Quotes

By Suzanne Fernandez Gray The first few times it happened, I tried not to look at the clock. Then I decided to make a game of awakening in the middle of the night by trying to guess the hour at hand. 3:11 a.m? 4:13 a.m.? 1:45 a.m.? By checking things out like the shade of […]… Continue reading Writing the Midnight Oil — BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog

By Sweta Vikram Remember the joy and pain of writing your novel or memoir or poetry book or short story collection or set of essays? Remember the pride, the emotional exhaustion, the enthrallment, and the physical pain of bringing your book in this world? The rush, the celebrations, the book events, the sleepless nights, the […]… Continue reading Four Simple Ways to Promote Your Book Long After Its Release — BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog

By Jaye Viner I recently finished Paul Tremblay’s collection of short stories, Growing Things. In the back matter, he talks about how he envies writers who always have more ideas than they have time to write. After graduate school, I was anxious about keeping my idea trough full. Neil Gaiman calls it the ‘compost heap,’ […]… Continue reading Feeding the Compost Pile: Finding Sources of Inspiration that Expand Our Writing World — BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog

In her new craft essay, Mary Ann McSweeny illustrates why compassion should be one of the underlying components of all stories, and she explains how it is only when the writer remains a “detached witness” that compassion can flourish. McSweeny provides a list of questions and a brainstorming exercise for writers to immerse their characters […]… Continue reading On Writing With Substance and Compassion — BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog

For Jennifer McGaha, writing a book is like hiking. The journey will envelop you in foggy haziness, unexpected visitors will creep up along the way, and hopefully others will be there to push you when you’re floundering. She finds joy in not knowing what will happen on a walk or where an essay or book […]… Continue reading Embracing the Unknown: Writing as Discovery — BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog

By Jill Quandt I was raised on Texas Hold’em, and knew the odds of faceless, suited hole cards winning the hand were too low to raise pre-flop before I knew how to do long division. I could hold my own in poker games with my dad’s friends, all engineers, before I knew the formal word […]… Continue reading Betting on Words — BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog

By Marie A Bailey The first time I saw Pam Houston was in 1991 or 1992. I was a graduate student in English at Florida State University. The university was hosting a creative writing conference and Houston was on one of the panels. I had not read her story collection Cowboys Are My Weakness in […]… Continue reading It Only Takes a Few Words to Love a Book — BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog

By Jennifer Jordán Schaller Even though self-compassion is not my strongest trait, I was able to figure out how to characterize myself in my memoir manuscript after reflecting on my writing using a few steps. My manuscript explores the effect of trauma on the ability of the protagonist, that’s me, to parent as an adult. […]… Continue reading Developing a Time of Writing Voice in Memoir — BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog

By Rae Pagliarulo “I miss the joy of words,” I said to my coworker through a mouthful of potato chips while trying to ignore the ping of my inbox. “I miss synonyms and antonyms and the thrill of reworking a sentence until it sounds like music.” I had been trying to write on my lunch […]… Continue reading On Writing Back From Grief — BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog

By Nancy Jorgensen and Elizabeth Jorgensen Stubbornness runs in our family. I, Nancy, started it all. While my female relatives were all stay-at-home moms, I took my daughters to preschool so I could teach high school choir and direct Broadway-style musicals. My daughter Gwen inherited the trait. While her university peers crawled beer pubs, she […]… Continue reading Three Stubborn Women: On Publishing and Book Promotion — BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog