Get On Board: Keeping Readers on the Dramatic Train

By Allison K Williams

There is a glorious moment in almost every manuscript where the editor realizes, “Aha! THIS is where the story starts!” and breathes a prayer of thanks that the author does indeed have a book. Their labor has paid off, we discover, and we don’t have to send a diplomatically worded editorial letter suggesting they start again from scratch.

This moment is usually somewhere in pages 34-50.

Don’t get me wrong—I see plenty of strong first-page hooks. Intense confrontations, moments of critical action interrupted, or even just a powerful literary or comedic voice inviting the reader onboard to share a journey with the protagonist, lean forward and enjoy the story. But the pattern I’ve seen lately is 3-5 kickass opening pages—most authors, by the time they’re ready for a developmental edit, have carefully workshopped and developed their opening with plenty of feedback—and then…backstory. Family details. Worldbuilding. Relationship-showing. Well-written anecdotes that don’t connect. The destination sounded cool, but now we’re in the observation car learning about the upholstery and wondering when we’re pulling out of the station.

As an editor, I’m still carefully reading every word of the subsequent pages, spotting craft issues and great phrasing and sentences and paragraphs to salvage from the sea of not-bad-writing-just-meh. As a reader, I’m jittering in my seat, yelling (sometimes literally) “But what do you WANT?? What’s HAPPENING?” and startling the heck out of my husband who would just like to process some databases, please, at our coworking table.

I’ve fallen into the hook-‘em-then-meander trap myself.

I wrote a book some years ago, a manuscript I workshopped and friend-read and had professionally edited, and landed an agent. The book was shopped to publishers but nobody yet was buying. Then, as a student at a conference, I participated in a session where first pages were read anonymously to a panel of agents who rang a bell wherever they would have stopped reading. The reader got through my whole page, and after a moment of silence, the room burst into applause. Major ego moment!

So I thought, why not pull a few pages for the student reading? And as I leafed through the manuscript—boring, too much set-up, that’s unclear out of context, boring, porn, backstory, ugh—a revelation came upon me: the book wasn’t selling because the book wasn’t good enough. After the page that hooked the panel, there was an awful lot of explanation and muddling around, trusting my authorial voice and the shock of the concept were carrying the book.

They weren’t.

So how, fellow writers, can we carry out the promise of our glorious first pages?

By focusing on the dramatic arc. First, we must establish what the memoirist or the protagonist is longing for in those 3-5 opening pages—no matter how wild or tense or action-packed the scene, what do they need? Why don’t they have it right now? This can be stated or implied, but it’s something bigger than the immediate scene, a goal or desire that can’t be easily met.

In the next 5-7 pages, show when they are farthest away from meeting that need. This is often, but not always, the “here’s how the whole story started” scene. Meeting-cute for a bad relationship, becoming conscious of their poverty, going to the party where they’ll take that first hit. If we’re still moving forward chronologically, this is where we see the untenable existing situation and why the character needs more. They may already know they have the need, or it may be clear to another character, or maybe only the reader can see it, but it’s there.

Next comes the first turning point scene, where the protagonist begins changing: they gain a skill or a mentor, or face a big obstacle, or start running down the wrong path to reach the goal.

By page 20 (double-spaced, in case you’re counting), the character’s journey is established. After the immediate engagement of the opening scene, their dramatic arc has begun. The reader understands explicitly or implicitly what the character wants, why they don’t have it right now, the outside obstacles, and the inside change that must occur in the character in order to meet that need. The reader has seen the first steps towards the goal, and their curiosity is building about the path to the destination.

Throughout these opening pages, weave in backstory in small doses, where personal history is either a direct cause of the main action, or serves as context/contrast for the scene. The further you are into the book, the more grace the reader has for detail, setting, backstory, etc. But they need that initial pull to get on the journey. Show them the dining car and the observation car after the dramatic train gets going.

Take a look at your own first pages—you probably have a strong hook! Are you also showing what the character needs and why they don’t have it? Try highlighting everything that’s backstory or information in the first 20 pages—is the protagonist (possibly you!) taking actions on a journey that has definitely started?

Let us know in the comments what you discover.

_______

Allison K Williams is Brevity’s Social Media Editor. Ready to sell your memoir, or want to be? Join her for Proposal Bootcamp April 12-14, for three days of planning, writing and finishing your memoir or nonfiction book proposal. (Friends of Brevity use code BREVITY50 for a discount!)

Crabby Hermits and Simone Biles: Using Satire and Experimental Forms

By Carlos Greaves

Simone Biles had just withdrawn from the women’s gymnastics team event at the Tokyo Olympics, and reading Piers Morgan’s tweet made my blood boil.

“Are ‘mental health issues’ now the go-to excuse for any poor performance in elite sport? What a joke.”

