2022 08 01TheWriter

FICTION & NONFICTION
AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2022
4
E VEN
0+
TS FOR
WRITERS
INSIDE!
YOUR
ULTIMATE
GUIDE
HOW TO
WRITE A
STRATEGIES RESEARCHED
FOR CRAFTING MEMOIR
A KNOCK-OUT
OPENING
TOP
RESOURCES
2TO5OL+
S
FOR E VERY
WRITER
The Writer THE OLDEST MAGAZINE
FOR LITERARY WORKERS
Founded in Boston, 1887
VOLUME 135 AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2022 NUMBER 8
26
32 42
The writer’s virtual
toolbox
Sites, apps, and other
resources to make our
writing lives a little easier.
48
Throwing out
the rulebook
How ignoring popular
26 38
writing advice freed me
to write my way.
Opening acts By Charity Marie
A successful begin-
ning should both invite
readers into a story
and make them eager
54
Craft secrets from 10
to stick around until
the conclusion. Here writers across 10 genres
are five tried-and-true And what we can learn
strategies for writing from them about word
your own. choice, plotting, pacing,
By Sarah Van Arsdale and more.
By Toni Fitzgerald
3 Prologue
32 4 Dear Reader 62
The art of plotting 5 Bookish
5 Opportunities
Remember,
Novelists share their report, repeat
best tips for creating 6 Insider
10 Literary Spotlight How to combine lived
a strong narrative that
14 Off the Cuff experiences with
engages readers from
research and reporting
beginning to end. 16 Breakthrough
to craft a memoir that
By Jack Smith covers new ground.
18 Broadening the
By Melissa Hart
Bookshelves
38 Getting to know
Semi-permeable
Caribbean literature.
BY YI SHUN LAI
68
COVER: A. SOLANO/SHUTTERSTOCK
writing Long way home

How learning to filter 74 Postscript My book took me 30
the feedback I received Writing conferences years to finish – and I’m
made me a better writer. glad it did. Here’s why.
By N. West Moss 80 Gigi Will Know By Susan Ito
WRITERMAG.COM 1
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GOTHAMWRITERS. COM
Prologue
“Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.”
—TER RY PR ATCHETT
p. 4 Filling our creative stores p. 5 New craft books for writers

p.6-8 Profiling the National Association of Memoir Writers and Stanford University’s Online
Certificate Program in Novel Writing p.10-12 Send your stories to The Keepthings and
Solarpunk Magazine p. 14 Jenn McKee on reevaluating long-term writing goals
FRAN_KIE/SHUTTERSTOCK
p. 16 Ellen Meeropol on resolving unanswerable questions in fiction
WRITERMAG.COM 3
Prologue » Dear Reader
Busywork
AROUND THIS TIME OF YEAR , MY chicken wingtips and spines. The rind too frivolous for my eyes-on-the-prize
freezer begins to look like something of a good chunk of aged cheese en- brain. Years of writing for hire made me
out of Stranger Things. The door groans riches a future pot of beans. The crab recoil from anything without a defined
under the weight of the salmon spines, shells we save today will flavor tomor- audience, a deadline, and a point. Any
marrow bones, pork jowls, and chicken row’s chowder. time spent on the page should be spent
organs; the light flickers feebly behind It’s frustrating, sometimes, to step swiftly traveling from Point A to Point
stacks of blood-red tomato sauce and back and realize you’ve spent six hours B, in my remarkably un-fun opinion. I
ghostly parmesan rinds. One wrong in the kitchen to feed your future self didn’t have time for side quests.
move amidst the heaps of unidentifi- and still have nothing to feed your Then I took a writing class where
able vegetables could very well send every week’s assignment began with a
you into the Upside Down. prompt, and even though so many of
Every harvest morning finds me my pressed-for-time responses would
pleading with the aging appliance, beg- never see the light of day outside the
ging its weary, overstuffed contents to classroom, I still couldn’t believe how
accept just one more head of cauliflow- much I enjoyed them. What’s more,
er from the garden, just one more batch these silly side quests yielded so many
of roasted cherry tomatoes before the treasures for my future projects. I stole
first frost arrives in earnest. from my old work with delicious aban-
In Alaska, we joke we don’t mind don, easily weaving in great sentences
the dark of winter because it final- from not-great works into my drafts. I
ly lets us get some damn sleep. But I fleshed out half-formed ideas into full-
find even when I’m up late with the fledged essays in half the time.
midnight sun, working to preserve Prompts, freewriting sessions, exer-
what we’ve caught or grown with our cises – these activities were the furthest
own hands, it never feels like toil or thing from a waste. The words I wrote
drudgery. The drudgery will come in were stashed away like the rinds and
midwinter, when the sun doesn’t rise spines in my freezer, ready at hand to
until 10 a.m., and there is no possi- enrich any draft at a moment’s notice.
ble way to treat myself with enough These scraps, too, were a gift to my fu-
kindness. The work I do now is an current stomach for dinner. But I’ve ture self, even if they weren’t yet ready
antidote to that drudgery, a gift that learned no time spent there is wasted. to be published by my current one.
won’t be unwrapped for six months. I’m constantly discovering new tech- I’ve spent these last long days of
Come winter, I will count my days not niques, brainstorming fresh ways to use summer gleefully freewheeling through
in sunlit hours but in how many bags old ingredients. And I’m always, always as many prompts as I can find. When
of bright pesto or chopped rhubarb writing in my head, noodling plots or winter arrives, and my creative stores
remain in my frozen stores. When I working through ideas as I chop cab- are leaner, it’ll be such sweet relief to
can finally see the back of the freez- bage or idly stir a sauce. know how many riches I already have
er, move around in it freely, I’ll know It’s rather mortifying to admit how waiting in the wings, eager to be put to
that the green of spring is just around long it took me to realize that writing work on the page.
the corner. is the same: No time spent on it – not
EAMESBOT/SHUTTERSTOCK
My favorite part is turning would- a single second! – is wasted, either. I’ve Keep writing,
be scraps into foundations for future confessed in these very pages that I
meals. Leek tops and parsley stems are never was a big fan of writing prompts, Nicki Porter
squirreled away for broths alongside which always felt too unproductive, SENIOR EDITOR
4 AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2022
» Bookish » Opportunities
Memory Into Memoir: A Writer’s Handbook Upcoming calls

BY LAUR A KALPAKIAN
for submissions
“The memoir is not the story of what you know,
it’s the story of how you learned it,” explains au- Creative Nonfiction:
thor and instructor Laura Kalpakian in this guide, Sunday Short Reads
submissions
which won the Gold Medal for Writing/Publish-
Editors of Creative Non-
ing at the Independent Publisher Book Awards. fiction seek previously
Chapter topics range from navigating memoir unpublished submissions
beginnings and scenic details to rendering re- for their “Sunday Short
membered dialogue and narrative voice. “Anyone Read” email, which fea-
beginning a memoir – or floundering about in the tures works of nonfiction
middle or even toward the end – will thank their under 1,000 words. A $3
reading fee is waived for
lucky stars to get Laura Kalpakian’s guide in their
subscribers of Creative
hands,” praises author Priscilla Long. Nonfiction and/or True Sto-
ry. Payment: $50. Submit
by Aug. 1.
creativenonfiction.org/submissions
Body Work: The Radical Power
Prairie Schooner:
of Personal Narrative
Summer Creative
BY MELISSA FEBOS
Nonfiction Contest
Melissa Febos examines the act of storytelling in Send imaginative essays
this “mix of memoir and master class” on personal of general interest under
narratives. In the very first line, Febos admits, “this 5,000 words to Prairie
Schooner for consideration
is not a craft book in the traditional sense.” Rather,
in its annual summer
she writes, “these essays are attempts to describe the nonfiction contest. This
ways that writing is integrated into the fundamental year’s guest judge is
movements of my life: political, corporeal, spiritual, award-winning author
psychological, and social.” The book accrued rave Jerald Walker. The winning
reviews and blurbs from well-known memoirists, entry will receive $500
including Cheryl Strayed, who calls it “an instant and publication. Submit by
Aug. 1.
classic of the how-and-why-do-we-write form.” prairieschooner.submittable.com
West Trade Review:

Fiction, creative
Write for Your Life nonfiction, poems
West Trade Review editors
BY ANNA QUINDLEN
welcome short fiction (up
Bestselling author Anna Quindlen aims to show to 5,000 words), poetry
readers “how anyone can write, and why everyone (up to five poems), creative
should.” Aimed at everyone, not just writers by nonfiction (personal
profession, Quindlen’s book makes the case for essays, memoir, literary
journalism, and lyric essays
why writing is an essential act of discovery: “Sol- up to 6,000 words), and
itude can lead to a tunnel within ourselves at the novel excerpts (8,000 to
end of which is a room we didn’t even know was 12,000 words). Submit by
there. Writing can help lead you to that room.” Aug. 1.
“Highly recommended for those looking for a westtradereview.submittable.com
means of coming to terms with their lives and the
world around them,” writes Library Journal in a
starred review.
WRITERMAG.COM 5
Prologue » Insider
NONFICTION
EDITION
National Association
of Memoir Writers
Interested in writing and publishing your life
story? Consider joining this organization,
which aims to provide advice and community
for every step of the journey.
By Melissa Hart
FOR THE PAST FOUR DECADES, LIN-

