hard, so celebrate “the wins” of others.  It’s a key component of being a good literary citizen.  You never know when you might need help, so aim to be a positive, supportive presence for others.

Community Engagement & Writing Groups

Find a writing group.  I’m in two writing groups, one long-standing, which only meets during the academic year, remotely.  The other, newer group is with six local women who met in an online course.  We meet every other week to discuss one another’s flash nonfiction pieces.  I’ve found that posing specific questions to my friends—would this work?  would X be better? reward me with better feedback. Find your people: they will stimulate your writing practice.

Connect with writers in your community and participate in live readings.  One group I recently joined is supportive and casual:  each individual reads for five minutes.  Readers are encouraged to share new or evolving pieces rather than finished work.  A medical humanities group in which I participate is more structured:  readers submit pieces, which are then workshopped and rehearsed before a public performance.  Both groups add value to my experience and give me a way to hear how my work impacts readers and how it sounds out loud.

Participate in community writing courses or online craft webinars.  I have taken several community writing courses through my local literary organization (shoutout to InPrint Houston).  Outstanding teachers, both published authors and experienced graduate students from local universities, offer small group writing courses in person or on-line.  These courses stimulate my writing mind and practice, while filling in elements of craft that may not have been explicit in my MFA program.  There are also some excellent online courses available.  As we’ve all become comfortable with Zoom culture, these courses offer the chance to engage with writers and instructors across the country.

Personal Accountability

In my program, students submitted a letter to their faculty advisor with each monthly packet, listing our writing work (new pieces/revisions, with intentions for each) and our reading log. Now that I’ve completed the program, I write a letter to myself at the end of each month, with the following:

            –Compilation of writing:  new essays, substantive revisions, essays I’m trying to map out

            –List of my reading:  books, essays, short stories

            –Listing of what I call “community activities”

                        –Courses or webinars I’ve attended

                        –Community readings or literary events

            –Log of my submissions to journals and contests

            –Log of responses

The letter keeps me accountable to myself, to write the pieces I said I’d write, to read the books I said I’d read.  No excuses!

I also keep a writing notebook, which includes my daily/monthly writing activities, notes from classes I’ve taken, book recommendations—and most importantly, snippets of ideas for essays, sentences that come to me unbidden, words whose derivation I need to explore.  The notebook, which goes everywhere with me, serves as a physical connection to my writing.  An Excel spreadsheet keeps track of both my submissions to literary journals and contests, as well as to upcoming submission deadlines, creating a map of intentions for the next month or two.

Strategy + Discipline

Hopefully these suggestions will be helpful for other recent MFA graduates.  It’s all too easy for daily distractions to overwhelm the writer’s good intentions—unless you create your own roadmap for the way forward.  Apply the same discipline you employed during your graduate program and keep writing!

___

Dr. Nancy Glass has been published in Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, The Journal of Narrative Visions, Medicine and Meaning, and Amaranth.  She won the 2022 Writer’s League of Texas Manuscript Contest in General Nonfiction. After forty years practicing pediatric critical care, anesthesiology and pain medicine, and pediatric hospice care, she retired from clinical practice as Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics in 2022. She received her MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts in January 2023.

Memoir or Novel?

By Rebecca Morrison

After losing my legal contracting job at the beginning of the pandemic, I put my fears aside and pursued my decades-long dream of writing a memoir. I’d been a lawyer for over twenty years and didn’t know much about creative nonfiction. So, I signed up for an online writing class hoping it would give me the push I needed to pursue this impossible seeming goal.

With each class I took and each story I wrote, the fire that had been burning for years within me to write a memoir grew. Bit by bit, I learned to improve my writing and tell my complicated, sometimes dark, mother-daughter story and the struggle with my weight and body image.

When my first essay was accepted for national publication, I reached out to my mother and told her I wanted to pursue a writing career and my goal was to tell our story in a memoir. We’d spent years working on our relationship, being honest about our heartache and regrets and learning to love each other. I was scared she would see my desire to share our complicated past as an attack. But she didn’t. She said she supported my decision and would stand by me no matter what I wanted to write.

So, I went in full force and started to write my memoir. When I was around 50 pages in, I met Pronoy Sarkar, Senior Editor at Little, Brown, a publishing house, at an author panel. I told him about my memoir and publishing goals. He gave me advice that would change the course of my career. He told me to start publishing essays before writing the memoir. He said publishing essays would do several important things:

1) Help me find my writing voice;

2) Show which stories resonated most with me and my readers; and

3) Make it easier for me to know if I want to dedicate years of my life writing about these parts of my life.

He was adamant about this plan.

In the next twelve months, I published a dozen essays in national publications. They contained important elements of my memoir. Pronoy was right. It helped me fine-tune my voice and figure out which stories connected most with my readers and me.

Then the direction of my writing changed again. I met Joy Peskin, a children’s book publisher, who after reading my essays suggested I write a middle grade novel based on my childhood. I’d never considered writing fiction but was intrigued. I spent the next eight months turning my childhood memories into a novel. The experience was incredibly rewarding. After sending the draft to a group of teen girls and young women, the feedback I got was that the novel had the same depth and gravity as my personal essays.

In the midst of finalizing my middle grade novel, I published a mother-daughter essay on the Today Show website. The title was, “As a Girl, My Mom Taught Me That Being Fat Was the Worse Thing a Woman Could Be.” It went viral.

Friends and family from around the country called my mother asking if she was okay. How could her daughter say those terrible things about her, the woman they knew to be so loving and kind, they asked.