How someone with zero experience competing in elite sports — let alone Olympic gymnastics — could say something so heartless and ignorant about an athlete’s struggles was baffling to me. So, as a satirist, I did what I normally do when I read something that makes me incandescently angry — I tried to write something funny about it.

If you read McSweeney’s or The New Yorker’s “Daily Shouts” section frequently, then you’re likely familiar with humor pieces that take on any number of forms, from BINGO, to math problems, to a spoof of the New York Times’ “Connections” game.

This writing technique is called a hermit crab essay, and here is everything you need to know about what hermit crab essays are and how to write one: 

FAQ About Hermit Crab Essays

What is a hermit crab essay?

A hermit crab essay is one in which the writer uses an existing form such as a letter, a quiz, or a product review, as a structure for their writing. 

What are some examples of hermit crab essays?

• Brenda Miller’s rejection letters essay, “We Regret to Inform You”
• Samantha Irby’s recipe essay, “an instagram frittata”
• “Thanksgiving Rider” by Simon Rich

Is this FAQ an example of a hermit crab essay?

Yes, how very astute of you. But was that actually a question, or are you one of those people who likes to ask questions they know the answer to in order to show off how smart they are?

How do you choose what form to use for your hermit crab essay?

I’m so glad you asked. Often, the form conveys something about the author or the characters. Samantha Irby’s recipe essay, for example, tells us about her complicated relationship with food. In the case of “Thanksgiving Rider,” the use of legalese reveals the ways in which the relationship between the mother and daughter feels contractual and carefully negotiated.

Is it called a hermit crab essay because the author is adopting a “shell” for their essay much like a hermit crab?

No, it’s because writers are all crabby hermits. Yes, of course that’s why it’s called a hermit crab essay. But, again, I’m pretty sure you asked this question already knowing the answer, you obnoxious little teacher’s pet, you.

What are some benefits of hermit crab essays?

• Constraints are a great way to combat writer’s block. Having a specific form to work off of can help eliminate the paralysis of choice when tackling a topic.

• Form can add a layer of humor as well as get the author’s point of view across more effectively. 

• Hermit crab essays are also a great way to structure essays about hermit crab essays because they provide a concrete example of a hermit crab essay while allowing the author to insert running jokes that make the essay more fun to read.

Do hermit crab essays always have to include meta humor?

No, that’s just a thing I enjoy doing.

As I was brainstorming ways to satirize Piers Morgan’s tweet, I thought about how unqualified he was to weigh in on Biles’ decision to withdraw. That got me thinking: is anyone qualified to criticize the greatest gymnast of all time? That question inspired my piece, Are You Allowed to Criticize Simone Biles?: A Decision Tree, which uses a flowchart to guide the reader through questions like “Are you a gymnast? Yes or No?” and “Did you win four gold medals in women’s gymnastics at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro? Yes or No?” Gradually, as the reader follows the flowchart, it becomes clear that the only person allowed to criticize Simone Biles is Simone Biles.

A few days after the piece was published, a friend texted me, “Check out Simone’s Twitter page!” There, under the “likes” section, was a link to my piece. That my piece about Simone Biles, borne out of second-hand frustration and written by a stranger half a world away, was able to reach Biles herself was empowering as a writer. And look, I’m not saying my piece was the reason Simone was able to bounce back so quickly and win a bronze medal in the balance beam. But I’m also not not saying that (I’m kidding, she bounced back so quickly because she’s Simone freaking Biles). Still, maybe an essay with the right form can be just the thing to reach someone struggling to find a form of their own.
___

Carlos Greaves is an engineer, writer, filmmaker, and occasional Bruno Mars impersonator. His writing has been featured in The New Yorker, NPR, and McSweeney’s, and his debut book, Spoilers: Essays That Might Ruin Your Favorite Hollywood Movies is available wherever you get your books. More of Carlos’s writing may be found at shadesofgreaves.substack.com

For the Edification of My Soul—And the Enhancement of My Writing Craft

By Laura Johnsrude

I go to art galleries for the edification of my soul.

I go to art galleries to gasp and moan and wonder and pause.

Pause, as I do at a good line on the page. Captivated, I read the good line again, to savor the craft and the way the prose makes me feel.

At an art gallery, I want to see through someone else’s viewfinder, see inside someone else’s mind, yes. And visual art—I find—can nourish a writer’s imagination, generating ideas for new work.

Reason enough for me to wander a room surrounded by paintings, collages, and mixed media installations.  

As a creative nonfiction writer, I believe there’s more to glean in these experiences than seeds and fertilizer.

In an art gallery, I relish the unexpected, the artist’s novel choices. I lean close to see the threads or buttons or bugs stuck to the canvas. To see the tiny dots of color or the swirls of the paint. To see the contrasting dark and light in a photograph. The recurring elements. What’s implied or echoed or blown up into hyperbole. I laugh when I realize the artist repurposed lightbulbs or dominos or pencil erasers, turning the stuff of drawers and boxes and trashcans into art.