da Joy Myers – memoirist and pres-
ident of the National Association of
Memoir Writers – has worked as a
therapist. She’s the author of The Power
of Memoir: How to Write Your Healing
Story and a staunch advocate of writing
book-length memoir with all the ther-
apeutic benefits the practice provides.
“When you write a scene, you be-
come your own character at an earlier
time in your life walking through and
reliving those scenes. When you do
that, you put your life into a new per-
spective because you’re the narrator,
and you’re the character in the scene
at the same time,” she explains. “When
we figure out how to begin our mem-
oir, how to develop the middle, and
how the story – but not our life – ends,
we’ve created a structure that holds our
experience. And when we do that, we
have created a new experience. It’s pret-
ty magical.”
To share that magic, she founded
the National Association of Memoir
Writers in 2008. The organization of-
fers teleseminars, online workshops on
craft and therapeutic writing, a virtual
book club, and interviews with writers
and memoir experts. Laymon, Ashley C. Ford, Joshua Mohr, Made Heavy a Best-selling Memoir?”
and Anna Qu taught “The Heart of Myers finds that one of the biggest
What you’ll learn Memoir: Craft Essentials for Memoir- challenges when writing a memoir is
The Association regularly hosts mul- ists.” Laymon, the author of the mem- the shift from academic writing or nar-
tiweek classes in memoir writing on- oir Heavy, taught a four-week class in rative journaling to an entirely differ-
line. In early spring 2022, authors Kiese May and June as well, titled “What ent genre. “Certainly, journal writing
is very helpful,” she notes. “But when “When we figure and participate in lively chats ranging
we write in a journal, we don’t paint out how to begin from how to find a literary agent to
the entire picture as a scene with the how to self-publish a memoir.
colors and the essential details and the
our memoir, how Members of NAMW hail from all
textures and sounds. If you paint a pic- to develop the over the world; among other benefits,
ture for your readers to experience like middle, and how the they also receive access to the organiza-
a movie they can walk through, they’re story – but not our tion’s private, invitation-only Facebook
going to find your memoir much more life – ends, we’ve group, where they’re able to share events
interesting to read.” and articles and chat with other writ-
To that end, NAMW offers two created a structure ers in the genre – members like Leslie
live Zoom events every month. One that holds our Johansen Nack, author of Fourteen: A
is a presentation by a memoir expert, experience.” Daughter’s Memoir of Adventure, Sail-
focusing on elements such as charac- ing, and Survival, and Marcelle Sovie-
terization, setting, dialogue, and more ro, author of An Iridescent Life: Essays
esoteric topics, as well. In April 2022, on Motherhood and Stepmotherhood.
author and communication specialist Some members also sign up for the
Marijke McCandless gave a talk titled group coaching Myers offers through
“Exposing the Poetry of Presence in NAMW. “People talk with each other,
Memoir: Naked Writing as Juicy Prac- and they talk with me. Sometimes they
tice for Getting Present.” In May 2022, find people they want to buddy with, or
author Gina Frangello gave a presen- they create a critique group,” says Myers.
tation titled “I See You: The Radical “It’s very much a ‘let’s cheer each other
Power of Recognition in Memoir.” on’ kind of thing that we’re doing here.”
The Association also hosts a month-
ly virtual book club; authors lead dis- How to join
cussions about their published books, Non-members can visit the website to
and attendees can ask questions about sign up for a free newsletter, read free
the process of writing, publishing, and articles, and download a list of recom-
marketing. “The authors we invite are mended books as well as the eBook
mostly ordinary, regular people who Begin Your Memoir Now. The associa-
are not famous or even infamous,” My- tion offers an annual membership for
ers says. “They’re just people who want- $149, giving writers access to hundreds
ed to write their story and found a way of memoir-related articles and audio
to do it.” presentations about the craft and busi-
She herself led a virtual book club in ness of memoir writing. Members also
2022, along with She Writes Press pub- receive discounts on sponsored work-
lisher Brooke Warner. Titled “Feminist shops, and free books.
Foundations,” it invited club members Still not sure if your own personal
to examine memoirs by Virginia Woolf, story is worth sharing? Myers has this
Maya Angelou, Erica Jong, and Maxine to say to skeptics: “No one else lived the
Hong Kingston – books, Myers says, life you’ve lived and learned what you
that have shaped the genre and had a learned or went through what you went
profound effect on female memoirists. through. Yours is a unique story that is
very interesting.”
Who’s involved
The Association has an active Facebook For more information,
Contributing Editor Melissa Hart is
page open to anyone. More than 6,000 contact Linda Joy Myers at the author of two memoirs: Gringa and
members discuss all things related to customersupport@namw.org Wild Within: How Rescuing Owls
memoir. Anyone is welcome to join and visit namw.org. Inspired a Family. melissahart.com
WRITERMAG.COM 7
Prologue » Insider
FICTION
EDITION
Stanford University’s
Online Certificate Program
in Novel Writing
Stanford’s two-year certificate program for aspiring novelists
boasts acclaimed faculty, small class sizes, and an online-only
format designed for busy working adults.
By Melissa Hart
LIKE MANY OTHERS, KAREN ED- in, and they’ve lived. They’ve worked a workshop class and a literature class
monds began writing a novel in the in different jobs and can bring that ex- each term. The Stanford program re-
midst of the pandemic. But she wrote pertise to their characters. They’re ea- quires one class a term, in which in-
it with the assistance of award-win- ger for education and camaraderie and structors blend writing, workshopping,
ning authors teaching for Stanford writing community – they’re a really and reading.
University’s Online Certificate Pro- delightful, appreciative, hard-working “We’re working with working
gram in Novel Writing. “I liked the group of adults.” adults and super busy people who
fact that it was laser-focused on nov- don’t have time to take two classes at
el writing and geared towards debut How it works once, so we’re creating classes that look
authors,” Edmonds says. “I liked that The two-year program is asynchro- at how novels are written by looking
it was all online, so you could do it nous with an optional hour-long at really great published examples,”
around your schedule.” Zoom meeting once a week. Partic- she explains. “There’s a majority com-
Her novel is a fictionalized account ipants complete a full-length novel, ponent of writing and responding to
of the occupation of the Malheur Na- working in contemporary fiction, mys- each other, so a quarter of the course is
tional Wildlife Refuge that took place tery, thriller, science fiction, historical reading, and three-quarters is devoted
near Burns, Oregon, in early 2016. fiction, autobiographical fiction, and to writing.”
She studied with one cohort her en- young adult fiction. Requirements dif- Edmonds wasn’t interested in pur-
tire two years in the program, work- fer from instructor to instructor, but suing a Master of Fine Arts degree in
shopping their novel chapters and in general, students submit approxi- creative writing; the Stanford program
receiving critiques on her own rough mately 1,000 words a week over a 10- gave her exactly what she needed. “It
drafts. “You’re going through this ex- week course. actually isn’t the certificate that I was
perience with a whole group of people Watrous, who holds an advanced after,” she says. “I was after the instruc-
who are all working on the same proj- degree in creative writing, notes that tion about how to write a novel.”
ect,” she explains. in a typical Master of Fine Arts pro-
The program accepts 60 students gram in creative writing, students take What you’ll learn
from all over the world. Instructors are Students in the program take five core
published and accomplished novelists courses in sequence. In their first year,
and current or former Wallace Stegner Online Certificate Program they study novel forms and theories.
Fellows. Each class includes 15 students in Novel Writing. Watrous teaches this course with an eye
who study together with one instructor Stanford Continuing Studies. toward helping students to determine
Stanford, California.
each term. Author Malena Watrous, whether their novel needs an inciting
Contact Malena Watrous at
the program lead, appreciates the range 650-725-2650, incident, and if so, where in the story
of student ages in the program – from continuingstudies@stanford.edu. should it occur. “We look at different
23 to 85 years old. “I love the wealth of continuingstudies.stanford.edu. opening chapters of published novels
life experience,” she says. “People come each week and how those beginnings
» Opportunities
hook you,” she explains. “We study how signed her immediately. Her novel, We Wanderlust Journal: ‘On
the Road’ submissions
the beginning of a novel needs to raise Are the Brennans, became a New York
This travel journal seeks
a question that interests readers enough Times bestseller. Jessie Weaver finished prose from 1,000 to 1,500
that they’ll keep reading the book and the certificate and found an agent who words that fit the theme of
how to do that.” sold her debut YA thriller, Live Your “On the Road.” “Have you
Writers also examine novel plot Best Lie. Other writers, Watrous notes, taken to the road in a vehi-
and structure in their first year. The have gone on to publish independently cle of some sorts? Where
following year, they examine theme, or with a hybrid press. are you now? What’s next?
Be specific. Be generous.
language, and subtext. The fourth
Take us with you,” editors
course focuses on completion of the How to join urge. Submit by Aug. 2.
novel manuscript. Participants must Interested writers must fill out a formal wanderlust-journal.submittable.com
also take one elective course – classes application, which includes a writing
such as memoir, poetry, specific fiction sample of at least 3,000 words, along Grayson Books:
genres, or craft elements. with a paragraph of constructive feed- Poetry Contest
back for revision on the first page of a John Sibley Williams will
judge the 2022 Grayson
novel (supplied on the application).
Books Poetry Contest, open
Applicants must explain their goals for to manuscripts of 50 to 90
the program and submit a description pages. Submit by Aug. 16.
of themselves as a person and student, graysonbooks.submittable.com
“In a program like as well as a potential member of an ed-
Book of Matches: Prose,
ucational cohort.
this, the more “In a program like this, the more you poetry, translations
Send fiction and nonfiction,
you put into it, put into it, the more you’ll get out of it.
poetry, and works in transla-
It’s all about what the student brings
the more you’ll to the experience and how much work
tion to editors of this online
journal. While Book of Match-
get out of it.” they do,” Watrous explains. “You’re led es rarely publishes works
by talented instructors, of course, but over 2,100 words, editors
the class grows as a group based on stu- say they will consider a lon-
dents being excited about it and put- ger work “if it really makes
us tingle.” Micro fiction
ting in the work.”
and nonfiction (100 to 500
She notes that she and colleague words) will also be consid-
Students may also opt for the One- Scott Hutchins created the certifi- ered. Submit by Aug. 19.
on-One Tutorial after they complete cate program for working adults who bookofmatcheslitmag.com/submit
their manuscript. They’re matched might not have the time or money to
with an instructor in a similar genre complete a traditional MFA program – The Writer: 2022 Summer
who reads the novel in its entirety and adults who have taken writing classes, Flash Contest
Submit entries in any genre
makes line edits and developmental who have a basic understanding of nov-
– fiction or nonfiction – for
suggestions, and then they spend a term el structure and grammar. “You don’t consideration in our annu-
immersed in intense revision with that have to have a perfectly-formed novel al flash contest. Entries
instructor’s support. Instructors in the outline,” she says, “But we’re here for must be 1,000 words or
certificate program include Samina Ali, people who are ready to commit to a less in order to be eligible
Deborah Johnson, Nami Mun, Ron manuscript, people who are hungry for for the $1,000 grand prize
Nyren, Thomas McNeely, Jack Livings, it. This kind of program is a real gift in and publication in a future
issue of The Writer. Second
and others. the life of a writer.”
and third prizes will receive
Several writers have completed the $500 and $250, respec-
certificate and gone on to publish their Contributing Editor Melissa Hart tively, in addition to publica-
books. Alumnus Tracey Lange pitched is the author, most recently, of the tion on The Writer’s website.
her completed novel to an agent at middle-grade novel Daisy Woodworm Submit by Aug. 29.
a writer’s conference, and the agent Changes the World. melissahart.com writermag.com/contests
WRITERMAG.COM 9
Prologue » Literary Spotlight
NONFICTION
EDITION
The Keepthings
This Instagram journal is devoted to sharing “stories of
the things we keep to keep our dear dead with us.”
By Melissa Hart
A VCR TAPE OF JANE FONDA’S WORKOUT of a merchant ship on her way to pick up Reading period:
from the 1980s. lumber in the Pacific Northwest.” Year-round.
An orange finger puppet in the “How could you not be hooked Length:
shape of an octopus tentacle. from the very start?” Way says and 600 words.
A black and silver artificial larynx. describes how Singleton’s father dealt Genre:
Visitors to the Instagram journal with excruciating pain for the rest of Nonfiction.
The Keepthings can see and read about his life, eventually founding a textile Submission format:
all of these objects...plus so many more. company to provide for his family. Online, via website.
Deborah Way was an editor at O, the “He compresses so much into a small
Contact:
Oprah Magazine for 15 years, until the amount of space,” Way says of the au- Deborah Way at
print magazine closed. In April 2021, thor. “His tone is matter of fact – he deborarh@thekeepthings.
she launched The Keepthings with the lets the drama of the events speak for com, thekeepthings.com.
subtitle “stories of the things we keep itself – yet you feel how deeply he ad-
to keep our dear dead with us.” She mired and respected and loved his fa-
asks potential contributors to submit ther. It’s very moving.”
the story of an object and the person
it’s connected to in 600 words or fewer, Contributors
along with photos of the object. Jenny Shortridge contributed a piece ti-
“I think of them as love stories told tled “The Dickens Humidor” (April 13,
through objects,” Way says. “Some of 2021) to The Keepthings. It describes her
them are shaped like classic stories, mother, fun-loving yet troubled by men-
some of them are more like prose po- tal illness, and an antique tobacco hu-
ems, but I’m continually surprised at midor hand-painted with scenes from
how unique and meaningful every sto- Charles Dickens’ novels – an object
ry is. Even though the details are always much like that belonging to the
different, the one constant is the deep alcoholic grandfather who raised
sense of human connection.” Jenny’s mother. Thirty years after
her mother’s death, the humidor
Tone, editorial content still has a place in the author’s chi-
Way notes that the 600-word limit na hutch.
doesn’t leave much room to be “writ-
erly.” “I aim for the tone to be conver-
sational, almost as if you were telling
GEORGE SINGLETON (HIP); JENNIE SHORTRIDGE (HUMIDOR)
someone your story while sitting at a

bar,” she explains.
George Singleton has a piece titled
“My Father’s Hip” (June 20, 2021) on
the site, illustrated by the photo of a sil-
ver replacement hip. The story begins:
“In October, 1963, during stormy seas,
my father fell 45 feet into the empty hold
» Opportunities
Anthology magazine: An-

thology Short Story Award
Send short stories under
1,500 words that deal with
the theme of “courage” to
Anthology magazine to be
considered for its Short Sto-
ry Award. The winner will re-
ceive €500 and a one-year
subscription to the maga-
zine. Submit by Aug. 31.
anthology-magazine.com
“It’s unusual and kind of lovely, but was 8 years old, and his best friend – Un- Amazon.co.uk: The Kindle
that’s not why I keep it,” she writes. cle Larry – helped to raise her along with Storyteller Competition
“It doesn’t remind me of her, exactly. his own children. The card, she explains Amazon sponsors this con-
I guess it reminds me that she loved in her piece titled “The Buddy Card,” is test for authors who have
published in English on the
her grandfather without hesitation, as a beautiful expression of friendship be-
Amazon.co.uk Kindle Direct
mean as he was and as painful as their tween her father and her uncle, and be- Publishing (KDP) platform
relationship could be.” tween her uncle’s daughter and herself. between May 1, 2022, and
Laura Buchwald’s piece “The Buffa- Aug. 31, 2022. The grand
lo Nickel” (not yet published) tells the Advice for potential contributors prize is £20,000, and all fi-
story of Tom, the author’s charismatic Way believes everyone has a story about nalists will receive a Kindle
and charming friend, who – among oth- a beloved object from a deceased family Oasis E-Reader. All genres
are eligible, but any book
er interests – was passionate about what member or friend. She also believes ev-
that has been previously
Buchwald calls “bygone America.” In eryone can tell a 600-word story, with a published elsewhere will be
the months before he died, Tom talked little help. She edits all the submissions disqualified.
with Buchwald about the ways in which she publishes, and she’s happy to work amazon.co.uk/b/12061299031
spirits might reach out to people back with contributors on crafting their ini-
on Earth. “She got him books on the tial drafts. She urges potential contrib- Grid Books: 2023 Off the
subject, and one of the things they read utors to contact her whether they have Grid Poetry Prize
Now in its 10 th year, the Off
about was coins,” Way explains. “Then he a fully completed story or not. In some
the Grid Poetry Prize aims
died, and just a few days later, she found cases, she adds, people have sent her to recognize the work of
a Buffalo nickel on the street. She has ab- photos of an object along with a few poets over age 60 with pub-
solutely no doubt that it came from him paragraphs but were unclear on how lication and a $1,000 prize.
in the afterlife. I was captivated by this to proceed. Way returned to them with Eligible poetry manuscripts
magical appearance of a keepthing.” questions about their object and the must be unpublished as
Way urges people who don’t consid- person they lost. a whole (individual poems
may have appeared else-
er themselves writers to submit pieces, “Then we’d go back and forth over
where) and at least 50 pag-
noting that some of the most beautiful email, fleshing out the story,” she ex- es in length. Garrett Hongo
stories she’s received come from people plains. “I wouldn’t want to do that with will judge the 2023 compe-
who don’t write at all. From the website, every story, obviously, but I believe tition. Submit by Aug. 31.
“What matters is that you have a trea- the stories people have inside them are grid-books.submittable.com
sured object connecting you to some- worth sharing. So if you need a little
one who was important in your life.” help getting your story out, that’s what PEN America: Socially en-
LISA WARD (CARD); LAURA BUCHWALD (COIN)
gaged fiction manuscripts