“Everyone thinks I’m a monster,” she said on the phone, struggling to take in a breath between sobs. With my heart twisted and my hands shaking, I explained that if they had read the entire essay they would have seen that I had also written about her love and understanding and our current close relationship.

She said she couldn’t talk about it anymore and hung up.

A few hours later, she called me back. “I don’t care what anyone says. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. Go after your dreams. I love you. Keep writing.”

As a tear escaped my eye, I thought what if my son wanted to write about the times I’d been cruel, unfeeling, and dismissive? And my friends and family read those words and judged me, as they surely would. How would I handle it? Surely, not as well as my mother. I told her I’d keep going.

But when it came time to write my memoir proposal, I froze. Every time I sat down to work on it, I broke out in a cold sweat. The thought of writing the memoir was tearing me apart. After many sleepless nights, I decided I wanted to write a novel based on my life instead of a memoir.

Here are the things that convinced me novelizing my memoir was right for me. If you’re struggling between writing a memoir or a novelized version of your life, consider these elements:

1. Writing and publishing personal essays about my life helped me satisfy an itch I’d had for decades to connect with others and make them feel less alone in their struggles. It also helped me heal and release unresolved feelings I’d been carrying.

2. While writing the essays, I’d only thought of the impact on the people in my essays, namely my mother and me. But after publishing them, I understood that the essays brought up difficult feelings for my siblings who had their own relationship with my mother. The pieces also affected our larger family and friend groups. They felt the reverberations of my stories in ways I could have never imagined. I also realized my memoir, which would contain a darkness way beyond the essays, could be used by people that have their own agenda to hurt my mother and to mock her, to take out their feelings of resentment, jealousy, pettiness, on her. That’s not something I wanted to risk, especially now that our relationship had reached such an open and loving place.

3. Writing the children’s novel showed me I could take meaningful parts of my life and turn them into a story that could help others feel seen and empowered while giving me the flexibility to fill in parts I didn’t remember well and enhance elements to create a well-rounded compelling story. The experience also showed me I could get the catharsis I was seeking without having to reveal the details of my family and my trauma.

We can be never be sure of the consequences of writing a memoir – the people we might have helped with our truth or the pain it might have brought for our family and friends. But what we can do is take steps to understand our stories, our relationships and ourselves and make the best decisions based on what we learn.
__

Rebecca Morrison is a lawyer and writer. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Today Show, Newsweek, NBC News, HuffPost, Salon, Insider and The Independent. She’s completing a middle grade novel based on her childhood as an Iranian immigrant trying to fit into her family, school and new homeland in America. You can find her work and subscribe to her newsletter on www.rebeccakmorrison.com.

17 Steps to Accelerate Your Writing Life

How simple changes propelled my writing productivity beyond my imagination

By Bethany Jarmul

I’ve loved writing since I was a child, but I haven’t always made it a priority. Last year, I published two pieces of writing. I was thrilled with those publications, but when it was time to make my 2022 New Year’s resolution, I decided to go all-in: to give it my best effort for one year and see what would happen. 

This year, I’ve had 33 pieces accepted for publication in literary magazines. Here are the changes I made to make this kind of productivity possible.

1. I got serious about taking care of my mental health. My anxiety and depression were preventing me from writing. (I started therapy and medication.)
2. I set a tiered goal for myself to publish a certain number of pieces. Even if I couldn’t achieve the top goal, I could achieve one of the smaller ones. I celebrated every time I reached a goal. (I’ve now surpassed my top goal of 25 publications!)
    
3. I joined Twitter and found the #WritingCommunity. The support, encouragement, and inspiration I discovered there have been invaluable. 
4. I participated in writing classes and workshops to brush up on my skills and to force myself to meet deadlines.
   
5. I joined one writing group and started a second one, building community and accountability for my writing life.
   
6. I gave up activities that were filling my free time—mainly watching TV and mindless Instagram scrolling.
   
7. I decided to follow my passions, to write whatever I wanted, to experiment, to dabble, to follow my whimsy, to write whatever gave me the most joy in that moment, not worrying about where it would get published or about staying in a particular genre.
   
8. I decided to focus on writing and getting published instead of trying to make money or trying to get into the most prestigious mags—writing and sharing being the two things that brought me the most joy. I reframed writing as my super fun hobby. 
9. As a mom to two young kids, I decided to write in whatever small pockets of time I have, and to write in messy, loud spaces (because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t write at all). No more excuses about not having the time or the space. Having limited time became motivation to get words down. (I wrote another Brevity Blog post about how I do this here.) 
10. I submit a lot. Each piece of writing, I submit to a minimum of five places, sometimes up to 12 to 15 places at once in a wide array of lit mags. The more I submit, the less the rejections hurt and the more chances I have to get published.
    
11. When in doubt, I submit anyway. If the piece might fit the submissions call, if there’s even a tiny chance the editors could choose my work, I submit. I don’t self-reject.
    
12. I very rarely abandon work. I just keep editing and transforming it until it’s something better, or I pull pieces from one piece to use for something else.
    
13. I don’t write every day, but I do think about writing every day. I brainstorm ideas and try to be aware of my surroundings, always searching for interesting people, facts, places, ideas in whatever is happening around me.
    
14. If I’m too tired to write, I read. If I’m too tired to read, I sleep. I’ve learned to respect my body and mind when they tell me to rest. Pushing through exhaustion doesn’t lead to good writing. Getting rest and exercise in my life helps my writing.
    
15. I befriended other writers, and the few friends that I already had who wrote I brought into my writing groups and spaces. Now my personal life includes other people who also are passionate about writing.
    