Whoever thought of doing that? Making a quilt out of ticket stubs. Making a portrait out of aquarium rocks. Making a sculpture out of thimbles and bottlecaps. Painting the young girl’s eyes that piercing shade of green. Using paper towels color-dyed by wiping wet vegetables. Placing the pitchfork so close to me that I feel stabbed.

Oh, yes, there’s inspiration inside an art gallery for us—the writers—to craft our prose in unexpected ways, to make our own novel choices.

We can think about ways to do that. Juxtaposing concepts for contrast and comparison. Evoking mood with sensory details. Pulling a thread through a segmented essay. Lifting lyrical prose with rhythm. Portraying motifs by intentional repetition and list-making.

Oh, lean close to see the delight of a scene so round and crisp it is alive. To see the imagery created by language, like smoke, suddenly just . . . there. To see all those words arranged with dots and commas to slow the pace, then strung together in a rushing, stomping, revving, peddle-down, cascade of consonants clacking together, into a full-stop crash at a pitchfork period.

Yes, I go to art galleries for the edification of my soul.

And I go to art galleries for the enhancement of my writing craft.

We can visit art galleries to pay attention—to notice— and then can carry the insights and feelings back home with us, to write and revise, building and shaping our prose. Maybe our readers will gasp and moan, or even laugh. Maybe they’ll pause and wonder—how, pray tell, did they do that?

__________

Laura Johnsrude is a retired healthcare provider and creative nonfiction writer, recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her essays have been published in Fourth Genre, Bellevue Literary Review, River Teeth, Hippocampus, and Under the Gum Tree among others. She is Assistant Book Review Editor for Good River Review. Connect with Laura on Instagram.

Does It Have to Be Memoir?

By Beth Kephart

In the end, we make it. We craft the poem, we THE END the novel, we choose the cover art that will announce our work. No matter which pronouns we’ve used, no matter how many autobiographical facts we’ve either deployed or disguised, no matter how we defend or announce ourselves in our gussied-up flap copy, the books by us begin with us; they are personal. There is always the glimmer of an I standing in plain sight.

Having written and taught memoir for more than thirty years, I understand the impulse—better than I sometimes wish—to uphold the I as a verifiable I, to go to market with a memoir. The true story can, after all, be nearly anything at all—splinters, streamers, details, arcs—so long as it is true. But sometimes, even after years of work, the memoir we think we have been writing simply wants to buck the truth. It wants to suppose. It wants to bend. It needs a dose of artifice. It’s just not interesting anymore. It’s stuck inside its cage.

If that’s the case—if your memoir has become not an odyssey but a job, not a fervent search but a grinding duty—why not set it free? Why not liberate your best true stories by exploring other forms?

Think Ocean Vuong. Think Francisco Goldman. Think Vaddey Ratner. The first made, of his personal history and his great love for his mother, the art of the novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. The second transformed the harrowing sudden death of his new wife into Say Her Name, a book he sold as fiction. The third recreated the trauma of her experience with the Khmer Rouge into the transporting In the Shadow of the Banyan, also a novel. These three authors are among the many authors (Claire-Louise Bennett, Sheila Heti, Lisa Halliday, to name a few) who gave themselves the freedom to write toward emotional truths without lashing themselves to the absolutes of mindful autobiography.

Throughout my nearly forty-book career I’ve swerved from personal memoir to a river’s memoir that felt more true than anything that had preceded it. I wrote a wild corporate fable (with a chief executive officer friend) that encapsulated so many of my years spent writing annual reports and vision statements and executive talks without betraying a single confidence or company policy. I wrote a middle-grade novel called Undercover which is, in all the most important ways, the story of my teenaged years that I would never write as memoir, and I once wrote a young-adult novel called The Great Upending that features two young people I loved, on a landscape I loved, with a message that, had it been written into a memoir, might well have come off as a screech.

Finally, in November, my newest book, My Life in Paper: Adventures in Ephemera, was released—a book in which memoir sits alongside deeply researched history, and in which the narrative adhesive is a series of letters written to a man I never met, a paper adventurer named Dard Hunter who died in 1966.

Every book I’ve written, in other words, began as something true—a memory I had, a problem I faced, a regret I couldn’t neglect, some kind of beauty I wanted to hold onto, some question that needed to be answered, or at least heeded. Writing beyond the truth hasn’t just given me room to go deeper and farther than the facts sometimes allowed. It has also returned me to memoir, and to memoir teaching, with a greater respect for the possibilities of form, and tense, and attitude.

In the end, the words we’ve written are the words we’ve written. We claim them. They claim us. If memoir has become, for you, too small a space within to dream, consider the novel, the watercolor, or the poem.