Lisa Ward didn’t consider herself a I’m here for.”
Established by Barbara
writer, but she learned about The Keep- Kingsolver in 2000, the
things and thought about a Christmas Melissa Hart is the author, most PEN/Bellwether Prize for
card mailed from her father to his best recently, of the middle-grade novel Socially Engaged Fiction
friend on the USS Taconic in 1961. Daisy Woodworm Changes the awards $25,000 to a pre-
Ward’s father died in 1975, when she World. melissahart.com viously unpublished fiction
WRITERMAG.COM 11
Prologue » Literary Spotlight
FICTION
EDITION
Solarpunk Magazine
Optimistic speculative fiction – plus poetry and nonfiction –
is welcomed with open arms at this bimonthly magazine.
By Melissa Hart
THE WORD “SOLARPUNK” REFERS TO communities and futuristic technol-

a genre of speculative fiction informed by ogies that work in conjunction with
equity, community, optimism, and – fre- nature. They’re passionate about work
quently – the natural world; think Frank that dismantles the cultures of white
Herbert’s Dune and Octavia Butler’s Par- supremacy and patriarchy and depicts a
able of the Sower. Solarpunk Magazine is more balanced sharing of wealth.
a bimonthly publication featuring ideal- The July 2022 issue is a celebration of
istic short stories, poetry, nonfiction, and speculative fiction written and edited by
art. As editors write on the magazine’s BIPOC creators. The issue includes Jer-
website, “the time has never been more emy Nelson’s “Sweet Water from Salt,”
urgent for an explosion of utopian stories a story that Castagnozzi says captured
to light a path forward out of the dark- readers’ imaginations. “The main char-
“An online publication
ness into which humanity has dug itself.” acter is fleeing corporate seizure and a imagining a better world
This is a magazine about hope, in- wicked thunderstorm on his late parents’ through optimistic
formed by its subtitle: “Demand uto- boat, all while attempting to preserve its speculative literature.”
pia.” Here, you’ll find stories about precious cargo: bees and beehives,” she Reading periods:
blimps powered by chlorophyllectrics explains. “[The plot] joins heritage, in- See website for reading
(“Tillandsia” by Josie Kallo, Issue #2) heritance, rebellion, and entomology in periods and themes.
and harmonious settlements rich with one fantastic survivalist story.” Length:
plant life (“The Last of the Mbahuku Norton-Kertson points to Brazilian Prose up to 7,500 words;
Tribe” by Oyedotun Damilola, Issue author Renan Bernardo’s story “Look poems up to five pages.
#1). You’ll also find nonfiction pieces, to the Sky, My Love” (Issue #1) as the Genres:
including “Utopianism: An Interview type of piece the editors like to publish. Fiction, nonfiction, poetry.
with Kim Stanley Robinson.” In one scene, the protagonist waits in
Submission format:
Justine Norton-Kertson is co-edi- line with another character at a party. Through Moksha on
tor-in-chief, along with Brianna Cast- Bernardo writes: magazine’s website.
agnozzi. Norton-Kertson enjoys poetry
Payment:
that captures the aesthetic of solarpunk While we waited in line, Alana Yes.
in a lyrical way and explores themes told me how thirty percent of
Contact:
“like radical hope and harmony be- all party-generated energy in
Co-editors Justine Norton-
tween technology and nature.” They Quadrilha da Perpétua came Kertson and Brianna
prefer fiction populated by characters from the feet stomping on the Castagnozzi at info@
compelling enough to fall in love with. ground, all the frisking and solarpunkmagazine.com,
“A solarpunk aesthetic is important too, rhythm translated into energy solarpunkmagazine.com
COVER ART BY BRIANNA CASTAGNOZZI AND VU DANG
but that’s the packaging for the juice, and dignity for all the surround-
which is the characters and thematic ing communities. And she told
threads,” Norton-Kertson explains. me how it could reach seventy
percent if the party itself was able
Tone, editorial content to trim its energy expenditure,
Editors at Solarpunk look for pieces and how so many possibilities
that depict cooperative, sustainable could come from that.
» Opportunities
manuscript “that addresses

Editors at Solarpunk look may continue to live as a human,” Cast-
issues of social justice and
agnozzi explains. “The imagery of the
for pieces that depict starlit seas fits well with our visions of
the impact of culture and
cooperative, sustainable politics on human relation-
lunarpunk, as does the narrator’s sense ships.” The winner will also
communities and of agency.” receive a publishing con-
futuristic technologies Norton-Kertson notes that Solar- tract from Algonquin Books.
punk looks forward to publishing the Submit by Sept. 1.
that work in conjunction pen.submittable.com
magazine’s first solarpunk story for
with nature. middle-grade readers, written by J.
The Hunger: Short prose, po-
Dianne Dotson, in 2023. “It’s a really etry, and hybrid manuscripts
sweet story that leans on into the lunar- Send prose, poetry, and
punk aesthetic and takes place in a uto- hybrid manuscripts of 15
pian world,” they say. to 50 pages to The Hun-
ger Press for consider-
“The story does an excellent job of Advice for potential contributors ation in its 2022 Tiny Fork
Chapbook Series Contest.
capturing the spirit of hope and opti- Check Solarpunk’s website for upcom-
Grand prize is $100 and 10
mism, particularly with its theme of the ing themes; Issue #5 (deadline Sept. 13) copies of the printed chap-
power of celebration, that are the hall- focuses on solarpunk labor, while Issue book, but contest finalists
marks of solarpunk,” Norton-Kertson #6 (deadline Nov. 8) focuses on lunar- will also be considered for
explains. “As well, it illustrates the fu- punk. The magazine hosts a monthly publication at the press.
turistic, art nouveau, clean energy aes- microfiction contest with a monetary Submit by Sept. 1.
thehunger.submittable.com
thetic of the solarpunk genre.” prize for the best story of 250 words or
fewer, adhering to that month’s theme. EastOver Press: Stories by
Contributors (Check the website regularly for an up- rural writers of color
Past contributors include poets Gabri- dated list of contest themes.) EastOver Press seeks short
ela Avelino, Vanessa Jae, and Marisca Editors would love to see more cre- stories from BIPOC authors
Pichette; fiction authors include Otan- ative nonfiction submissions related to who live in rural or semi-ru-
cia Noel, Sarena Ulibarri, and Endria solarpunk themes and the fight against ral areas; characters in
these submissions should
Isa Richardson. fossil fuels. They’re not interested in ac-
also live and/or work in rural
Elizabeth Sutterlin has published in ademic pieces full of jargon or political or semi-rural places. Stories
the magazine – a nonfiction piece titled rants. “For fiction and poetry,” Castag- should be no longer than
“Solarpunk and She-Ra: How Netflix’s nozzi says, “emphasize joyful, hopeful, 7,500 words and previously
She-Ra Reboot Invites us to Imag- or otherwise positive endings.” published either in 2020 or
ine a High-Tech, Just, and Sustainable They’re committed to publishing 2021. Payment is $100 to
Future” (Issue #3). Nina Munteanu’s pieces by marginalized writers; they $300. Submit by Sept 5.
eastoverpresscutleafjournal.
“Why Eco-Fiction Will Change the encourage potential contributors to submittable.com
World – from CliFi to Solarpunk” ap- identify themselves in a cover letter as
pears in Issue #1, as does Lindsay Jane’s BIPOC, LGBTQIA, neurodivergent, Diode Editions: Poetry
“Helping Your Garden Transition with or disabled, for example. “We love to book & chapbook contests
Climate Change.” amplify voices from marginalized com- Poets who write in English
Castagnozzi is eager to publish T.R. munities that are most impacted by are welcome to submit man-
uscripts for Diode Edition’s
Siebert’s poem “Choice” in the Novem- climate change and other global prob-
Full-Length Book Contest
ber 2022 issue, devoted to lunarpunk lems,” Norton-Kertson writes on the and Chapbook Contest.
(think solarpunk but more spiritual magazine’s website. “In fact, it’s one of Submission lengths are 25
and introspective). In it, the poet de- the key characteristics of solarpunk.” to 46 pages for the chap-
scribes a decision faced by the narrator. book contest and 55 to 100
“They may join their sisters in a beau- Melissa Hart is the author, most for the full-length edition.
tifully monstrous transformation and recently, of the novel Daisy Woodworm Submit by Sept. 30.
diodeeditions.com/contests
live powerfully in the ocean, or they Changes the World. melissahart.com
WRITERMAG.COM 13
Prologue » Off the Cuff
Shelved ambitions
How working at a library made me reevaluate
my long-term writing goals.
By Jenn McKee
FOUR YEARS AGO, I BECAME A PAGE But often when I’m shelving, I’ll happily ever after” rings reductive and
at my town’s library for a few reasons: pause over a book’s cover, knowing that painfully simple in my adult ears, “she
to get out of the house and counter the the object in my hand was someone’s published a book” often works similar-
social isolation that comes with being a dream they labored over for months – ly for writers.
freelancer; to support a local communi- maybe even years. Yes, seeing a book you made out
ty institution I believe in; and to earn a Then I’ll stare at our packed- there in the world seems exciting and
little extra money while talking about to-bursting shelves and see my li- gratifying and fulfilling. But these
books with fellow nerds. brary as a repository of thousands of positive feelings are also often accom-
What I didn’t anticipate was that wishes-come-true. panied (or followed) by a lot of anxi-
the job would, over time, spark a radi- A lovely notion, to be sure, but ety and despair.
cal reset on my writing ambitions. there’s a limit on how many writ- Authors with published books have
Now, the work of a library page is er-dreams my small-town library can told me tales of checking Amazon
as basic as it gets. I trundle a cart (with physically house at one time. Conse- rankings obsessively; feeling jealous of
one janky wheel) out to the drop box quently, a process called “weeding” peers enjoying success and fame; ex-
to bring in materials and check them happens, wherein the librarians cull periencing wall-punching frustration
in; I work the circulation desk and an- older or seldom-circulated materials to when marketing efforts yield little to no
swer phones; I shelve things; and when make room for the new ones published gain; enduring the pain of mean online
it’s slow, I make sure the collections are each week, thus making the “here today, reviews; and suffering the humbling
in order. gone tomorrow” nature of the publish- awkwardness of reading your work to a
What does this have to do with my ing world all-too-visible. mostly empty room.
writing life? Seeing this firsthand reminded me Just as marriage is far too complex
On the surface, not much. that, just like the phrase “they lived a relationship to be summed up in a
fairy-tale finish line, publishing a book
is hardly a guarantor of permanent hap-
piness and artistic legitimacy, either.
So despite the fact that I, like nearly
all writers, long dreamed of writing and
publishing a book, I’ve lately wondered
why. To prove my worthiness as a writ-
er (i.e., validation)? To take my shot at
fame? To make something (besides my
children) that might outlive me? To
beef up my professional bona fides? To
avenge old classmates who mocked me?
If I’m being honest, all of these
things probably contributed to my
book dreams.
But I’ll note here that what you
SURFSUP/SHUTTERSTOCK
don’t see on that immediate list is, “Be-

cause a book is burning inside of me,
and I can’t NOT do it.”
In fact, every time my freelance writ- of how you get it published), etc., that likely, if not more, to find my essays
ing schedule gets clear for a while, and there’s a built-in assumption that this is online than they would a book on my
my husband says, “You should use this the prize we’re all gunning for. library’s shelf.
time to write a book,” I shrug and say, The idea so pervasive that I’d begun So my recent goal recalibration
“About what?” to feel guilty when I found myself in- doesn’t stem from a sense of resignation
There’s the rub, folks. creasingly uninterested and un-tempt- or some kind of personal or artistic fail-
For this is simply the strange truth ed by these offerings. Was I just lazy ing. It comes from identifying precise-
of the matter: As much as I’ve want- and un-ambitious? Had I just given up, ly what I want – versus what the world
ed, since childhood, to publish a book after all these years of toil? may tell me to want – and letting that
with my name emblazoned on it, there No. But I did determine, over time, guide me.
just may not be a book in me. that the writing that gives me the Yes, my writing career may forever
And now, in middle age and in greatest satisfaction and joy comes in remain modest in scope, but letting go
mid-career, I’m finally coming to real- the form of personal essays (like this of a dream that’s not really mine has al-
ize that’s OK. one). I love the freedom and flexibil- ready made my load lighter.
This feels like a liberating, weirdly rad- ity inherent in this particular kind of
ical confession. So many things – from writing life – unglamorous and un- Jenn McKee lives in Michigan and has
conference panels to personal coaching celebrated by mainstream culture as published work in Good Housekeep-
pitches to craft books – focus on writing it may be – where I can dig in and ing, Scary Mommy, American Theatre
manuscripts and proposals, getting an explore experiences or ideas as they magazine, Your Teen magazine, Hour
agent, marketing your book (regardless come to me; and readers are just as Detroit magazine, and more.
WRITERMAG.COM 15
Prologue » Breakthrough
What you can’t find in research –