16. I gave myself permission to fail, to try new things, to get rejected—again and again and again. Because if it was easy, that would take away some of the fun. 
17. I also gave myself permission to learn from others, to see myself as a student again. I’m not afraid to ask questions or reach out to others for ideas or help when I need it. 

I originally published these tips on Twitter, and I’ve been blown away by the number of other writers who found them helpful. I’m grateful that I could offer something valuable to the writing community that has bolstered me many days when I needed the encouragement. 

Whether you are a seasoned writer or brand new to writing, I’d love to connect with you on Twitter. 

___

Bethany Jarmul is a writer, editor, and artist. Her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and has been nominated for Best of the Net. She earned first place in Women On Writing‘s Q2 2022 essay contest. Bethany enjoys chai lattes, nature walks, and memoirs. She lives near Pittsburgh with her family. Connect with her on her website or on Twitter.  

Writing as Therapy Doesn’t Mean Bad Writing

By Nancy McCabe

“She’s just writing for therapy,” we sometimes say, meaning that the work seems self-indulgent or self-pitying or self-absorbed. But using writing to merely wallow or vent is not, according to research, all that therapeutic—as studies have shown, it is writing to find meaning that boosts immune function and promotes healing.

Nevertheless, I feel like I’m breaking a taboo when I make the shamefully unartistic admission that I find writing to be therapeutic.

*

Many years ago, a stranger broke into my house at 3:30AM, aimed a flashlight into my eyes to wake me, then ran when I screamed.

For months afterward, I woke at 3:30 every morning.  My life felt derailed, haunted by an ever-present fear.  Gradually I realized I was going to be stuck until I wrote about it. But writing about an experience can feel a lot like reliving it, so it took time to muster my courage. 

Late one night, I finally got started. I wrote for hours, becoming so absorbed in finding the right words that I forgot to be afraid. In the process, I began to understand the sources of my fear, embedded in memories from childhood, glimpses of the fragility of loved ones, and trepidation about the future. Over time, as I revised and shaped the story, I saw how my experience connected to larger issues—violence against women; our inevitable confrontations with mortality.  Writing about the Flashlight Man drained away his power, restored control to me, and helped me free myself of fear.

Only a few months after this encounter with the therapeutic possibilities of writing, I taught a freshman composition class in which a student wrote an anguished personal essay about the death of her twin. Her classmates praised her honesty and consoled her and then the floodgates opened: one described with great emotion her mother’s cancer, another detailed his recovery from a brain injury, another poured out her struggle with anorexia.  In small groups, students read aloud with tears streaming down their faces and at the beginning of the next class they’d ask eagerly, “Do we have group today?”

I smiled weakly. I was horrified. I was supposed to be teaching writing skills. I was not a licensed therapist.

My students wrote in the evaluations that it was the best class they’d ever taken.  I wasn’t quite sure whether I’d succeeded wildly or failed miserably as a teacher that semester.

*

In the branch of therapy that uses writing as a technique, the objective is not to produce a work of art. According to UK therapist Sharon Hinsull, in “Writing as Therapy: A Silence that Speaks Louder than Words,” the goal is to give “silent but meaningful expression to that which has not been, or cannot be, spoken aloud.”

Many experts advocate for the relationship between writing and mental health. In her essay “Writing Memoirs and Writing for Therapy: An Inquiry on the Functions of Reflection,” Tara DaPra references the work of biobehavioral health professor Joshua Smyth, explaining that

while the initial writing—the first draft—may provide a cathartic effect, the lasting benefit comes from seeing the problem in a new light—the organizing, editing, and structuring of a piece of writing.

The key is revision: digging deeper into the experience so that the writing becomes a conduit to growth and change. James W. Pennebaker, who originated the form of therapy referred to as “expressive writing,” says that it’s the use of cause-and-effect words like “because,” “realize,” and “understand” that ultimately leads to redemption and healing.

*

Good memoir is, of course, the opposite of self-absorption. The unique aspects of the author’s experience also link to bigger issues and tap into the experience of readers, offering perspective and insight. A memoir may initially be motivated by catharsis (or revenge), but somewhere in the revision process, it requires the courage, honesty, and generosity to reach out in meaningful ways to others, to remind readers that we are not alone in our struggles.

The goals of therapy and writing often intersect. Writing well in any genre forces us into active engagement, roots us in time and place, helps us to carve out the impact of one event on another, understand the relevance of details to events, gives them voice, texture, order. But even suspending our inner critics and allowing ourselves to write what Anne Lamott refers to as the “shitty first draft” is a first step toward making connections. Descriptions and metaphors force us to put names to what is nebulous and appreciate the interconnectedness of the world around us, how forks of lightning are like tree branches are like veins and arteries. The wrong metaphors can make us laugh at ourselves. The right ones can lift us out of ourselves to find points of similarity with others.

*

I don’t know if any of those freshman comp students are still writing. I do know that my own writing about the Flashlight Man transformed significantly, starting as a journal, turning into fiction, then, eventually, ten years later, becoming an essay. While it evolved over the years, it did, I hope, retain its original emotional energy. It won a Pushcart and become the first chapter of my first book.

As DaPra writes, “Perhaps the only recompense for tragedy—for death and loss of innocence—is the chance to create some measure of beauty.”

________

Nancy McCabe is the author of nine books, including the memoir Can This Marriage Be Saved? (Missouri 2020). Her debut young adult novel Vaulting through Time was just released by CamCat Books. 

This blog was originally published in Good River Review and reprinted in Creativity and Compassion: Spalding Writers Celebrate 20 Years. 