__________

Beth Kephart is an award-winning writer and teacher and a paper artist. More at bethkephartbooks.com and bind-arts.com. Please join her for her upcoming Craft Talks presentation, Does It Have to Be Memoir? Reimagining Your True Story, April 3rd at 2PM Eastern time (yes, there’s a recording!)

What Columbo Taught Me About Writing Essays

By Andrea A. Firth

I’ve been watching reruns of Columbo lately. Why? At a young age, I was fascinated by the quirky detective from the 1970’s TV series—Columbo the rumpled, cigar-chomping, trench coat-wearing detective who investigates and solves a high-profile murder case each week. And now, I’ve come to see what the show and the character have taught me about writing essay. Yes, Columbo is a fictional character, but much of the craft we employ in creative nonfiction, like personal essay, stems from the techniques of fiction. And, I’ve found studying another medium, a television drama, provides a new lens, a new way to look at storytelling. I’ve picked up a few good writing tips from the show’s screenwriters. Plus, this detective’s dogged determination to find the truth, not just whodunit, but how and why things connect—that’s what resonates with essay writing.

Each episode of Columbo starts with a pivotal scene, the murderer committing the crime. Next Lieutenant Columbo meets the perpetrator, who he follows and badgers throughout the episode repeating his catchphrase “just one more thing” raising question after question until he cracks the case. Columbo’s approach is formulaic—and it works every time.

Asking questions, digging for answers, finding connections—this is what an essayist does. It’s fundamental to the essay’s DNA. We start with a personal experience, identify the themes at work, and write to uncover the deeper meaning—like Columbo, we connect the dots.

So what did Columbo teach me about personal essay exactly? Let me show you with an example and a few of the lessons that I’ve learned from the show.

[Spoiler AIert]

In the episode, “Negative Reaction” (Season 4, episode 2), the actor Dick Van Dyke plays a prominent photographer who murders both his wife and the ex-con he frames for her murder. All this happens before Columbo arrives on the scene.

Lesson 1: Embrace the Counterintuitive

Dick Van Dyke—the singing and dancing chimney sweep in Mary Poppins; the indulgent father who invents a flying car in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang; the husband who comically stumbles over the ottoman at the start of each episode of his eponymous sitcom with Mary Tyler Moore—he’s a double murderer? Well, I didn’t expect that.

Columbo shows us who the villain is at the start, but there’s always something surprising and unanticipated in the opening. In this episode, simply the idea that this affable actor could play a double murderer is unexpected. Allison K Williams describes this as employing “the counterintuitive,” and the technique is especially effective with openings and titles in personal essay. What your reader doesn’t expect, draws them in.

Lesson 2: Irony Has Impact

Back to the episode, as Columbo arrives on the scene of the second murder, at a used car lot, he drives by a sign that reads “We Buy Junk Cars” in his aging, dirt covered Peugot 403 convertible. As he pulls up, his car sputters and stalls. The car is as frumpy as Columbo. Simply ironic. Setting and details can provide humor and characterization in essay too. Look for it.

Lesson 3: Consider an Alternative Perspective

Columbo visits a homeless shelter to interview a witness for the case. “That coat. That coat. That coat,” says the nun who runs the shelter when he walks in. “I’ve had this coat for seven years. I’m very fond of it,” says Columbo defensively. He goes on to explain that he’s a detective working a case. The nun concludes he’s working under cover, his shabby coat a disguise. She sees Columbo in a different way.

Again, the screenwriters insert humor, and the repetition of “That coat” three times is good dialogue technique. But this situation also reminds us to consider alternative perspectives. How might the other people in your essay view you or the experience that you are exploring? How might that support what the essay is about?

Lesson 4: Write About What You Don’t Know

As the episode draws to its conclusion, Van Dyke (the photographer/murderer) is exasperated with Columbo’s constant questioning. He describes Columbo as a shaggy haired terrier who has an incessant grip on his pant leg. Like Columbo, this is what the essayist needs to embody as they search for what their story is about and what it means.

This is my biggest take away from Columbo/Columbo.

In the same way that the detective spends each episode working to uncover what he doesn’t know, in order to make the connections and solve his case, you as an essayist do the same. “Write what you know” is common writing advice, and it’s about half right. What you don’t know is the place to explore with personal essay—expansive, unchartered, revelatory territory.

Dinty W. Moore says, “what you don’t know will save your writing.”

Think about it.

Unlike Columbo, I don’t think writing personal essay has a set formula, that’s one of the wonderful things about the form, there are myriad ways to do it. But, like the scrappy detective, Columbo, the essayist needs the tenacity to uncover what the story is about and what it means.

And, I believe there’s more to learn from Columbo and Columbo, so I plan to keep watching.

__________

Andrea A. Firth is an editor at Brevity Blog. Andrea is teaching Finding Your Essay’s Heartbeat on Substack in April.

Your Media IS Your Market

By Allison K Williams

How is the media you regularly consume supporting your book?

