The Writing Craft
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How to Write about What You Don’t Know in Personal Nonfiction
Writing personal nonfiction—memoir or the personal essay—generally requires us to approach our subjects from a first-person point of view. Since we are telling our own stories, we naturally refer to ourselves as “I” and speak as ourselves. We write as factual human beings about our actual lived experiences. By writing in first-person, though, we limit ourselves… Continue reading
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The Two “I”s of Memoir
Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings:it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility. William Wordsworth During the British literary Romantic Period (1780s-1830s), William Wordsworth offered a definition of lyric poetry that places memory at the center of the creative process. He suggests that the stuff of poems arises from a poet’s contemplation… Continue reading
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Writing about Place in Personal Nonfiction
All of our experiences are located; they happen in a physical space. All of our most profound thoughts and deepest wishes, all of our doubts and our convictions, our heartbreaks and triumphs have been influenced by the place in which they occurred. Fiction writers know that creating a palpable setting for their stories is essential… Continue reading
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What to Do When Your Writing Stalls
It happens to me regularly. Maybe it happens to you, too. I’m writing something, and I think the work is going well. Then, after a while, I’m struck by the feeling that what I’m writing is dull and unoriginal, and that it lacks energy. Or I realize that what I’m writing is not the message… Continue reading
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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
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 