and why it matters
Sometimes, the questions you can’t answer are
the ones that shed the most light on a story.
By Ellen Meeropol
FICTION WRITERS ARE TAUGHT

that if the background research required
to make a novel feel authentic is done
well, it’s rarely noticed. If the writer has
done their job, there are no anachro-
nisms that jerk the reader out of the sto-
ry. If the details feel historically accurate,
the reader puts themselves into the com-
petent hands of the author and enters
the narrative wholeheartedly.
There are various ways to proceed
with this research. Some novelists learn
as much as they think they’ll need about
the subject area of a novel before begin-
ning to write; others write a first draft
and then research the areas that are thin
on background material. But most nov-
elists are obliged, at some point, to go to
the library or search online or interview
experts before finishing a manuscript.
Novel research has taken me places I
never expected to go. For my first nov-
el, House Arrest, I interviewed a proba- Washington, D.C. amusement park. presented a different challenge. Some
tion officer to learn about house arrest It was surprisingly difficult to discover of the research followed my typical pat-
ankle monitors, and a friend helped me when portable toilets were first used at tern: A local police detective helped me
describe visiting nurse infection control demonstrations for Her Sister’s Tattoo understand the procedures followed
policies. Researching On Hurricane Is- and fascinating to interview a man who when a person is reported missing, and
land included braving a gun shop to feel had been on staff of the Senate commit- I devoured books about Jewish partisans
the weight of a pistol a character needed tee investigating COINTELPRO. Even in Polish forests during the Holocaust.
to use and delving deep into first-person the details that never make it onto the But I faced a big knowledge gap.
accounts and military manuals about page of a book add verisimilitude and The main narrative concerns an elder-
black site torture by U.S. security ser- richness to a story. ly woman who goes missing one No-
vices. I interviewed a professor who My usual process – followed in those vember morning. Her home is on the
studied plant diseases and a young wom- four novels – is to write a first draft of grounds of a decommissioned state
MACONDO/SHUTTERSTOCK
an who coordinated a university per- the manuscript entirely from my imagi- mental hospital, and her husband is
maculture garden for Kinship of Clover nation and then dig into the research to the former head psychiatrist of the
and studied old newspapers to unearth fill in the bald spots. But my fifth nov- hospital. The mental hospital is based
the details of the pickets to integrate a el, The Lost Women of Azalea Court, on a real place that closed in 1993, the
buildings torn down or repurposed, harmful to patients. They were hidden steered the novel in a different direc-
although I changed some details. The because they were shameful. People tion, one that focused on those trou-
more I learned about the place, the were confined because they were eccen- blesome questions.
more I wanted to get that history right, tric or gay, because their husbands tired If I had been writing nonfiction –
to honor the people who suffered there. of them, because they did not conform journalism or exposé – I would have had
I couldn’t really begin to tell the story to the behavior standards of the day. to either keep digging or acknowledge
without deep background knowledge. Perhaps this situation creates an excep- defeat. But a pleasure of writing fiction
But I had a steep learning curve. Un- tion to the rule of research remaining is the opportunity to explore an import-
like my previous books, I had almost no hidden as well. Maybe in some cases, ant but unanswered – perhaps unan-
knowledge about the subject area – little excavated information – or the lack of swerable – question. To dig as deeply as
experience with mental illness or its treat- that information – must be brought to possible into the “what ifs,” with all the
ment and no prior experience with ar- light, highlighted even, to do justice to complexity and nuance one can muster.
chival research. Luckily, both the public the story. To honor the history, ugly as it is, and
library and the historical museum in my In my novel, one psychiatrist had write a story that is as much about what
town have extensive collections of state the power to commit a woman to the we don’t know as what we do.
hospital material and incredibly knowl- hospital, but I couldn’t find anything Because sometimes, it’s the material
edgeable and helpful staff. I was able to in writing to support that. Eventual- you can’t find that reveals the most.
dig into old records and photographs, ly, an expert on the legal issues about
newspaper articles, and unpublished mental hospital commitment told me, Ellen Meeropol is the author of five
testimony from former patients. Massa- “It could have happened the way you novels, most recently The Lost Women
chusetts has digitized 140 years of annual imagine it,” and I decided that was close of Azalea Court and Her Sister’s
superintendent reports to the legislature enough for fiction. But I found no an- Tattoo, a finalist for the Sarton Prize,
and made them available online. People swers to the question of female patients and co-editor of the forthcoming
with firsthand knowledge – attorneys becoming pregnant and giving birth. anthology Dreams for a Broken
and social workers and psychiatrists and Pregnant by whom? What happened to World. Recent essay publications
attendants and former patients – shared those babies? The lack of available data, include Lilith, Lit Hub, Mom Egg
their memories and tried to answer my and the importance of the issue to me, Review, and Ms. Magazine.
questions. Most importantly, they were
willing to discuss whether things could
have happened the way my story was un-
folding in my brain. So much primary
source information – and yet, why was it
hard to find what I needed?
Why couldn’t I discover for certain GRADUATE PROGRAMS IN
exactly what it would take to commit a
woman to a state mental hospital in the Your story WRITING, LITERATURE
mid-1950s? Even with the help of experi- starts here. & PUBLISHING
enced librarians at the county law library
and attorneys specializing in this area, :LWKDZDUGZLQQLQJIDFXOW\ŴH[LEOHSURJUDPVDQGDOXPQL
I found the legal procedures remained FRQQHFWLRQVWKDWUXQGHHSWKURXJKWKHLQGXVWU\QRRQHWHDFKHV
murky. And why was it so easy to learn the art and business of writingOLNH(PHUVRQ
how many bushels of potatoes or pounds
of onions were harvested in any year Creative Writing MFA Publishing & Writing MFA
from the hospital farm fields but not a
word about how many women became Popular Fiction Writing & Writing for Film & Television
pregnant while patients at the hospital Publishing MFA MFA
and what happened to their babies?
$SSO\IRUIUHHWRGD\emerson.edu/feewaiver
Of course, I do know why. Some
state hospital practices were deeply
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WRITERMAG.COM 17
Broadening the CARIBBEAN
LITERATURE
Bookshelves
By Yi Shun Lai
Getting to know Caribbean literature
W
hen I was in college, I took a class on So I think that also we have this
sort of expansive notion of space and
French Caribbean literature. For a place in the region, and it’s seen by just
long time, then, that’s what Caribbean even defining the territory of what is
literature was to me: French. I’m a lot the Caribbean.
older now, though, and a long chat with Professor Tanya TW: So what I hear you saying is that
Shields at the University of North Carolina Chapel the Caribbean is now also being some-
what defined by its diaspora. Would
Hill has set me further straight. Her class, “Rahtid that be somewhat accurate?
Rebel Women: An Intro to Caribbean Women,” covers
everything from literature to cooking and was named TS: Sometimes those places, like let’s say
the coast of Venezuela, [are] very actual-
as one of Elle Magazine’s “63 College Classes That Give ly near Trinidad and Tobago. So there
Us Hope for the Next Generation.” We talked about was movement between those places,
intersectionality, women’s studies, and so much more. where people in Trinidad would go to
that coast, people would travel back.
So that question of diaspora becomes
a really interesting idea to consider be-
The Writer: Let’s start at the begin- retentions by these original inhab- cause, in some places, I think we think
ning. How do we define Caribbean itants. We have some of their oral sto- of diaspora as just “a group that moved
literature? ries, we have some of their art, their over and settled here.” But some people
petroglyphs, that kind of thing. And [say] you can’t be a diaspora until there’s
Dr. Tanya Shields: I think this defini- I think people are doing more and sort of two movements. So if you move
tional question is one that haunts the more research about this. The Carib- from the Caribbean to Britain and then
field, and I would say it haunts the bean [is also] not just the islands in someplace else, then you become a dias-
field of Caribbean studies, not even the Caribbean Sea. There is also what pora. But the move from the Caribbean
just Caribbean literature, because we call the greater Caribbean, or to Britain is not enough of one. I don’t
we’re always looking at issues of place the circum-Caribbean. So the coast subscribe to that. But that’s also part
and who has the right to speak, who of Venezuela, the entire countries of the critical conversation about what
gets to speak when. So if we think of of Guyana, Suriname, and French constitutes diaspora.
most of the Caribbean, these islands Guiana are thought to be part of the People talk about places like Lou-
were colonized and most of the Caribbean. Parts of Central America, isiana, Miami, New York as being ex-
Indigenous population decimated. like Belize, are seen as the Caribbean tensions of the Caribbean, and I think
And we don’t have a lot of written in Caribbean studies. that can be problematic because those
places are in the first world. You know, had to adapt to the kind of messiness Guyana and Trinidad are two
we can talk about first world and Third in their histories and their societies Caribbean sites that have a 40-some-
World and global south embedded because they are small societies that odd percent African-descended
in global north. But all that to say: have been linked to the global because population and a 40-some-odd Indian
These questions of definition plague of colonial processes. descended population…Then there’s
us and are not easily resolved and are like 10% of mixed-race people, “other
part of how we characterize and think TW: Do you think it’s unique in that others,” quote unquote. But other
through, “what is the Caribbean, peri- regard? places like Jamaica – though Jamai-
od, and then what are Caribbean stud- ca has a Chinese population and an
ies, what is Caribbean literature?” TS: I think it was one of the earliest Indian population and a mixed-race
globally cosmopolitan spaces in the population – is an overwhelmingly
TW: Does that sense of squishiness modern world. And if we think about African-descended space, you know.
damage the study of Caribbean litera- modernity as sort of starting in the 14th, And then when we look out beyond
ture in any way? 15th century, then I do think that we the English-speaking Caribbean
have bodies that came from Europe. We to include territories like Cuba…it
TS: I don’t think it damages it, but I have Indigenous bodies. Yes. Many of becomes a whiter Caribbean if we in-
think it definitely challenges us be- them were decimated, but they’re still clude the Spanish-speaking territories,
cause, you know, we like neat catego- there. We have European bodies. We like Cuba, Dominican Republic.
ries. We like to categorize things. We have enslaved Africans, but we also have
like to be able to put things in a box indentured bodies that came from plac- TW: Related to this is the question of
and know that [they’re] safely in that es like India and China. And later in the what traditions these different popula-
box. And so I think that the Caribbean 20th century, we had Arab populations tions bring into Caribbean literature.
sort of ruptures that idea of being neat. from Syria and Lebanon and places like You said that this multi-ethnicity chal-
But I think Caribbean people have that that also came to the region. lenges the idea of Caribbean literature
and how we can define it and how we
can think of it. Specifically speaking,
what form do you think those chal-
lenges take?
TS: When I’m thinking about the Carib-