Writing a book is tough enough, but when we’re ready to bring our words into the world, we get overwhelmed and confused. What goes under Marketing and Audience in our book proposal? Which titles make great comps, showing the book’s place in the market? And, uh, who are your audience…and once you know that, where do you find them, and how do you get your voice into those places?

Scrambling to identify and reach a market at the querying stage, or right before a book launch is disorienting and discouraging. More than ever, authors are expected to know who they’re writing for and what media those readers already consume before the book deal is signed.

Didn’t publishers used to do all this work? Yes and no. Twenty years ago, publishers signed fewer authors and spent more money on marketing. But media was more focused: buy ads in the New York Times and USA Today, send out press releases to the dominant newspaper in each major market, and contact the handful of relevant book reviewers. Now, marketing can mean identifying the 100 or so most influential BookTok and Instagrammers, contacting key indie bookstores and writing specialty press releases for niche magazines and websites, while spreading the budget across Amazon ads, podcasts and the six major social platforms on top of traditional radio, TV and print outlets.

It was also easier to buy memoirs only from people who were already famous, politically prominent, or in the news. The “personal” memoir category has grown exponentially, which means more opportunities for writers, and more niche audiences to reach with a story that will specifically appeal to them.

So how do we find our niche?

A few weeks ago, I was listening to The Gist, with podcaster Mike Pesca interviewing an author who’d written about recent political developments in Guatemala. As it happens, I was working with a memoirist whose book largely takes place in Guatemala. My thought process:

1) There might be info in this podcast that the memoirist needs. I didn’t know there were 20+ different tribes of Maya, and she might want to give that context. Or maybe she wants to reference what’s happening in the Guatemalan lives around her, to give the setting and auxiliary characters more depth. Maybe the sea change in local politics reflects one of her themes or her own turning points.

2) This podcast host is at least passingly interested in Guatemala. The memoirist might listen to more episodes (or, shortcut, just read the show notes) and see if Mike Pesca covers other events in the region. She could add him to her book proposal as a potential press opportunity: she, or her publicist, or the publisher’s publicist, can send a press release and request to be on the show when her book launches.

3) The author being interviewed has written about Guatemala. Could his book inform the memoirist’s writing? Would he be a good comp? Is he someone to ask for a blurb?

4) Where else has that author been interviewed or published? Are any of them venues for the memoirist to send an essay, or get interviewed herself?

As an editor and book coach, I stay aware of the publishing marketplace. Subscribing to Bookbub’s weekly discount ebooks email (free!) tells me what books are getting an extra push from their publisher. Publishers Marketplace (not free!) shows me deals made for books coming out in a year or two. I pass info to the authors I work with, forwarding them links to podcasts, newspaper and magazine articles, and cultural trends that will support their work when their book is ready. But this is work you can do for yourself, too.

Start your own list of future publicity venues while you’re writing the book. Making a couple of notes a week for several months is much easier than scrabbling for info in a frantic rush when you’re ready to query or launch.

Start local: where does your subject fit in the media you already consume? What articles gave you great ideas, or a new spin on your own topic? What essays are wrong–and you have an opposing argument? Then expand outward–where else are those people publishing, or what else is published in that venue?

Where can you reach your audience right now? Who else is talking about your topic, or parallel issues, or cultural trends surrounding your work, and can you engage or publish in those communities? Who is reading those venues, and how are they engaging with what they read (comments, re-shares, social engagement, opposing editorials)?

Who do you want to be connected to? Which podcast hosts do you find lively and appealing? What authors should you follow on social media, or seek out their other work? If you review or comment on their work, sign up for their newsletter and start gently interacting now, they won’t be a stranger when it’s time to ask for blurbs.

Paying attention to your audience and your market, through the media you’re already consuming, will not only lay the groundwork for your future sales–it’ll help you reach the audience who needs your story. And by deliberately interacting with and considering the issues around your story, and the other writers discussing your topic, you’ll also write a better book.

________

Allison K Williams is Brevity‘s Social Media Editor and the author of Seven Drafts, which she gleefully promotes on all the podcasts she’s ever listened to. Develop your own PR plan at Proposal Bootcamp, a 3-day live-on-Zoom event to write most or all of your book proposal with professional help and support. April 12-14, $425–Use code BREVITY50 for a $50 discount. More info/register now.

Hit Play: Tapping the Power of Song

By Gretchen Cion

“Just listen,” my friend said, handing me her headphones. 

At thirteen years old, I sat on the steps of my junior high school while Martin Gore of Depeche Mode spoke directly to my soul. Martin had me at that first word of his tragic yet electrifying lyric— “fragile!” With puberty and unrequited crushes and pimples strewn across my face, I too knew what it meant to be fragile daily. Tears brimming from having been seen, I promptly went out to Bill’s Records and bought “Black Celebration” on cassette.