Ready to explore self-transformation through writing? Join Nancy and CRAFT TALKS for an 8-week, live-on-Zoom synchronous workshop, The Healing Power of the Artful Essay: Transforming Experience into Art ($575).  Registration open now – workshop begins September 24.

Work Your Writing

By Clorisa Phillips

Writing essays and a memoir-in-progress is work for me. In a good way.

When I retired from my four-decade career in higher education, colleagues encouraged me to write a book. “Do it!” “It would be so informative!” All I could think was ugh. Strategic planning, community relations, fund-raising? Performance tracking? That would just continue the impersonal work I’d always done. Eager instead to go on what Isabel Allende describes as “a journey into memory and the soul,” I wanted my writing to take me somewhere.

Where it might take me wasn’t important, but I did worry about casting aside 40 years of experience to write personal essays and memoirs. I pictured myself not being well-equipped, carrying an empty suitcase.

Three years now into my journey, I know my worry was unwarranted. Every day, these skills and strategies from my former work strengthen and propel my writing.

Strategic Planning

• Craft a vision. This is more than “write a book by the time I’m 60” or “become a well-known essayist.” For me, it’s to excavate family memories that shed light on larger stories or themes, especially ones that are lesser known or even forgotten. Each time I contemplate an essay, I ask, “How will this advance my vision?”
• Assess the environment. What’s involved to achieve your vision?(For fellow planning nerds, think of the old SWOT analysis: determine your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.) I spent some time frustrated that my literary magazine submissions were going begging. But once I realized the stories I want to explore, as well as my storytelling style, are more appropriate for commercial publications, writing and publishing have been less fraught.

Community Relations

• Accept that no work is done in isolation. Build a community of fellow writers and be a good citizen. Congratulate their efforts, praise their successes, ask for advice, share tips. Recognize and stay in touch with stakeholders—editors, teachers, funders, PR advisors, teachers. For example, I read fellow essayists’ published work (Facebook groups for writers and editors enable this) and congratulate them; I notify well-known authors when their books and ideas influence my work, with a quick email or comment on social media.
• Learn the lay of the land. Study how things work. Do you need an agent? How do you approach editors? What’s the difference between a big commercial publisher and a small indie? How do you manage a relationship with an agent? With an editor? The questions are endless; don’t be embarrassed to ask. Replay (and replay) helpful webinars.

Performance Tracking

• Study best practices and set expectations. Whether you’re writing essays or a book-length memoir, ask yourself what successful pieces have in common. As an essayist, I examine personal stories in top-tier commercial publications by looking at style, content, tone, and length.
• Hold yourself accountable. I keep a spreadsheet showing name and date of essay submissions and dates of acceptances or rejections, and I have a goal for number of submissions per quarter. For you it might number of words per day, or number of pages to an editor every month. Develop goals and ask someone to help you with monitoring them; my writing buddy asks for my spreadsheet if I don’t send it to her once a month.

Research, Research, Research  

• Substantiate and fact check your work. Even fiction readers don’t like factual errors. If you don’t enjoy research (and have some budget), hire someone. Reliable websites list qualified freelance researchers, whether you need help for a week, or an entire project. Ask fellow writers for suggestions. If you live near a college or university, like I do, find a student.
• Limit random rabbit holes. Loving to investigate back stories can be a problem. You deceive yourself that you’re not procrastinating because you’re doing research. But the person expecting that essay you pitched won’t be tickled pink to hear the fascinating story you learned when you miss their deadline.

Fund-raising

• Learn how to pitch and do it often. This applies to grants, fellowships, residencies and publication. Rules of thumb are the same. Study the funder or the publication/publisher and show how what you do matches what they want. Shed your insecurities and pitch often. Rarely are you turned down because you stink—it’s often because there’s not a fit.

Overall, two mindsets served me well over the decades and still guide me now.

1. Embrace learning. Memoir writing isn’t a static brain dump of everything you want people to know about you. Commit to learning at least one thing from each book you read, each substantive conversation with a fellow writer, each webinar—even the disappointing ones. Use what you learn.
2. Be flexible. “Pivoting” isn’t just for pandemic-level crises. Have a backup plan, or two, when things don’t go as planned: your agent closes shop; a publisher reassigns your editor; the essay about your “great idea” bombs repeatedly. Be unafraid to reassess your ideas when circumstances change.

Remember: a “journey into the memory and soul” has no prescribed path. No specific steps. Prepare for the expected and the unexpected. It turns out my suitcase was full all along—I’d been packing it for years.

___________

Clorisa Phillips is a historian and essayist, retired from a long career in higher education. She explores family stories, aiming to reveal overlooked or commonly unknown facets of life. Her personal essays have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The New York Times and elsewhere. Clorisa holds a B.A. degree from William & Mary and M.Ed. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Virginia. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The Unexpected Blahs of Post-Publishing Blues

By Kathy Wagner

I never thought I’d write a book. Sure, I daydreamed about it; I imagined myself flustered by Oprah’s effusive praise or wearing a glittery designer gown while accepting the Nobel Prize in Literature. I mused over my literary fantasies in the same way I imagined how I’d spend my eighty-three million dollars of lottery winnings, even though I was way too practical to buy a ticket.

As a single mom with three kids to feed, the idea of spending decades of training, practice and rejection for the hope of walking proudly in the literary world seemed even less practical than buying a lottery ticket. Instead, I trained as a technical writer and then a content strategist. These careers let me noodle with words and gave me a reliable and good paycheque.