bean, I feel, I don’t want to say pressure,
but – I feel like I must represent it in its
most holistic sense. So that means I can’t
just stay in the Anglophone Caribbean.
So [in my syllabus] I have to have text
from the Francophone and the His-
panophone and the Dutch-speaking
Caribbean as well. I probably have a
more cultural studies bent than a purely
literary studies bent. But I also feel that
reflects Caribbean experiences because
even Caribbean writers, they were rarely
just writers. They were often teachers,
and some of them were engineers, and
some of them were painters, and some
of them were politicians. So they are
these multi-dimensional people who
are interested in a wide variety of things,
WRITERMAG.COM 19
B →B Caribbean Literature
and their writings reflected that. So at things like language, history, recu- has a great piece where she talks about
you’d have people who are poets and perating various paths. So there’s a lot how critical it is to recuperate Carib-
playwrights and sometimes painters in of recuperation of African pasts and a bean languages and write in them and
addition to writing a novel. And then lot of these works. Language becomes valorize them because they have often
they taught high school, you know, a huge, huge thing because people are been seen as incorrect speech or wrong
or elementary school. So these were like, we speak in what Edward Kam- speech. So I think that sort of exper-
people who were definitely fashioned au Brathwaite calls “nation language,” imentation with language and how
and informed by a really broad un- as he says. To call it a “dialect” or to language appears on the page impacted
derstanding of what it means to be an call it a “patois” diminishes its role genre and how we tell stories.
educated person.
I remember when I was in grad TW: In your syllabus, you ask your stu-
school, I had this old Jewish neighbor, dents to make some recipes from the
she did everything, too. But she’s like, Caribbean, and you have them watch
“Is there such a thing? The Caribbean movies and films from and about the
has a literature?” This is a woman who There was a real region. Why touch on so many modes
is very well read, really valued learning of communication?
about other people in other cultures.
tension between:
But she could not conceive of this sun- “Are you writing TS: I feel like, you know, like the writers
and-sand region as being also a place who are never just in one box, you can’t
that was a literary powerhouse. in English, or are just [understand the Caribbean] in a
singular way. It is really important to
TW: Are there places to learn more
you writing in bring in as much lived experience [as
about Caribbean literature? the colonizer’s possible], especially for an audience. It’s
interesting how many of [my Caribbean
TS: One of one of the resources that I language, versus students] know the Caribbean through
have found really useful from my perch food because that’s the one thing that
out here is the Bocas Lit Fest, a literary
the language that their family retained. Especially if they
festival that’s based in Trinidad and To- you dream in or the don’t travel back. I wanted them to have
bago. They have an archive. You can go a full Caribbean experience, which to
back and look at talks with scholars. Be- language that you me means it can’t just be the written
fore Bocas, there was something called word, or it can’t just be music. It has
CariFesta, which was about celebrating
use at the market?” to be as much of that [experience] as
the Caribbean across linguistic regions. possible. I also wanted to give students a
That [is] a mechanism for all types of regional scope, which means I just can’t
artists, not just writers, to get together. stay in the Anglophone Caribbean, and
So many people talked about CariFesta we have to, even when I don’t do it well,
as a way of learning about other people as a language. And so he says, “Yeah, I do want them to know these other
in the Caribbean beyond your linguistic people speak Jamaican, or they speak places exist, and they have complicated
group because I think that that’s also a Trinidad or Trinidadian, or they speak histories because, again, we have a tour-
critical part of the Caribbean is that we Creole or whatever you want to call it. istic gaze when we think of the Carib-
tend to be a, quote unquote, fragment- But these are languages, and we need bean. So part of my job is to rupture
ed place, fragmented by our colonial to recognize them as languages.” There that on as many fronts as possible.
experiences that led to linguistic differ- was a real tension between: “Are you
ences that still live with us today. writing in English, or are you writing Yi Shun Lai is the author of Pin Ups, a
[In the 1950s, during] this quest in the colonizer’s language, versus the memoir. She teaches in the MFA program
for independence [from colonialism], language that you dream in or the lan- at Bay Path university and is a founding
people started looking [for] “what guage that you use at the market?” And editor of Undomesticated Magazine.
makes us, us?” And they start looking Merle Hodge, who is a Trinidadian, Visit at undomesticatedmag.com.
Talk to the
Practitioner:
Celeste Mohammed
O
ver 20 years ago, a good
friend of mine told me, ap-
ropos of nothing, that he
thought the entire indus-
try of all-inclusive resorts was corrupt.
He said he’d been to a Sandals resort
in Jamaica and opted to go “outside the
gates,” as he called it, and had been hor-
rified by what he’d seen there. Poverty,
he said, was everywhere, but also, people
living a life quite apart from the resort.
This confused me at first. The line In any case, I haven’t been to an So when I went looking for literature
we’d been fed was that resorts like San- all-inclusive resort since then – it of the Caribbean, I was, despite my best
dals and Barefoot and Club Med fed was too obvious that we visitors were intentions, still operating from a very
into the local economy, hiring people just borrowing the scenery. But I also limited knowledge set. My interview
to work at their resorts and in general didn’t make any further attempts to with writer Trinidadan Celeste Mo-
contributing. The picture John painted get to know, as a responsible tourist, hammed, whose book of linked short
for me was very different. the Caribbean Islands my friends were stories, Pleasantview, came out in 2021,
It wasn’t until I finally went to an talking about traveling to: the Domin- took place against this intellectual back-
all-inclusive for myself that I actual- ican Republic, say, or Trinidad, or Ja- ground, and Mohammed quickly and
ly understood what he meant. The maica or the Bahamas. And, perhaps gently put everything in perspective.
multi-national resorts hired childcare even worse, I did travel there on multi- “It has always interested me over the
or waterskiing or parasailing instruc- ple disaster-relief efforts for an interna- course of my entire life and my many
tors from America or Europe; the local tional NGO I volunteer for: I’ve been trips to the U.S. how little Americans
people who did get hired on to work at to Haiti three times for earthquakes understand about their backyard,” she
these resorts were usually cleaners. You and hurricanes, and Dominica twice tells me. “We are your backyard, right?
didn’t really speak to them. for Hurricane Maria. And the thing is that, politically, your
WRITERMAG.COM 21
B →B Caribbean Literature
government understands very well how does not value them. The young men in and someone will pick it up. Moham-
important we are to your well-being. the neighborhood are guided by every- med’s agent was sure this would hap-
That’s why they always intervene in thing from power to the promise of a pen, too. One by one, her stories were
matters in the Caribbean…And if you better life, if only they will convert to published by magazines like the New
just go back, I mean, come on. Alexan- Islam. A good chunk of it is written in England Review; Kweli Journal, and the
der Hamilton was a Caribbean immi- Trinidadian vernacular. Beloit Fiction Journal. They went on to
grant. So there’s so much that the Carib- And yet, despite all of this texture, win awards: the PEN/Robert J. Dau
bean has done and it has fed into Amer- Mohammed says, “Seems like the pub- Short Story Prize for Emerging Writ-
ica. But Americans remain clueless as to lishing industry in America doesn’t real- ers, the Virginia Woolf Award for Short
what constitutes the Caribbean. There Fiction. And yet, her agent came back
is this just one-dimensional view of the time and again with rejections.
Caribbean, established narratives of Mohammed began to reconcile her-
what the Caribbean story should be.” self to the idea of self-publishing. “I be-
Mohammed tells me that this is one lieved in the book, and I believed that
reason she opted to get her MFA, which There’s so much Caribbean people would embrace this
she received from Lesley University in book because I knew there was nothing
Massachusetts. “I am not interested in that the Caribbean like it that was unapologetically telling
writing into those established narratives.
I am seated here, live and on location
has done and it has the truth. And I felt people would see it
and people would embrace it anyway.”
and able to give you directly an inside fed into America. But one of her mentors at Lesley Uni-
view as to what it is like to live here.” versity had another idea: The mentor
Pleasantview takes place in a fic- But Americans sent the manuscript to IG Publishing,
tional neighborhood of Trinidad that
is guided by everything from good in-
remain clueless as who couldn’t believe the work was still
on the table.
tentions to political corruption to co- to what constitutes Mohammed is very philosophical
lonialism. Pleasantview’s people try about the whole string of events. She
for the American dream, flying to New the Caribbean. prescribes part of the turn of events to
York and leaving their entire fami- the pandemic: by the time March 2020
lies behind. They try to put their own rolled around, she’d “failed twice,” as
stamps on their identities even as they she put it, in getting either a novel or
carry around the genes of their colo- the book that would become Pleasant-
nizers. The women in Pleasantview do ly want that. What you want is, you want view accepted for publication. “I hadn’t
their best to survive in a world that me to continue to support your view, written anything since the news of that
that of exoticism and eroticism and, you rejection of the novel September the
know, the kinds of stories like, ‘oh, the previous year. I had come to a point
beautiful, Black, goodhearted slave, pre- where I was like, ‘Listen, I’ve thrown
vailing or falling in love with the white.’ away my legal career. I’ve invested ev-
No, that’s – I’m not doing that.” erything I’ve done, everything a person
Mohammed began writing the sto- could possibly do. And I failed twice.
ries in Pleasantview while she was in her So. I don’t know what I’m going to do.
MFA (she’d also written and pitched a I don’t know what I’m going to do with
novel in the meantime, and didn’t find my life.’ I was out of it, completely.
publication). With the stories in Pleas- “In retrospect,” Mohammed says,
antview, she followed exactly the formu- “perhaps the timing and all of those
la that most writers are told will lead to rejections were all divinely strung to-
book publication: write the stories; get gether because, were it not for the pan-
them published in good literary mag- demic, if this book had come out be-
azines; from there, trust in the system fore, I’m not sure it would have been
received as it has been received. People an upper-class Trinidadian, feel any pres- somebody who was not Indian. Similar-
were trapped at home and hungry and sure to not write that point of view? ly with Black people, they feel comfort-
glued to social media. People are so “I’m glad you’re asking the question able. So I get insight into certain things.
much more open to these virtual events and that you’re asking it openly, because I’m pretty comfortable that everything
and meetings and whatever. A small, there’s some things that are uniquely I’ve written in Pleasantview comes from
little independent press like that, they American. And I feel like that’s a prob- firsthand experience, observed or lived.”
didn’t have any budget for marketing. lem that tends to be a uniquely Ameri- Mohammed’s comments remind me
They couldn’t fly me and I couldn’t fly can problem. Americans are really good that, no matter how much I’ve learned
me all over the place to attend events.” at labeling things, and a label to me is and read about other cultures so far, I
Mohammed suggests that the tim- like a container, a discrete container for still carry the baggage of an American
ing was right for yet another reason: something. And not everything can be perspective, where things fit neatly
her next book, slated for publication by poured neatly into those labels. And so, into labels and genres, where we some-
HarperCollins in 2023, is a children’s like in the Caribbean, Trinidad – I don’t times fail to see the long history that
picture book, about steel pan drums. want to speak for the entire Caribbean gives a writer perspective, just because
“If it weren’t for the pandemic,” she because that also is a myth that the Ca- it hasn’t crossed our minds to imagine
said, “I would have never sat down to ribbean is a monolith and it isn’t. Every what such a perspective might endow
write a picture book.” single Caribbean island is different and a writer with. But talking with her also
Mohammed says this. But she is driv- certain groups of islands they are differ- reminds me that there is are so many
en by something much more tangible: ent depending and their very the his- more lives to be learned.
the need to show her daughter, who was torical reasons that go back to slavery
born in the mid 2010s, something that and Trinidad. I can speak with a lot of
is uniquely Trinidadian. “What I really certainty about being a Trinidadian and
appreciate when [I’m reading] is I see also being a student of history.” (Mo-
myself on the page, I see something I can hammed’s great grandmother and great
identify with. And I was buying all these grandfather were brought over from In-
books for my daughter with brown chil- dia to work on a British cocoa planta-
dren and, you know, Black, brown, yel- tion.) “The thing about it is, I grew up
low, red, whatever kids. But my daughter not wealthy. I know what that is like. I
isn’t any of those things, right? She never just talked to my grandparents, my aunts,
will be just like me. She can’t tick the box my mother. I know what that is like.
that says ‘you’re this thing or that thing.’ “Because of education and social
Her father is Latino. She doesn’t know mobility, my present life may not be
what she is. But she does know that she’s that. And I may live among people who
Trini. That’s the one thing she does know don’t know that. But I knew it. I grew
that she is. And so I wrote that book try- up in a very Indian home. But I could
ing to show her that this is something never be Indian enough because of that
very Trinidadian. Trinidad gave the that bit of Black. [Editor’s note: Mo-
world this musical instrument. It’s one hammed is bi-racial.] So I always saw
of the few actually invented in the 20th myself as Black. But Black people didn’t
century. And it came from somebody see me as Black. I wasn’t Black enough
taking what they had available and turn- and I wasn’t Indian enough. And, so it
ing it into art. It’s an indigenous musical has allowed me to slide socially wher-
instrument. And I really wanted her to ever I can. And also it has allowed me
know that and be proud of that.” to sort of observe people in the wild. So
I ask Mohammed about one more sometimes I would be seated in a group
thing that’s been on my mind since I read of Indian people and they’ll feel com-
Pleasantview: The book’s population is fortable to say certain things around
mostly poor, or lower-class. Does she, as me that they wouldn’t say around
WRITERMAG.COM 23
Nightstand
Cuban-American writer Vanessa Dancing in the Dark, Caryl Phillips.
Garcia is a literal tour de force. Garcia helped Phillips with the
research on this biography of vaude-
Everything she touches becomes villian Bert Williams, but that’s not
something bigger than its original the reason she loves it. “[Williams
implication. I know because was] a Black vaudevillian who had
to wear Blackface, and the layers of
meeting her gave me the impetus [the book] are just intense,” she told
I needed to sign with the same me. Phillips’ own identity, she added,
small press where she published adds to the complexity of the work:
“I think the first thing you see when
her debut novel. Being around her is like sitting in the eye you meet him is a British writer,” she
of a storm of projects, all of which are experiencing their said. “Then, two seconds later, after
own moments of movement: her immersive experience, a conversation, you realize like, no,
actually, hang on, he’s from Saint
Amparo, ran in Miami to great acclaim before moving Kitts. He’s doing the same layering
onto Instagram; her posts about Cuban independence and layering himself. And then add to
have been lighting up her social media feeds, and her that the United States, because that’s
where he is now. So he’s born in Saint
latest project is a picture book (What the Bread Says: Kitts, raised in Britain, lives in the
Baking with Love, History, and Papan), due out from U.S., with obviously deep roots still
Cardinal Rule Press in October. Even after signing with in Saint Kitts and England.” Gar-
cia notes that this layering calls into
Cardinal Rule, Garcia wasn’t done; she convinced her question, for her, what constitutes a
publisher to change paper suppliers in order to avoid “real” Caribbean narrative and what’s
doing business with China, which has come under fire for seen as real. “[Writers are] writing the
real narrative,” she says, “not what you
human rights violations. think is the Latin or Cuban narra-
We asked Vanessa to recommend five must-read tive. I’m still getting requests for ‘real’
books by Caribbean authors. stories, but the other day, I pitched
something, and they were like, ‘no,
we want the real story.’ OK, you want
me to cross the border and then have
a fiesta, eat a taco, and hit a piñata?
Obviously, I’m being obnoxious –
they don’t want the piñata anymore.
They get that part. [But they say] they
like the real; they actually don’t.”
Cocina Criolla, Nitza Villapol.