With time, the intensity of music and my love for it lured me into writing. By then, I had graduated to The Smiths. I would crack my journal open and rant away mostly in the form of really bad poetry. I certainly wasn’t alone as a teenager in this practice, waxing poetic on my disdain for the world or a less-than-loyal boyfriend. Morrissey pierced my melodramatic heart. It wasn’t until I started writing essays as an adult, though, that I realized how vital music could be to kickstarting my creativity.

I’ve found songs from my life to be the container in which my stories are kept. Turn up some Janet Jackson, and I’m breaking and popping at a house party in New York City circa 1999. Pop in some “Wagon Wheel” by Old Crow Medicine Show, and I’m feet-out-of-the-window road-tripping, singing along with my husband and kids across West Texas in the summertime. When writing about these memories, I put the music on and let myself go into a deep, full body remembering that’s transportive.

While working on my essay collection, For Shame and Other Fun Feelings, I was struggling to find the emotional resonance of a specific memory at the crux of my piece. “Bambeléo” by Gispy Kings opened the floodgates, dropping me right back into my twenty-two-year-old, self-conscious self and the basement apartment in San Francisco where I betrayed my truth for group acceptance. Sure, the song left me a little raw from the pain it contained, but its time-machine quality, delivering me into details of the moment, was worth it. 

Songs, no doubt, are portals to the past, but it’s not all about the memories. Dig into some new tracks and be ready for the ideas they deliver. I teach a class called Poetic Playlist to girls and gender-expansive youth through The Intuitive Writing Project. Each week, I introduce lyrics by beloved songwriters. We discuss both craft elements and the lines that resonate with us. Then I present a prompt connected to an idea, the song’s theme, or a direct quote from the music before we go off and write together.

Years into leading this class, I’m still amazed by how readily a song presents a prompt after one read-through. Inspiration abounds, usually tethered to an explicit truth worth exploring. While listening to, say, Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill,” one might consider who or what in the writer’s life is worth an uphill battle. Part of what I love about using songs as prompts is how the music can make us feel and how it can affect and inspire each of us in completely different ways.

I’ve come to depend on the warmth and serenity music can provide when I write. My fingers freeze on the keyboard without it. I become one of Pavlov’s dogs. Cue the music, cue my creativity. It’s as if the music moves to the forefront, while my writing becomes a secondary, less precious, out-of-the-spotlight kind of thing. Nothing to see here, just some words coming together. With the daunting silence filled, my fingers fly. 

Lofi Girl is instrumental to my practice, literally. No lyrics, just a steady string of beats that sets a layer of calm in my space. As an educator, I routinely use chill tunes to welcome my students into the classroom, to accompany group discussions, and as a backbeat setting for in-class writing time. Everybody seems to like a little backbeat. 

Could I write without music?

Possibly, but why would I deprive myself of the richness of reflection, the imaginative sparks, or the cocooned tranquility song can offer? We all have our writing practices. Some thrive in a closet of silence while others need community to stir their creative flow. For me, I’ll lean into the power of a playlist every time. 

____________

Gretchen Cion is a multi-genre writer, filmmaker, aspiring DJ, and educator currently teaching with The Intuitive Writing Project and Berkeley City College. She holds an M.Ed. from Hunter College and has nearly completed an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Her essays have appeared in Transfer Magazine, Sky Island Journal and her first short film, “Full Crow,” was a semi-finalist at the Boden International Film Festival. You can learn more about Gretchen at www.gretchencion.com.

Tending the Lotus

By Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

Vietnamese Buddhist monk and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh told this story in his book The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching:

When a young man wanted to learn how to paint lotus flowers, he approached a master for instruction. The master led him to a lotus pond, inviting him to sit. The young man saw flowers bloom when the sun was high, and he watched them return to buds when night fell. The next morning, he did the same. When one lotus flower wilted, its petals falling to the water, he observed the stalk, the stamen, the leaves, then moved on to the next. For ten days. On the eleventh day, the master asked, “Are you ready?” He replied, “I will try.” The master gave him a brush, and although the young man’s style was childlike, his technique naïve, the lotus he drew was beautiful. 

He had become the lotus. The painting emerged from that union. 

I work with a lot of writers who despair of ever being “good enough.” I sympathize; I’m well-versed in my own artistic limitations. An uninspired vocabulary, untrustworthy grammatical instincts, a propensity to play it safe with voice and form—I often feel unqualified to publish, much less teach. At times seeing my work in print reminds me of walking around in public as a not-conventionally-beautiful woman, painfully self-conscious about my non-existent style, blemished skin, and kitchen haircut. It takes a concerted effort to turn instead to arenas of beauty I value (courage, kindness, honesty), trusting that these cultivate the inner beauty, in body and in prose, that I seek.