But a few weeks short of my fifty-third birthday, I suddenly knew I would write a memoir. Tragically, that knowing emerged from my son’s death—a personal apocalypse that destroyed my world and left it in ruins. In those early years of grief, the idea of writing a book to provide hope to others gave me a path forward. It gave me purpose as I examined the rubble of my life and considered how I might rearrange what was lost and what remained.

I was unprepared for writing my story. I’d never studied creative writing. My training in technical communication and plain language only went so far, and it was nowhere near far enough. I didn’t have a “starter book” or two or three, that many published authors have before hitting their stride with both artful and marketable storytelling. As a middle-aged memoirist, I’d lived my life blind to the fact that I was an author, until a story within me demanded to be set free. Whether I’d studied the craft of writing or not, my story was coming out.

I dove head-first into my writing journey, fuelled by ignorance and optimism. I took creative writing classes, joined get-your-book-done programs, went on writing retreats, found writing mentors, participated in online writing communities, and started a weekly critique group. I’d always read widely, so I had a strong sense of what good creative writing sounded like and what compelling stories felt like. I put more of myself on the page than I ever thought possible and more of my son than I had intended. I learned to be gentle with myself as I relived traumatic moments, and I developed much more compassion for the story’s narrator than I’d ever had for myself.

My literary goals for the memoir were not as lofty as my youthful fantasies. I would be ecstatic, I told myself, if I could get traditionally published by a quality publisher and if my book helped other struggling parents to feel hope and know they were not alone. And I’m gratified and grateful that version of my dream came true.

Launching my memoir into the world felt like celebrating a holiday feast with all the festive trimmings—weeks of planning and days of cooking consumed in a dizzying twenty minutes; my head ringing with gushing and sincere compliments from friends and family; my world spinning from local media attention (in this analogy, my holiday meal made headlines); and my heart filled with gratitude that my meal nourished those who were truly hungry.

And then everyone went home, and I was alone with the leftovers. Soon, I knew the meal would become a memory and that thought tasted like disappointment—a seasoning I don’t keep in my kitchen, and certainly didn’t use in my meal. How did disappointment sneak its way in?

I’ve come to learn that many authors experience post-publishing blues and so few of us talk about it because we just published a book! We’re meant to be happy—we are happy—but we’re confused by a conflicting swirl of emotions, as if we are simple creatures capable of only one feeling. I am ecstatic that my book is out in the world, in libraries and on bookstore shelves, impacting readers. And while I never expected Oprah to come calling, I’m also disappointed that it hasn’t gotten more media attention; that it’s not making bestseller lists.

My world changed when I published my book. After five years of writing, crying, celebrating, and struggling to create something that has meaning, I am no longer creating it and no longer in control of it. It’s grown up and moved out, leaving a gap in my life that feels a lot like grief.  

I’ve received well-intentioned advice from writers. “Pour yourself into promoting your book,” some say. “Start your next book,” say others. As if staying busy or starting a new project will chase away uncomfortable feelings. As if those feelings don’t deserve their own moment to shine. As if promotion or another book is a foregone conclusion.

I’m adept at navigating grief and finding my way in unknown territory, and that’s what this post-publishing world feels like to me. Writing my memoir was my soul’s calling, but can I imagine life now without writing? Can I imagine writing without the compulsion that drove me this far? I don’t know if I’m a one-book pony or if I opened the door to a new world where I am a writer. And I don’t need to know.

I will feel my way forward.

In my post-publishing world, I’ll lean into grief’s wisdom. It has taught me how to honour joy and disappointment, like two sides of a coin. It will lead me forward to a world where my memoir is a part of me always. It will create space to be filled and, by filling it, I will discover my next chapter.

__________

Kathy Wagner is the author of Here With You: A Memoir of Love, Family, and Addiction, and the mother of three grown children, including her son Tristan who died from fentanyl poisoning in August 2017. Her essays have been published in the New York Times, The Globe and Mail, and The Sun Magazine. Kathy lives in Metro Vancouver, BC, with her goldendoodle and two cats, where she spends hours each day walking through woodland trails, trying (and failing) to live in the moment, and imagining answers to the question “What now?”

The Life-Changing Magic of Micro Prose

By Darien Hsu Gee

Tell me a story about something true and real and important to you.

Now tell it to me in 300 words or less.

It may seem impossible, but it’s not. Micro (aka micro prose, micro narratives, micro essays, micro memoirs, or micro stories) is a short form of 300 words or less, the lesser-known cousin of flash. Three hundred words clock in at about one page double-spaced, Times New Roman 12 point (using the first 300 words of this essay as an example). That may not seem like a lot of space, but it’s plenty if you decide micro is for you.

I didn’t think micro was for me, and I was wrong

I fell into micro by accident. It was 2019 and I was 50 years old, graduating from a low-residency MFA program in Tacoma, WA. I was on my way to class when I received word I had been awarded a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship for my work, Other Small Histories. This was remarkable for many reasons, one being that Other Small Histories was originally intended to be a full-length, multi-generational historical novel based on the women in my mother’s matrilineal line. I was already a published author with five novels under my belt, but I had been struggling with this manuscript for several years. Instead of a sweeping saga of four generations of women, the story I wanted to tell was distilled into 36 prose poems of 300 words or less (some previously published as micro essays), now spanning five generations of women in my family. I was a writer known for novels of 85,000-125,000 words—but micro was the form that set my story free.

Micro opens doors

The following year, during the throes of the pandemic, a local Hawaiʻi publisher and I talked about how we could help people tell the stories of their lived experiences. We knew full-length memoir projects could be daunting, so I said, “What about micro memoirs?” We created a writing and publishing program to help writers put together a collection of micro memoirs. We believed (and still do) that micro is one of the best ways to get your memories on the page.