Published news stories often call Vil-
lapol the Julia Child of Cuban cuisine
– and it’s true, she did have her own
cooking show, Cocina al Minuto, for
decades – but Garcia refers to her as
the “Anthony Bourdain of Cuba,” –
she even continued her show even after
challenging the reader to pick up on
meaning and nuance.
Brother, I’m Dying, Edwidge Danticat.

Danticat’s memoir won the National
Book Critics’ Circle Award for Au-
tobiography and was a finalist for the
National Book Award. For Garcia, the
book resonates on a craft level: “It’s
not exactly a deadpan narrative, but
she just tells you the story she’s telling.
Some of those things just stated and
said are so powerful that you don’t
really need the commentary. It’s there
in the space.” It also, she said, calls
to mind the question of exile versus
immigration. “I always think about…
nobody wants to leave Cuba. Nobody
wants to jump in a raft to risk their
lives and possibly never come back
and join however many souls are at the
bottom of the sea, potentially. I mean,
that’s not what people want. Does a
country have a chance to be? Why
don’t we see that? All those things.
They strike home always when I’m
reading Danticat.”
Fidel Castro took power, even after the through writing, through his pen. And
fall of the Soviet Union, adapting end- he died in actual battle.” The volume A Brief History of Seven Killings,
lessly to suit the ingredients Cubans of children’s stories is the book form Marlon James.
had to work with. of Marti’s periodical for children, La Garcia holds up her copy of her book
Cocina Criolla is Villapol’s first Edad de Oro, which Marti published and waves it at me. “A couple reasons
book. Her second, named after her in New York during his exile from I love this book. First of all, look at it.
show, she adapted time and again, in Cuba. “In Cuban families, this book I mean, it’s ambitious. It’s huge.” The
flow with Cuba’s changing status. “So is passed down through generations,” novel, a fictionalized version of the
many of these recipes are the recipes Garcia told me. “This copy was gifted events surrounding singer Bob Mar-
I grew up with,” said Garcia. “I open to my mother – the inscription is to ley’s death, won the 2015 Man Booker
it, and it’s really Cuban food for me.” her – and then she passed it to me.” Prize for Fiction. Garcia also praised its
Garcia’s copy of the book is the one her The stories in these works are for chil- chiaroscuro effect (Marley is referred to
mother used. dren, but Garcia notes that the morals as “The Singer” throughout the book).
and values presented in the stories are “This chiseling around of a character
rooted in the real world, as opposed until you see who he is; it’s like the defi-
La Edad de Oro, José Martí. to the fanciful fairy-tale offerings we nition of context, you know, it’s like,
Martí, says Garcia, “was the patriot might first consider when we think of why do these figures exist? Because of
poet of Cuba. He essentially fought stories for children. And Garcia notes, a moment, because of everything that’s
for Cuba’s independence from Spain “there’s no holding back on language,” happening at the time.”
WRITERMAG.COM 25
MJGRAPHICS/SHUTTERSTOCK
26
A successful beginning should both
invite readers into a story and make them eager
to stick around until the conclusion.
Here are five tried-and-true strategies
for writing your own.
By Sarah Van Arsdale
27
emember parties? start with whatever you think is going
Writing fiction is a to be the beginning. Start with what-
little like hosting a ever scene is the most compelling to
party, with the read- you. Work your way forward from that
er as a new friend point, and don’t worry about writing it
you’re bringing into chronologically. Once you’re satisfied
your home. Your job, as the writer, is with how the plot moves, go back and
to host the party: make sure everyone write your opening.
is supplied with food and drink, show In this way, you can bring to the
them around, keep the conversation opening whatever you need. It’s only
going with snappy dialogue and in- once you know how the story will
trigue, remind everyone there’s an end- turn out that you can properly pre-
point, and then see everyone out the pare the reader with the right kind of
door, satisfied. opening. And you’ll only know how it
But first, you have to get the guest will turn out by writing it. In working
to want to come in the door. And that’s on a story, and especially a novel, you
where your first line – which can ex- may discover that you need to begin
tend to the first paragraph – comes in. days, weeks, or even years before the
It’s crucial to get the opening of a story, first moment you’d originally thought
whether it’s a 400-page novel or a 500- of. Or you may develop another char-
word work of flash fiction, just right so acter as you work, who then needs to
that the reader wants to stay in the fic- make an appearance in the opening.
tional world you’re creating. Or you may realize that you need to
Whatever the form, the first line of a plant some seeds for the reader, so
work of fiction needs to pique the read- they’ll have the hints about who the
er’s interest, give them a reason to leave murderer is.
their nice, comfortable “real” life. This In other words, consider how the
is often described as “catching the read- party will go before you lay out the
er’s attention,” but what does that really glasses and appetizers. You have to
mean when you’re face-to-face with the know how many people are coming
computer screen? and what fireworks may be going on
Wait a minute. Before you even between them. Some party hosts even
think about writing your opening, consider how they’ll get everyone to
I urge you to write the story or nov- shove off by midnight before even
el. When you sit down to write, don’t sending out the invitations.
STRATEGIES the novella Last Night at the Lobster before we meet the protagonist on the
FOR OPENINGS by Stewart O’Nan, which begins: Mall second page.
1
traffic on a gray winter’s day, stalled. You can also evoke the setting and
Bring the reader into That “stalled” may seem like a small the feeling of the story in just the
the fictional world thing, but it sounds a note of tension, first line. In Paris, in the spring of our
This strategy is more frequently especially set off on its own and finish- times…begins Love of Seven Dolls, a
used in novels, where you have more ing the sentence. novella by Paul Gallico. But consid-
room to spread out the setting for He goes on: Midmorning and the er how that opening sentence ends:
the reader, than in short stories. Of streetlights are still on, weakly. Scattered …a young girl was about to throw her-
course, the choices you make describ- flakes drift down like ash, but for now the self into the Seine. The next sentences
ing the setting matter; if it’s too dry, roads are dry. It’s the holidays – a gar- describe the girl, gaunt with hunger
you’ll lose the reader, but if you allow bage truck stopped at the light has a big and the misery of failure. So we move
yourself some poetic range in your lan- quickly from setting to character, and
guage, and if you focus on important we get the conflict between the light-
details, you’ll be offering the reader a ness of spring in Paris and the des-
բ
context into which you can then bring peration of the suicidal girl, and im-
the characters. mediately we’re concerned about this
When starting with setting, consid- protagonist.
2
er the mood you want to evoke. Will
you be using a humorous tone or a The first line of Raise a question about
poignant tone? Do you want it to feel a situation
gloomy and threatening or bright and a work of fiction One way to think about open-
cheerful? Is your narrator distant and
cold or warm and accessible? Even in
needs to pique ings is to consider presenting the read-
er with a question: why, or what hap-
third person, you can illustrate who the
narrator is and hint at where the story
the reader’s pened to create this situation, or what is
this strange world we’re entering, or who
will go by carefully calibrating the tone interest, give is this character? The question also can
of the opening. pull the reader forward into the future
You can also sound the first notes them a reason to of the story, making us wonder what
that will echo later in the book. This
can be subtle: open the novel in a living
leave their nice, will happen next.
One of the greatest works of specu-
room with a blue sofa, and close with
a character wearing a blue sweater. The
comfortable lative fiction, George Orwell’s 1984,
starts with an unforgettable line: It
subconscious of the reader will pick “real” life. was a bright cold day in April, and the
up on this, and this will contribute to clocks were striking thirteen. With no
their satisfaction when they close the direct explanation, which could de-
book. You can also think of this as bal- tract from the immediacy of this line,
ancing beginning and end: For exam- wreath wired to its grille, complete with a we know something is terribly wrong
ple, in my novel Grand Isle, I opened red velvet bow. The turning lane waits for in this world, and we’re driven to find
and closed with a party scene, so there’s the green arrow above to blink on, and out what.
a feeling of balance between the two, a line of salted cars takes a left into the It isn’t just speculative fiction that
and the reader can see how the group mall entrance, splitting as they sniff for can start with a compelling question.
of friends has changed over the course parking spots. Adam Thompson starts “The Old Tin
of the novel. In this way, O’Nan sinks us deep- Mine,” a story in his collection, Born
Even when you start with setting, ly into a setting that is far from filled Into This, with a situation that raises
be sure to consider where the tension with holiday cheer. We feel there’s questions: It wasn’t my first survival
or drama is. Can you describe a setting something off, with the “stalled” traffic camp. But when I struck at the damp
and infuse it with adrenaline that will and the snow, not sweet darling flakes flint and gouged another piece of flesh
keep the reader pulling along? Some- but “like ash.” And then there’s a gar- out of my knuckle, I swore it would
times, this may take a full page or two bage truck. The opening paragraphs be the last. This raises the question
before the character shows up, as in are infused with a kind of dread, even of what this character is doing in a
WRITERMAG.COM 29
survival camp, and why he was swear- but without being told too much: In setting here in the next sentences: It
ing it would be his last. There’s also one hand he held his duffel bag, and in moved quickly, tearing a path for days. It
a heightened sense of danger and vi- the other he clutched the form given to lived off the air, it slept in caves and hid
olence here, even though it’s just a him by Mrs. Lindemulder, the woman in trees; it burned, up and through, un-
knocked knuckle. with the horn-rimmed glasses from the concerned with what wreckage it left be-
This threat is seen also in the open- refugee service. hind, until it reached an Asante village.
ing of ZZ Packer’s “Brownies:” By our We don’t need a lot of background There, it disappeared, becoming one with
second day at Camp Crescendo, the girls because the writer has so thorough- the night.
in my Brownie troop had decided to kick ly immersed us in the character; we She doesn’t immediately get us into
the asses of each and every girl in Brown- feel his anxiety, just from the way he the character, but soon enough, we
ie Troop 909. We want to know why “clutched” the form, and we know now learn that the protagonist, Effia Otch-
there’s this Brownie troop rivalry as he’s a refugee, a situation loaded with er, and her story will be influenced by
well as what will happen. We want the conflict and tension. her fiery birth. Gyasi’s language is unde-
backstory, and we want to know what niably poetic, and that keeps the reader
the future holds for this narrator; no engaged, even though we don’t see the
matter how pacifist a reader might be characters start to form until the sec-
բ
in real life, we’re drawn into a story that ond paragraph.
5
promises some ass-kicking; more im-
portantly, we’re guessing that the nar- Foreshadow what’s
rator will have some conflict to resolve
about this.
The reader, to come
As mentioned earlier, another
generally
3
purpose of the effective opening is to
Raise a question about foreshadow what’s to come or to echo
the character
Consider this line from N.K.
speaking, themes that you’ll be touching on in
the book. A classic example of this is
Jemisin’s collection of speculative fic-
tion How Long ‘til Black Future Month?
needs much less Tolstoy’s opening to Anna Karenina,
as translated by Constance Garnett:
Her story “The Brides of Heaven” starts
with No one realized the extent of Di-
information Happy families are all alike; every un-
happy family is unhappy in its own
hya’s madness until she was caught sab-
otaging the water supply. What is this
than you’d way. The novel goes on to describe in
great detail, with passion and misery,
world, where apparently water is a big think. the lives of some very unhappy fami-
concern, and who is this Dihya, and lies. But beyond that first line, which
what drove her to this? makes up the first paragraph, we don’t
Some stories start with a slow, in- stay in the abstract mode. The second
4
tense focus on a character, such as Viet paragraph begins, quite specifically,
Thanh Nguyen’s “The Other Man” in Take the long view Everything was in confusion in the Ob-
The Refugees: Liem’s plan was to walk Sometimes, you’ll want to lonskys’ house. The wife had discovered
calmly past the waiting crowd after he start a story with a wider that the husband was carrying on an
disembarked, but instead he found him- lens, giving the reader even more of intrigue with a French girl, who had
self hesitating at the gate, anxiously scan- the setting and situation of the story been a governess in their family, and she
ning the strange faces. right up front. Consider Yaa Gyasi’s had announced to her husband that she
We don’t even know Liem. But im- opening to her novel, Homegoing: The could not go on living in the same house
mediately we know that something has night Effia Otcher was born into the with him.
changed in him to alter his plan. We musky heat of Fanteland, a fire raged So we leap from the diving board
also learn that he’s in a strange place through the woods just outside her fa- of that first line right into the thick of
and that he’s anxious, so we want to ther’s compound. a compelling situation, with the ques-
know why. Why is he anxious, why has Again, we’re asking why and how tion of who are these people, why is the
he changed his way of disembarking, did this happen, and what does this husband fooling around with a French
and where is he going? mean for these characters? And: What governess, and what will happen to this
In the next sentence, we learn more, will happen next? Gyasi stays with the rather unhappy family. But that initial
statement continues to hang over the story much earlier, say, at the start of know something about the characters
entire book. the backstory you want to bring in. and their situation.
The foreshadowing can also take a But you may not need that infor- Of course, rules are made to be bro-
more subtle form, as it does in Alexan- mation; the reader, generally speaking, ken, but you have to have a good rea-
dra Chang’s novel Days of Distraction. needs much less information than you’d son for breaking them. Consider Max
The first paragraph isn’t terribly dra- think. This gets back to the old “show, Shulman’s opening to his novel Sleep
matic but piques our curiosity by offer- don’t tell” rule of fiction writing. till Noon.
ing an intimate look into the narrator’s Starting a novel with a sound or
inner world: with dialogue can be done, but it’s Four shots ripped into my groin,
tricky because the reader doesn’t know and I was off on the greatest ad-
People think I’m smaller than I where we are. One exception to this is venture of my life…
am. For example, my feet. In fact, Christopher Bram’s opening of Lives of
I wear size 8.5 or 9. According to the Circus Animals, a novel set in the But first let me tell you a little
Google, these are the most com- world of the theater. about myself. My name is Harry
mon sizes for American wom- Riddle, and I am a sensitive, re-
en. Average is good, I reason. It “You want strangers to love you?” tiring person. Even as a boy this
means that wherever I end up was true.
in this country it will be easy to There was another long pause.
find someone whose shoes I can “No,” he said. “I just don’t want Shulman, clearly, is using this to
borrow. them to hate me.” comic effect. If you seriously begin a sto-
ry with a wildly dramatic moment and
As the novel proceeds, the question “And who do you think hates you, then peddle back into the past, you’ll
of the narrator’s identity as an Asian Kenneth?” lose the reader, unless you provide them
American woman gradually dominates with other reasons to continue moving
the story, and the novel includes quotes “Oh, everyone.” forward – such as humorous, elegantly
from texts about foot-binding in Chi- written sentences, as Shulman does.
na and a scene in which the narrator, She laughed, much to his sur-
at a party, considers stealing someone prise. Her laughter was thin and
else’s boots, left in the shoe pile by the professional, but not unfriendly. SITTING DOWN TO START A STORY
door. The reader may not have noticed or novel isn’t easy; sometimes, it can
the first paragraph consciously, but it This is an example of starting en me- even feel harder than throwing a par-
remains lodged in the subconscious, dia res – in the middle of the action, ty. But leaving the opening for last will
and, like Tolstoy’s opening line, lends a which this time is spoken. The read- allow you to avoid that situation at the
feeling of great coherence to the novel er is dropped into a session between end of a party when you think of all the
as a whole. an actor and his psychologist, with no things you wish you’d done at the start,
background apart from what emerges like why didn’t you have music playing
in the dialogue, and yet the dialogue is as the guests arrived, and why did you
A FEW CAUTIONS so compelling, we’re swept up into the sit Aunt Marion next to you mother?
characters. Bram starts off talking about But if you plan the opening well and use
Writing the beginning after you’ve writ- love and hate, and who isn’t interested the strategies at your disposal, it’s bound
ten the whole story also helps you avoid in that? And as the dialogue continues, to be a good time for everyone.
the “whiplash effect.” This is when you we get some details about the room
start the story with a compelling, inter- they’re in, and we move more deeply Sarah Van Arsdale is the author of six
esting opening moment and then shov- into the characters’ inner worlds. books, including the novels Toward
el in a load of backstory. Just when the Similarly, starting with a sound, or Amnesia (Riverhead, 1995) and Blue
reader is engaging in the story, you ask the description of a sound, disorients (winner of the 2002 Peter Taylor Prize
them to go back in time so you can fill the reader and doesn’t offer enough for the Novel). Her most recent is a book
in some blanks. context for the reader to care about of poems, titled Taken. She teaches in the
Instead, stay in the present moment the sound. Yes, a gunshot is an atten- Antioch/LA low-residency MFA pro-
of the story as long as you can; if you tion-getter, but consider how much gram, at New York University, and with
find that impossible, try beginning the more interesting it is if we already Maine Media Workshops and College.
WRITERMAG.COM 31
MINISIDE/SHUTTERSTOCK
The art of
32
“Storytelling is about
two things; it’s about
character and plot.”
— GEORGE LUCAS
Novelists share their best tips for