The impact of the apprentice’s painting sprang from affection cultivated by careful attention. No subject can be rendered artfully, the master knew, without the artist first following his affection to its source. Down at the pond, the novice came to know the lotus’s newness and demise, how morning sun ignited it, how it wilted at noon and glowed under the stars. Attention born of love lends art its life-spark.

I’m reminded of memorial services where grieving grandchildren eulogize their grandparents; up at the lectern, the awkward teenager pushes through shock and nerves to read memories of his dear Nana and sets the whole congregation weeping. Or I think of my parents’ love letters, which now that they’ve died my sister and I read aloud because their voices spring from the page; they seem so alive they might as well be waiting for my phone call. When I taught seventh grade English, the struggling students always floored me during our poetry unit; unlike the performative emoting of “good” students, their poems were raw, real, and powerful. Everyone has the potential to stir readers’ hearts, regardless of talent or skill.  Everyone.

Genuine, openhearted engagement—what beloved Minneapolitan writer Brenda Ueland called “interestingness”—is the basic ingredient of a fruitful creative process. “Everybody is talented, original and has something important to say” is the title of the first chapter in her excellent 1938 book, If You Want to Write. At its core, art is egalitarian. “The writer has a feeling and utters it from his true self.  The reader reads it and is immediately infected. He has exactly the same feeling. This is the whole secret of enchantment, fascination.” Interestingness, interestedness, dedication, attention, affection, truth: These are infectious, and the prerequisite to effective writing. 

I’ve written daily for thirty-five years. When I look back, what I most cherish over all that time isn’t publication or artistic triumph or even the times readers have approached me, saucer-eyed with awe, to thank me for my books. No, I most treasure how writing wakes me up. The practice asks me to look closely at what is, to slow down, to sustain a lingering, curious relationship with my subject—to be fully present. At its essence writing is contemplation, and like any contemplative practice it brings me more alive.

This critical, joyful dimension of writing is in easy reach: Just head down to the pond. Pay attention to what you love. Observe, be curious, be patient, grow in affection. Become a student of your subject, whatever it is—a flower, a secret hurt, a niggling question, your left toe. Paint it plainly, lovingly. Later, if you want you can gain proficiency, polish your style, and acquire literary flourish, but know these are additives.  The best starting place for art is who we are, in bare, sustained relationship with what we love.

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Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew is the author of three books on writing: Writing the Sacred Journey:  The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir; Living Revision; and The Release: Finding Creativity and Freedom After the Writing is Done, due out this fall.  Her creative work includes Swinging on the Garden Gate: A Memoir of Bisexuality & Spirit, now in its second edition, and the novel Hannah, Delivered.  She is a founding member of The Eye of the Heart Center, where she teaches writing as a transformational practice. You can connect with her here and learn more at her website.

How Do You Know When Your Work Is Done?

By Suzanne Roberts

One of the questions I often get about writing is this: How do I know when a piece is finished? The first answer I give is that it’s done when it says what it needed to say, which is usually something different or deeper than what I had set out to do from the beginning, so there are both surprise and recognition. I’m the sort of writer who often has no idea where I’m going until I get there. Writing is an act of discovery, and I only figure out what I’m trying to say by saying it.

Another answer I give is that I know I’m done when I’m putting commas in and taking them back out; fiddling with the minutiae is a sign that it’s time to let it go.

Both these answers are true, but they are also not true. The truth is that nothing is ever finished. This isn’t the answer most writers want to hear, but I’m offering it here as good news. If we accept that we will never be done with a piece of writing, we can stop worrying so much about it.  

We change and grow as writers, so when we return to our work, we can always improve it. When I give a reading, there are often words or phrases I read differently from the printed page, which is why I wince when someone in the audience opens my book “to read along.” Many writers I know do this, editing their already-published words when they read. And if we’re lucky, we might be given the opportunity to make those changes in subsequent press runs. I was able to do just this with my first memoir Almost Somewhere.

Two summers ago, I set out again to hike California’s John Muir Trail, the trip I wrote about in my 2012 memoir. I brought my Kindle along, so every night in the tent, I consulted my own book to compare the trail I was hiking to the one in my memory; I was interested in the ways backpacking had evolved but also how I had changed. Drought and wildfire, along with more signage and safer bridges, had transformed the landscape but more than that, my understanding of myself and my place in the world have changed.

Reading my earlier work, I found so many cringey phrases, and I also saw just how naive I had been about so many things. As a young woman, I had read mostly male nature writers and never quite saw the landscape they offered me in their books—one of rugged individualism and of conquest, so in Almost Somewhere, I had been seeking a uniquely feminine view of nature, one based on connection and community. What I hadn’t thought about, though, was that early American nature writers were not just coming from a masculine place, but a stance of colonization. I had been taught that our national park system was a wholly positive American endeavor, and it wasn’t until years later that I learned the creation of the park system was predicated on a dark past—one of displacement, murder, and erasure of Native Americans. Both my experience and the memoir I wrote represent an imagination limited by a lack of knowledge.