A couple of months later, I was approached by a mainland publisher who proposed an anthology of flash essays written by women of color. I asked, “Are you open to micro essays?” I served as executive editor for Nonwhite and Woman: 131 Micro Essays on Being in the World, which took home a silver IPPY award this year in celebration of those many voices, almost double the authors from the original proposal of flash essays.

Submit (and get published) as you go

Whether you’re using micro to build a collection of work, or as interstitial vignettes between chapters of your memoir, micro can be submitted to literary journals while you’re working on a larger project. Because of the word count, you can often submit three to five pieces at a time, similar to poetry. It helps editors of your future book know that your work has been seen (and vetted) by others, and ongoing publication of your writing keeps you buoyed and encouraged.

Getting good at micro

You develop micro writing skills by reading and writing micro. It’s not just about slashing a piece down to 300 words but understanding the elements of what makes micro so effective. It’s about practicing and building your micro muscles.

The good news is you can get good at micro in a relatively short amount of time when compared to say, learning how to write a memoir or even a personal essay. Micro can fit into your busy day. And revision? Pfft! As someone who has gotten massively lost in the weeds while ripping apart a 125,000-word novel, I can attest that revising a 300-word micro narrative is not just doable, but fun. Making your micro prose sing is the ultimate dopamine hit.

The best way to know is to try

Micro allows you to get to the marrow of your story. I now use it as a foundation for almost all of my generative workshops on the topics of ancestry, family, food, the body—subjects that run deep. I regularly teach micro at least once a month. Writers new to the form see immediate applications to their own work, and many establish a low-stakes daily writing practice where they know they’ll get some writing done each day while working towards a specific goal.

Read poet Maggie Smith’s memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, which is made up of over 208 micro memoirs, or Marion Winik’s collection of micro portraits of those passed in The Big Book of the Dead. Pick up any of Abigail Thomas’ books, or Beth Ann Fennelly’s Heating and Cooling. Brian Doyle was a master of micro. One of my earliest introductions to the power of micro was William Least Heat Moon’s Blue Highways. Many indie presses champion wonderful hybrid, micro work, too. When done well, a single piece of micro stands on its own and reveals exactly what we need to know, no more, no less.

Learning to write micro changed my life. What can it do for you?

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Join Darien Hsu Gee for a micro prose workshop with CRAFT TALKS webinars. The Magic of Micro Prose is tomorrow, August 15th (yes, a replay will go out to all registrants!). Register here.

Darien Hsu Gee is the author of five novels published by Penguin Random House that have been translated into eleven languages. Her collection of micro memoirs, Allegiance, about growing up Chinese American, won the 2012 bronze IPPY award for essays. Darien received a 2019 Poetry Society of America’s Chapbook Fellowship award for Other Small Histories, and a 2015 Hawai‘i Book Publishers’ Ka Palapala Po‘okela Award of Excellence for Writing the Hawai‘i Memoir. She lives with her family on the island of Hawai‘i. Join Darien’s mailing list for micro workshop updates, virtual write-ins, and writing prompts, or find her at dariengee.com.

Is This the Real Life? Is This Just Fantasy?

By Abby Alten Schwartz

Imagine you own a property. You sketch plans for a house, consult experts, allow yourself six months to build a solid foundation and ensure you’re up for the challenge. You reach that milestone and keep going, learning new tools and discovering which tasks you have a knack for and which are more cost-effective to outsource. Then one day, you look around and realize you’re living in this home you made and it’s lovely, comfortable, and secure.

That’s how it felt to build my own business from a thought I had in mid-2000 (what if I quit this job and worked for myself?) to a major part of my identity. Originally a graphic design company, I expanded to include copywriting and marketing consultation, and sharpened my focus to hospitals and healthcare organizations. The work was gratifying and provided the steady income and flexible hours I needed raising a daughter with a demanding chronic illness.

But here’s what happens when you’ve lived in the same house for 20 years. You start watching too much HGTV, envisioning what you’d choose if you ever decided to move. You still love your current house—this is just fantasy.

For years leading up to the pandemic, I’d felt a restless creative urge, a sense there was something more I was meant to do. My gut told me there was a collaborative element to it but the rest remained elusive.

Then, in the summer of 2019, Cheryl Strayed posted on Instagram that she was teaching a memoir writing course the following spring at Kripalu Center, a five-hour drive from my home. Terrified, yet powerless to resist, I registered.

Of course we all know what happened in the spring of 2020. And while there would be no weekend workshop with Cheryl Strayed, fate stepped in to usher me onto my new writing path, quarantine-be-damned.

On the day I would have arrived at Kripalu, I discovered The Isolation Journals (TIJ), a pandemic-borne online journaling project founded by Suleika Jaoaud. I began writing daily in response to Jaoaud’s prompts and sharing my mini essays with the private Facebook group. I found my voice and realized it was time to build an addition onto my creative house.

These last three years have been transformative—Dorothy stepping into a Technicolor world. A friend from TIJ introduced me to an expansive and generous community of writers. I took online courses where I met more writers, learned to pitch editors, got my first byline and my second and my twentieth. I found a coach and started my memoir, wrote essays, satire, reported stories, prose, formed critique groups, ventured to HippoCamp.

Every day I gazed in wonder at the new structure rising from the earth around me. This was no mere addition. This was my aspirational dream home, right out of a Nancy Meyers film.

Every day I’d trudge back to my other home, knowing my fantasy house wasn’t sturdy enough to live in or sustain a family.

Then one day I thought, if I can’t live in my new house, maybe I can borrow some of the furniture and accessories and spruce up my old place. And I started integrating bits of my personal writing life with my professional one.