creating a strong narrative that engages
readers from beginning to end.
By Jack Smith
33
Then you ask some key questions:
“‘What happens? Why does it happen?’
If your characters are properly devel-
oped, the reader will see parts of them-
selves on the page and therefore be in-
vested in the outcome – that’s a good
plot,” says Davis.
Be sure you have enough conflict
and tension, states Adrianne Finlay,
author of two YA speculative fiction
works. What is at stake for your pro-
tagonist? “What must the protagonist
risk in order to meet her goals in the
story – or prevent a terrible event from
happening? If a story doesn’t have
enough conflict and tension, we must
raise the stakes for the protagonist.”
That doesn’t mean they should be a
matter of life and death, she says, “but
they must be multi-layered, simultane-
ously furthering the thematic tension,
W
the emotional tension, and the plot
itself.”
riting a novel is a huge challenge. Not For mystery writer Elizabeth Spann
only must you create relatable, compelling Craig, “A good plot, like good cooking,
consists of good ingredients.” Among
characters who grab readers, but you also these, she includes conflict, pacing, and
need to nail down a storyline that does the what she calls “character management.”
same thing. Readers want adept storytelling, Conflict, both internal and external,
with scenes that move, lives that change – is essential to plot movement as well
as to your protagonist’s character arc,
and they want to know why. In short, they Craig says. “If your protagonist is the
want a plot. Plot is the causal connection between story events. same at the end of the story as he was at
One thing leads to another, causes another. Plot is hooked the beginning, that may indicate a plot
problem.”
right into your protagonist’s character arc. Pacing is important in driving the
But how do you create a plot that fully engages readers? plot. “If the plot is lagging, if readers
That pulls them in and won’t let them go? are spending too much time in a char-
We turned to six well-published novelists for their ideas acter’s head, it’s going to be tempting to
lay the book aside.” On the other hand,
and suggestions. says Craig, don’t speed through all of
your scenes; your reader will want to
slow down and savor some of them.
WHAT MAKES A GOOD PLOT ? ARE children and live on a farm? Our desires The third element, character man-
there any essential features? drive us and so should our characters’ agement, comes down to two things:
According to historical novelist desires. Our desires form the plots of developing your various characters
Stephanie Cowell, a rock-bottom re- our lives.” and avoiding “a cast of thousands.” If
quirement is the protagonist wanting For Lauren B. Davis, author of the you have too many characters, many
something, having a specific goal, and acclaimed novel Our Daily Bread, you of them will end up being names only.
facing various obstacles in the pursuit should approach your fiction writing in “Try combining two or more to make
of that goal. the following way: “You take two (or one well-developed character display-
Concentrate on your protagonist’s more) people, give them each some- ing different facets.”
desires, whatever they are, says Cowell. thing to yearn for and/or an opposing There’s another aspect to a good
“Does the hero want to find the mur- set of beliefs, and then you challenge or plot – the emotional component. Ac-
derer, become a movie star, or have six thwart those yearnings or beliefs.” cording to Carlos Allende, author of
Coffee, Shopping, Murder, Love, a good rough, I hope no one ever sees one!” As
plot provides “a series of challenges that she writes, she comes upon other char-
provoke distress, then joy as these chal-
lenges are overcome.” The sooner read-
acters and conflicts, and her writing be-
comes a work of the imagination. Any-
TIPS
ers “experience empathic distress, the thing can happen. A character might from the
PROS
sooner they will engage.” “meet a stranger on the stair, and every-
The protagonist’s goal is essential, thing changes” – including the plot.
but choose carefully, says Allende. Realize, says Cowell, that your role as
“We use stories to manage our mood a novelist includes shaping and forming
and learn vicariously from others. what your imagination has produced.
Hence, we gravitate toward relatable “We step in and tidy an attic or cut out
goals, toward stories that promise to subplots that don’t work. And then,
make us feel the way we want to feel guess what? That doting granny you cut
and that will either teach us some- out on page 40 who wanted your char-
thing new or will call attention to acter to marry turns into a grumpy gro-
what’s important.” cery store clerk who hates marriage, and
Good novels “mix the inner and the plot goes on and on…until it stops,
the outer,” says Grant Tracey, author and you have a book cohesive enough to
of several mysteries as well as works send to your first readers.” ADRIANNE FINLAY
of literary fiction. The former is the She adds, “After what seems like “Give your characters tough
protagonist’s emotional and psycho- endless revisions, scenes thrown out, choices that challenge
logical dimension, the latter the ac- retrieved, rearranged, reconceived, sud- their personal life, their
tions that make up the plotline. In a denly I have a plot and a book. After identity, and their worldview,
preferably all at once.”
mystery, he states, “the detective solves one year or after 20 years.”
a killing and navigates a treacherous Davis also writes by the discovery
world of double-crosses, mayhem, and method. For her, a plot outline would
murder, but he also makes a personal be like Paint-by-Numbers – a project
connection with some of the charac- with no surprises. And as a writer, she
ters, the world, and what the investi- needs those surprises, and she wants
gation does to him (pyrrhic in the best those same surprises for her readers.
crime stories).” She avoids sticking too closely to out-
As a reader, Tracey wants “a thrilling lines because following an outline tends STEPHANIE COWELL
plot but also a character who undergoes to block her characters’ natural growth “Listen to your characters
some kind of change or realization.” and development. and let them do as they
“I begin with my obsession/theme. wish. Follow them. Their life
I write about what obsesses me, what’s journey will make your plot.
WHAT’S THE RIGHT WAY TO PLOT A really bugging me. Then I create char- The plot grows out of who
novel? Should you do a lot of planning, acters who embody opposing aspects they are and will thus be
or should you discover your plot in the of that theme and toss them into a few utterly real.”
writing? Should you develop an outline scenes. Soon, I see where they’re head-
or just write your way into the novel? ed and what collisions await.”
One way to draft your novel is the When she gets to about page
discovery method. “I never plot nov- 100, Davis suddenly comes up with
els,” says Cowell. “They all start with a final scene, almost “like magic.” At
a few lines of character and place so that point, she’s clear on her novel’s
PHOTOS BY (TOP TO BOTTOM): JAMIE ORR, JESSE COWELL, HELEN TANSEY
LAUREN B. DAVIS
“Trust your characters
to shape your plot. Plot
unfolds because of who
they are, what they yearn
for, why they can’t get it, and
what happens when they
either attain their hearts’
yearning or fail to attain it.”
WRITERMAG.COM 35
direction because of the strong emo- danger toward the end of the story be-
tion in this scene. This particular emo- fore the book is resolved.”
TIPS tion, she says, is “the bell’s chime I want
the reader to hear long after the book’s
For early-stage writers, Craig rec-
ommends some initial brainstorming.
from the been closed.” With this just-right tone, “Then corral your thoughts by creating
PROS
she starts “arcing toward that, zig-zag- your back cover copy – that’s right, I
ging with obstacles, reversals, and reve- recommend doing that before you even
lations along the way.” start the story. Then take the book,
“Writing a good plot is like walking scene by scene, in your outline. If that’s
through a house,” says Tracey. “Each too much to tackle, try doing mini-out-
scene is a room, and in each room, you lines where you jot down at the end of
open a window or door and close a win- your writing session what you want to
dow opened in a previous scene. Even- write the next day. That may lead to
tually, you open and close enough win- longer outlines later.”
dows and doors to have a good story.” Allende also plans ahead. “I start by
According to Tracey, you’ll have choosing the mood and tone,” he says,
a plot problem “if you opened the “defining how I want my readers to feel
wrong window and walked through throughout the journey.”
GRANT TRACEY the wrong door.” In that case, he says, Once he’s decided on which scenes
“Always look for the inner “Go back and choose a different door, will result in certain feelings on the
story. What does your lead a different window.” part of his protagonist, he’s ready to
character want? What are Tracey does follow certain structur- identify the protagonist’s goal and his
they willing to do to get it?” al forms. “I borrow a master narrative main challenges. He begins outlining.
from film: three-act structure and two Yet he doesn’t write from his outline –
major turning points. So I know I have its only function is to give him a general
that scaffolding under my novel, but sense of direction for his novel, includ-
I don’t know where I’m going in the ing character, plot, and theme.
writing process, but I’ll eventually get If he gets stuck at some point, Allende
to these two key deflections.” Doing so, says, “I create smaller outlines inside each
he says, “will spin the protagonist in a chapter, and this time I stick to them.”
new direction.”
ELIZABETH SPANN CRAIG Craig trusts outlines. Early in her
“If your protagonist is the writing career she followed “a more or- WHAT ARE SOME MAJOR PLOT PROB-
same at the book’s end as ganic approach,” but doing so caused a lems you can encounter, and how can
he was at the beginning,
real problem when, just before a dead- you solve them?
you might have a plot
problem.”
line, she “ended up with a massive plot According to Davis, one serious
hole.” Since then, she’s outlined her problem is not having enough conflict
books fully, with outlines running as and action. “I don’t necessarily mean
much as 35 pages and taking a week
or more to write. For mysteries, she’s
developed a template. She says this in- PHOTOS BY (TOP TO BOTTOM): MITCHELL D. STRAUSS, KAREN DUNN PHOTOGRAPHY, TERRY MCFADDEN
cludes “the opening and ending scenes
(I like to tie those together), informa-
tion about the mystery’s victims, sus-
CARLOS ALLENDE pect interviews, and the moment of
“Find direction first. You
know the saying, ‘The end
justifies the means?’ I say,
‘The goal procures the
means.’ If you know where
you are going, you can figure
out how to get there.”
car chases and shoot-outs, although According to Allende, one ma-
if that fits your story, fair enough, but jor problem is the lack of plausibility.
there must be compelling internal and “Most events in a story must be pre-
external conflicts against which charac- dictable so that readers can connect
ters struggle and transform or refuse to cause and effect and create a coherent
transform. Characters must do things,” mental narrative. Just a few important
she says. incidents should come as a surprise.
For Finlay, “It’s important never to Still, these should be unpredictably
lose sight of a character’s emotional predictable.”
journey in the fulfillment of story and What does he mean by this oxymo-
plot.” Neglect that, and you’ve got a ron? “Contrary to common belief, we
problem: “Character motivation must do not enjoy uncertainty,” states Allen-
remain clear at all times; otherwise, the de. “What we enjoy is reducing uncer-
story becomes simply one thing after tainty. Part of the enjoyment of reading
another: this happens, then that hap- a novel comes from identifying cues
pens. What happens, however, is not that suggest progress or new challenges
the main focus of the plot. What’s im- because that satisfies our need for com-
portant is why any of it matters.” petence.” As readers, we are motivated
Ask yourself what your protagonist to read on when we suddenly “have to
fears or desires and how these fears and create a new prediction after a predic-
desires determine their actions, says tion error.”
Finlay. “If a plot is particular enough, it
details what happens while also asking
“READ THROUGH A second major problem, he says, is
getting off track. Every plot develop-
us to explore the very nature of the hu-
man condition.”
YOUR BOOK ment should relate to the main plot or
central thrust of the novel. If your novel
Plots can always go wrong, but there AND MAKE SURE is an episodic one, it’s going to call for
IT’S YOUR
are usually fixes, states Craig. “One “new goals as previous ones are real-
common problem is dumping backsto- ized.” On the other hand, events that
PROTAGONIST
ry on readers. An easy fix is to cut the “take your characters in a different di-
backstory out, paste it in a new doc- rection without providing some form
WHO’S CALLING
ument, and thread that information of resolution first” will sidetrack your
throughout your story.” In following plot and ruin your story, says Allende.
THE SHOTS.”
that strategy, she says, “you’re providing “It would be like Frodo suddenly de-
readers with clues about a person, set- ciding to forget the ring and become a
ting, or situation.” dentist,” he says.
A second problem, says Craig, is
“the sagging middle.” This can happen
when “writers lose steam and mean- WHEN YOU’RE WRITING A NOVEL,
der around trying to figure out their go for a plot that hooks readers. You’ll
direction.” You can easily avoid this need a character who pulls readers in,
problem by “creating another chal- involving them in the events of the sto-
lenge for your protagonist, just when ry, and this means plenty of conflict
it’s starting to look like he’s making and tension. You should follow the pro-
progress on his goal. I always like to cess that works best for you, not only in
drop a second victim right in the mid- drafting but also in working out prob-
dle of my mysteries.” lems during the revision stage. There
A third problem is what she calls the are a host of plot problems you can face
“backseat protagonist.” This happens as a novelist but keep in mind that they
when a secondary character “hogs the all relate in some way to the growth and
spotlight.” Make sure, Craig states, that transformation of your main character,
your hero isn’t passive. “Read through your protagonist.
your book and make sure it’s your pro-
tagonist who’s calling the shots,” not a Jack Smith is the author of six novels,
minor character – one with a support- four books of nonfiction, and numerous
ing role. reviews, articles, and interviews.
WRITERMAG.COM 37
38
How learning to filter the
feedback I received made
me a better writer.
By N. West Moss
39
I
was in my 40s when I became aware that I wanted
to write for an audience beyond just myself. I had
stories and books I wanted to create, but was
unable to accomplish what I was able to envision.
That’s when I decided to get my MFA. The good
news about being in an MFA program at that age is
I was completely committed to the hard work of learning
every bit of craft I could. The downside of being in my 40s
(I graduated at 49) was I was much older than all of my
classmates, several of whom made it clear they resented
my presence in the classroom.
The workshops were sometimes exhilarating I would leave workshops on those evenings
and sometimes gut-wrenching. I would polish feeling sick, humiliated, and exhausted. I was not
and polish and polish my little stories, hoping yet at all secure about my work, and for a while, I
someone would see promise there, hoping I had tried to figure out what my detractors wanted me
begun to crack the code of well-crafted writing, to do in my writing. I added in stuff that was sexy,
even though I was a novice, like everyone else. It’s violent, gimmicky, or derivative to try to entertain
hard enough, I think, to be in your 20s and writing them with the hopes of making them hate me less.
crappy, beginner-level stories, but there was some- I listened to their notes because maybe they knew
thing about being in my 40s and writing terrible more than I did. But even when I wrote for that
fiction that was humbling. very specific audience, Mr. Red Pen still struck out
That some of my classmates sort of hated me, huge passages and then threw his notes down on
well, I couldn’t completely blame them. What the table without even looking at me or saying a
twentysomething getting their MFA wants to be word. It was awful.
in a class with a middle-aged woman who’s writ- Until it finally wasn’t.
ing about the vagaries of married life, her fertil- Two things happened that turned my classroom
ity issues, her miscarriages? I imagine to sever- experience around for me. The first was when
al of them, it felt like their mother was in class my professor read a revision of one of my work-
with them. While many of my fellow students shopped stories and asked, “Why did you change
were encouraging, others were brutal. When the restaurant’s name? The name you had before
it was my turn, I would read my work out loud, was much better.” I said that a classmate had told
and several would visibly roll their eyes at one an- me to change it, and he said, “Oh, West, don’t lis-
other. One guy regularly used a red pen to cross ten to her!” It hadn’t occurred to me that I could
PREVIOUS SPREAD AND THIS PAGE: NEW AFRICA/SHUTTERSTOCK
out huge sections of my stories. He would write choose to ignore feedback that didn’t feel right.
things like “NO!” in red next to the crossed-out The second thing that happened was I spoke
title of a story without explanation. There was an- with a friend (who is also a writer) about my
other guy who clearly didn’t even read my work struggles in workshop. I said I wanted to remain
before workshop, as he was supposed to do, and open to feedback, I wanted to become a better
would nonetheless expound endlessly on its flaws writer, but I couldn’t figure out how to cope with
in a way that seemed like he was trying to impress mean-spirited feedback that was so unhelpful it
someone with how much more he knew about sometimes made me want to quit. She said with
writing than I did. her writing, she tried to be “semi-permeable:”
She would listen to feedback but gave it different days. I trust the editors I work with love the work,
weight depending on its usefulness. She listened and they are doing their best to shepherd it to be-
to and sat with feedback, and then decided what come its best self.
she would, and wouldn’t, act upon. This semi-permeability is helpful when I read
This was a revelation and has informed much reviews of my work as well. I’m interested in how
of my writing since. Right away in class, I stopped my work hits readers. It’s not that I will change my
reading any of the notes from the red pen guy. writing based on a review, but I am curious to hear
Weeks before, I needed a full day or more to what worked and didn’t work for them. I don’t ob-
recover from their spitefulness. They were bru- sess about reviews. No. I take them in, see what I
tal and offered nothing helpful, no suggestions can learn from them, and then let them go.
about what might work. Now, when everyone I don’t know if I’ll ever again be in a workshop
handed me notes on my stories after workshop, I situation where I have to listen to writers I don’t
would wait until I was alone, and then I’d throw already know and trust, but the big insight I got
his notes out unread. I simply bypassed them. from the hostility that came from those fellow
What a relief. Ever since writing students was this:
then, I don’t read notes that Writing requires loads of
are mean-spirited or that faith. We have to believe in
I deem unhelpful. I’ve be- our own work, often over
come like Teflon around many drafts and long peri-
that kind of toxicity. ods of time. If we don’t have
The often-unfriendly set- almost relentless faith, it is
ting in grad school ended up unlikely our work will ever
being great for my writing. see the light of day.
First, it forced me to double As I publish more, my
down on the stories I had to fear is this – I’ve read some
tell. What else could I do but of my favorite authors who,
tell MY stories? I was mar- once they got “big,” seemed
ried. I was middle-aged. The to stop taking notes from
stories I had to tell were in- anyone, and their work suf-
flected by my life experience, fered because of it. Perhaps
so my battles in the class- they trusted their initial
room caused me to commit instincts too completely.
to and embrace my stories. I have never again tried I don’t want to become that and hope I never
to pander to a hostile audience. I write knowing a turn out something that causes readers to think,
lot of people won’t like my work but trusting my “She could really have used an editor.” For now,
books and stories will find their audience, even if I remain semi-permeable, meaning open to all
that audience is a small one. feedback, but also on the lookout for notes that
Learning to navigate the workshop environ- might be counterproductive. I take it all in and
ment helped as I slowly became a professional reject what I need to reject to keep going with the
writer and had to work closely with editors. Ex- piece. Writing is the great passion of my life, and
cept for one notable exception (a copy editor gone I evaluate and wall off anything that threatens to
rogue), I love working with editors. I crave their ruin it for me.
ideas and feedback and love the collaborative way
a fine editor can help me figure out what is not N. West Moss’s memoir, Flesh & Blood:
working and how to make a piece of writing sing. Reflections on Infertility, Family, and Creating
I understand now that I don’t have to take any a Bountiful Life, is out now from Algonquin. Her
edits I disagree with, but I’m also aware enough short story collection, The Subway Stops at Bryant
to know all ideas should at least be considered. I Park, was published by Leapfrog, and she has a
can listen, take in what they’re suggesting, mull it middle grade novel called Birdy forthcoming from
over, and make a decision about whether or not Little, Brown. Her work has appeared in the New
to make the suggested change without becoming York Times, Salon, McSweeney’s, the Saturday
upset or wanting to quit, as I had in those early Evening Post, and elsewhere.
WRITERMAG.COM 41
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FOCUS create “delivery exceptions” that still
allow certain addresses (your boss,
Cold Turkey your editor, your spouse, etc.) to
Most distraction blockers (programs come through.
that prevent you from visiting
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For regular doses of digital tools like the ones found here, one idea to the next with ease. After
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tangentnotes.com
WRITERMAG.COM 47
48
By Charity Marie
49
1
Don’t write every day.
One of the biggest pieces of advice we