This is not to say that my first memoir—a record of who I was at that moment in time—isn’t of value. Yet when I revisited the book, I realized I wanted to write an afterword, noting the ways my perception, consciousness, and capacity for empathy have changed. When my husband and I took a rest day at the Vermillion Valley Resort, a popular stopover for both JMT and PCT thru hikers, I paid the expensive internet fee and wrote to my editor, pitching the idea of a new edition of Almost Somewhere. He wrote back immediately, saying he loved the idea.

When I returned home, I went through my memoir again, making small changes. I had to stop myself from making more significant revisions, because I knew I had to honor my earlier effort and the writer who made the best book she could at the time. Our work is a snapshot of our earlier selves, and if we aren’t sometimes embarrassed when we look back, that probably means we haven’t learned a damn thing.

Many people don’t get to go back and revise earlier publications, though I’m certainly not the first to do it. Walt Whitman famously revised his first edition of Leaves of Grass over the last four decades of his life. What started as 12 poems became a 400-poem “deathbed version” tome. The French painter Pierre Bonnard often retouched paintings he had made many years earlier and was even rumored to have persuaded a friend to distract the guards while he touched up a painting hanging in a museum.

Going back in and making changes and additions later enables us to see where we’ve been and maybe even where we’re going. It also makes clear that we’re never really done with a piece of writing or work of art—that is, not until we’re dead, and if we can keep this in mind as we go, maybe we’ll be able to more easily let things go.

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Suzanne Roberts is the author of three award-winning memoirs: Animal Bodies, Bad Tourist, and Almost Somewhere, as well as four collections of poetry. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, CNN, National Geographic Traveler, Brevity, and elsewhere. She teaches for the low residency MFA program in Creative Writing at UNR-Tahoe, and is currently at work on a craft book, based on her Substack newsletter 52 Writing Prompts.

In Search of Today’s Literary Zeitgeist … and an Agent

By Kathy Watson

After reading the wish lists of 353 literary agents, I’m considering writing a novel about an emotionally damaged dragon girl who steals an ultra-secret spacecraft with time-travel capabilities and then beams to a distant galaxy 5,000 years in the future to find a giant lizard shaman who can excise her demons, and while there, falls in love with the shaman’s shape-shifting daughter, who is secretly plotting the overthrow of her planet’s evil kingdom. It ends happily.

My amazing family would love this novel … my neurodivergent daughter, my bi-racial 14-year-old grandson, my transgender son, my queer daughter-in-law. They would appreciate the characters who exist outside the mainstream, just like them. I too am grateful for a growing tower of literature, written by new, underrepresented voices, that reflects the world as my family sees it.

The trouble for me is, the world inside the 102,000 words of my historical novel is squarely in the mainstream, as out of favor – I am gathering from all those agent wish lists – as chewing gum or handwritten thank-you cards. 

I am a straight, white, 67-year-old woman, one of about 100 million older women worldwide. From my deep dive into the hive mind of the literary agent community, I’ve come to think of myself and the other older women as Kryptonite. When I arrive in their inboxes with my query letter about a little girl born into a white sharecropping family, struggling through the Jim Crow south, the barren Montana prairie, California in the depths of the depression, I imagine the agents’ right index fingers drawn magnetically to the delete button.

Given that I have no time-traveling dragons in my novel, I’m looking for a way in … what I could write them in my query that doesn’t sound like “old women debut novelists are people too!”

In the film Funny Lady, the exquisite Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice is in her fancy train compartment. Billy Rose (James Caan), desperate for her affections, is watching her rub lemon halves on her elbows. “What do you want from me?” he asks. “Am I supposed to go for your elbows, or what?”

That’s how I feel most days, sitting down to my agent research. What can I say to get their attention? Should I go for their elbows, or what?

After weeks of paring down my query letter to the pithiest form possible, I came across this advice: “Your goal is to establish a relationship …”  A one-way relationship, sure, but somehow give it a shot in three paragraphs in which you roll out a riveting pitch and plot lines, establish your writing cred, list comparable reads, and describe your audience.

There was a Twitter string going around in the agent community recently as one agent after another announced they’d gotten the query from a rampaging writer who didn’t want to fill in the blanks and just ranted, “Read the fucking thing!”

I get it, but I keep querying.

I may know nothing of shamans and dragons, but I am audacious enough to think I know human nature. And what is a dragon anyway, but a lonely little girl in Riverbank, California, just trying to make her way through the heavens, to love and acceptance, and maybe, a happy ending.

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Kathy Watson, a journalist for twenty years, lives and writes in Hood River, Oregon, where she embarked on a second career as a chef and restaurant owner. She is married to a maniac windsurfer and fellow writer, and runs and hikes the Columbia River Gorge with Satchel, the world’s best dog.