I added journalism to my LinkedIn profile and posted links to my bylines, explaining them as writing I did to keep my creativity sharp. I’d previously separated these halves of my identity, wary of crossing professional boundaries and revealing too much of my personal life. I also worried my clients would mistakenly think I had one foot out the door. My clients not only liked my pieces, they asked about them in meetings.

The truth is my corporate writing makes my personal writing more enjoyable. Sure, I’d love more time to devote to the latter, but because it’s not my primary source of income, I can take a more playful, curiosity-driven approach. When the stakes are lower, there’s greater freedom to aim high. The worst that can happen is I get a rejection.

Still, writing essays and memoir has unleashed in me a greater desire for authenticity and genuine connection. So, brick by brick, I’m lowering the walls dividing my two halves.

I’ve been thinking about the word integrity—a core value of mine and an ideal I try to live by. The word means more than honesty and morality. Integrity is the state of being whole and undivided.

I’m now taking further steps to bring my creative identities into better alignment and give each the attention and respect they deserve.

I’m writing a proposal for my memoir-in-progress, with the goal of landing an agent and publishing deal in 2023. I’ll continue to pitch stories that interest and excite me, including pieces about chronic illness, wellness, and mental health, informed by my expertise in healthcare communications. I’ll continue to work with hospital systems but will also develop content for major healthcare brands. And I’m preparing to launch a design service for writers, offering book cover consultation and art direction as well as creation of promotional materials.

An old client I reconnected with a few weeks ago asked me, “What kind of work do you really have fun doing?”

It’s a question I hope I never stop pondering.

___

Abby Alten Schwartz is a Philadelphia-based writer whose work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, WIRED, Salon, The Belladonna Comedy and elsewhere. She also works as a healthcare copywriter, designer and marketing consultant and is writing a memoir titled Hypervigilant. Follow her on Twitter @abbys480, visit abbyaltenschwartz.com and subscribe to her free newsletter, Name Three Things.

Hard Silences, Hard Stories: A Memoirist’s Difficult Journey

Suzanne Strempek Shea interviews Melanie Brooks

Sitting in summer shorts while reading Melanie Brooks’ heart-enveloping memoir A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all, I was reminded that the best memoirists’ long treks through the land of memory often require tactical gear.

A Hard Silence details with documentarians’ precision the story of Brooks’ 53-year-old father’s death from AIDS during Canada’s mid-1980s Tainted Blood Scandal. The author was 13 when he was infected, and 23 when he died, a decade during which her parents required their four children to keep their situation private. Brooks’ father, Orville Messenger, was a respected physician heavily involved in his Evangelical Christian Church, in a time long before drug commercials illustrated the carefree lives of those with HIV. A Hard Silence story pays homage to the isolated soul of every child who’s been made to bear a family secret. It also is among the latest examples of the long, rutted path a memoir writer must tread toward truth, a semblance of peace, and becoming the person able to write the story fittingly.

As we speak over Zoom, Brooks’ Lab Wally snoozing behind her, the 51-year-old native of the Canadian Maritimes nods at lessons learned. “I lived the ten years, then I put myself through it again. I don’t think I knew that’s what I was going to be doing. I think if writers really knew what this was going to be like, they wouldn’t write.”

Melanie Brooks

Brooks did have some inkling, her first book Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma (Beacon, 2017), featuring 18 in-depth interviews including with Edwidge Danticat and Richard Blanco, began as a project three years into her memoir and during her studies at the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA program.  

“It became very clear to me that I needed something like the ‘gate’ that (James) Baldwin once said of his work, how he didn’t set out to write about ‘being a Negro,’ as though that were his only topic, but that was the gate he had to unlock to get to anything else. Writing Hard Stories was the gate for me—I had to have those conversations with those writers and really work through what the experience was for me, feeling re-traumatized, and maybe traumatized for the first time, by this writing… ‘You get to the other side of it.’ I needed to hear that to keep going.”

Most writers keep going while also shape-shifting through life. Over the decade of writing A Hard Silence, Brooks was wife, mother, runner, MFA student, undergrad and MFA writing instructor, Narrative Medicine Certificate student, prolific op-ed submitter, new author, and therapy patient with a manuscript in progress. She and her voice, perspective, and skill grew as the story did, despite writing that brought avalanching reminders of the deep love shared with her late father, and the struggles with a childhood faith that once was as much a given as the fact that her father one day would walk grandchildren along the shore. Brooks credits cognitive behavioral therapy, which she began during a confidence crisis around A Hard Silence’s start, for developing necessary emotional muscles and understanding.

“The writing fed therapy and the therapy fed the writing. It needed to be done like that for me. And, certainly, when I started I did not anticipate that I’d be in therapy for over a decade.” The sessions, which she’s continued, also became a story line underscoring the hard and long duty of revisiting the past.

Brooks recalls friend and colleague Richard Hoffman saying he needed 19 years to write his searing on-point memoir of childhood abuse, Half the House, another book in which silence is a main character. “I always say that that time includes all the striving to become the writer who could write that particular book,” Hoffman explained. “I think that’s pretty much true of all my books. None of them are written by the guy who first envisioned them. They are all the result of a process of becoming the author of each book. “

It was the same with A Hard Silence. “There’ve been a lot of times for me when I’ve thought, why haven’t I gotten this done? Why isn’t it published yet?” Brooks says. “But I also realized if this had gotten published right away after Writing Hard Stories, it wouldn’t be the book it is.”

Because the author would not be who she is right now, a woman turning more fully ahead, feeling able to telling the world her story. Is she someone who believes things happen when they’re supposed to? A Hard Silence, Brooks says, “speaks to some of the lessons of Covid that need to be continuously learned” and points to the re-emergence of HIV-AIDS in public conversation—and to a generation unaware of that pandemic’s story. “I do feel like it’s relevant to the current conversation,” she says.

A Hard Story easily will slip into worldwide discourse, but Brooks’ goals are more personal.

“I’m not counting on this being on the bestseller list,” Brooks says. “I’m putting it out there because it might give me the opportunity to have one conversation with somebody who says to me, ‘You know, before I read your book, I felt really alone. I don’t feel so alone anymore’.

“As much as I don’t want to say good has come from my dad’s tragedy, I am able to say I am the person I am, capable of sitting with people in their grief and leaning into hard stories, because of my own experience of a hard story.”
___

Suzanne Strempek Shea’s six novels and five works of nonfiction include Songs from a Lead-Lined Room: Notes—High and Low—from My Journey through Breast Cancer and Radiation, Shelf Life and This Is Paradise. Her journalism and fiction has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Irish Times, Yankee, Golf World, Down East, The Bark, and ESPN the Magazine. She is former writer-in-residence and director of the creative writing program at Bay Path University, founded its MFA program and co-founded its Narrative Medicine Certificate program.

Don’t Hold Back

By Sarah Cannon

For years, I allowed a few things to hold me back from writing. These are the top three:

1) I had children when I was young and decided to stay home for a few years.

2) When I was ready to go back to work, my partner survived a near-fatality.

3) I spent the next five years in a panic.

I also didn’t know what I wanted to do. I knew I was satisfied when I was reading to my children or to myself, or thinking of stories, or telling stories. I was having an awful time of life, but I had a story to tell—it was an itch I had to scratch. In what felt like a gluttonous move, I made the decision to get a loan and pay for time to write for real, time to read, and time with professional writers.

I’m not saying that everyone should pursue an MFA in Creative Writing. They’re costly, and a diploma does not secure a publishing deal or gainful employment. Fast forward several years; I make my living as a copywriter for a consultancy firm in the financial/technical industry—not exactly a sexy publishing gig, but it pays the bills.

I’m forty-eight now, and I know better than to give merit to headlines meant to give me anxiety, like Can You Have a Writing Career After Forty? or Ten Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Quit Your Day Job. When you’re “older,” you have stuff to say, and the confidence to say it. You know how to get the help you need, be it a paid mentor, community workshop, writer’s group, or an online class. You know better than to worry about what career means, anyways.

Recently, I met a sixty-something Australian writer who assured me now was a perfect time to hone my craft. The kids are older now, darling, and you have all the wisdom that comes from that. She has handfuls of novels in handfuls of languages, and she began, like me, when she was a broke single mom with teenagers.

In 2016 I signed a contract with Red Hen Press to publish my memoir. The two years between signing the contract and the day the book was in my hands felt like book publishing purgatory. At the time, I was an elementary-school lunch lady and a barista. I was going through a divorce and learning to manage a household myself. It was one of those times in life where you feel like you’re barely hanging on. I’ll never forget when the managing editor wrote to me saying she loved the manuscript. I wept in my car hugging myself. It was almost enough validation right there. Would this be a start of a career? I sure needed one. I hoped so, but I also decided to be ok with the opportunity to share my story and be part of a literary arts community.

The Shame of Losing went on to not sell fantastically, but it was nominated for a Washington State Book Award in 2019—an honor of a lifetime. The camaraderie I gained with others braving the artist’s path filled my cup.

To have a career in writing at any age means writing a lot. It means being patient. I can’t always write a lot, so I am patient with myself. I was forty-four when I threw that book launch party and read passages in panels and at bookstore behind a mike. Now I am forty-eight with a handful of unfinished manuscripts. I accepted the reality that to raise my kids on one income in our fast-paced and expensive society, I had to pivot and educate myself in the digital marketing space. I learned about coding and software management systems and project management and cloud technologies and machine learning and AI and on and on and on. While it wasn’t my primary goal, I discovered that learning new things enables me to connect with my design mind. I can leave the desk job work “at home” so to speak, and dip into the creative juices almost on command these days. I am less concerned about the publishing industry and my success in it, and more connected to the joy of the process.

Recently, I enrolled in a Julia Cameron-inspired The Artist’s Way course. Between the regularity of the morning pages and newness of the independent artists dates, I started exploring a theme I had always wanted to take on. Inspiration struck and I put in for some paid time off to draft the beginnings of a play that I “finished” in a few weeks. I devoted energy to meeting new people working in this space. The excitement I feel about the potential for making something that can be shown, of collaborating with actors and a director and a theatre company, is, I think, a result of my having chosen to be on technical and editorial teams these recent years. I might turn fifty before any invites are sent for opening night; having written my book gives me the confidence that it is possible.

Ignore anyone who tells you otherwise—so long as we are diligent in the work, keep channels open for feedback, and stay the course, we can have a career in an art form we practice at any age.

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Ready to bring your experience to the page? Join Sarah Cannon for Collage Memoir: Arranging the Ephemera, a CRAFT TALKS webinar August 9th at 2PM Eastern. $25/early bird $15. Register or find out more.

Sarah Cannon earned her MFA from Goddard College, where she later helped launch the Lighthouse Writers’ Conference and Retreat in Port Townsend, WA. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, Salon.com, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Brainline.org, Bitch Magazine, and elsewhere. She has taught creative writing at Edmonds Community College, Hugo House, and for Creative Nonfiction Magazine.