The Writing Craft
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Five Qualities of Good Writing
What distinguishes effective writing from writing that somehow misses the mark? What about our writing invites readers into our message and keeps them reading to the end? Based on my years as a writing instructor, writer, and reader, here are what I have found to be some of the qualities of good writing. 1. Surprise Continue reading
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Why You Should Write Micro-Memoirs
They combine the truthfulness of memoir, the conflict-focused tension of fiction, and the precision of poetry. They are brief, tightly woven nuggets of narrative energy. When Beth Ann Fennelly published Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs, she added another sub-category to the genre of flash nonfiction. Micro-memoirs capture seemingly insignificant moments in a life and discover Continue reading
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How to Begin a Personal Essay
No one wrote more provocative first lines of poems than Emily Dickinson. Who could read an opening line such as I felt a Funeral, in my Brain or I heard a Fly buzz—when I died and not feel compelled to read on? When we write introductions for personal essays, our impulse may be to rely Continue reading
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This Is Only Partly True
Try this. Freewrite about a time when you faced a personal conflict. You might choose a time when you felt vulnerable or embarrassed, a time when you thought that you were treated unfairly, a time when you believed that you failed at something, or any other tension-filled time. Begin anywhere and write about the experience. Continue reading
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Make Yourself a Metaphor
Metaphor is a mystery nestled somewhere near the heart of language. Why do we so often think this way, uniting unlike things with our words—the abstract with the concrete—and feeling satisfaction rather than dissonance as a result? Metaphor allows us to describe what would be otherwise indescribable—the minutiae of our emotions, the pinpricks of our Continue reading
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How to Use Family Photos to Fuel Your Writing (Part 2)
In this post, I continue my exploration of using childhood photos as a catalyst to writing memoir by experimenting with analyzing some of my own childhood photos. The first task when faced with stacks of family photos that are largely alike in their presentation of a single person or people, most often facing the camera Continue reading
Do you write about yourself and your experiences? Do you write about traumatic events in your life? Or, do you struggle to find time and motivation to write?
If so, this blog is for you.
Person on the Page 