hear is “write every day.” It’s implied
this should be done no matter what.
Apparently, you’re not allowed to have
sick days or feel too tired or have a fam-
ily emergency. It’s also implied that if
you don’t do it, you’re failing as a writer.
I internalized that for years.
Then I realized that’s garbage.
Here’s why: Name something you
do every single day without fail. If your
first thought was sleep or eat, OK,
My husband says after all this time, I you’d be right. Our minds and bodies
need rest and fuel. After that? There’s
should be teaching writing instead of not a long list of things we do each and
studying it, but I know I’ll study it for the every day. Some of us exercise (not on
my list), drink coffee (also not on my
rest of my life, always seeking new insights list), and work a day job (I’m fortunate
and ideas. It’s part of the writing life, to to be a self-employed author and entre-
preneur). Even then, we take days off
read about craft daily. I’ve read countless to rest – weekends, holidays, vacations.
books about writing over the years, so Why? Because life is variable.
We have the power to choose how we
many I can’t remember them all. Some of want our life to look. That includes our
these books are outstanding. (On Writing writing life. We decide what we’d like to
focus on, what’s important to us. Best of
by Stephen King and Writing Down the all, we can change our focus and goals –
Bones by Natalie Goldberg changed my and the strategies we choose to achieve
them – anytime we want. If something
writing forever.) Some books are not. But isn’t working, we can try something else.
the biggest mistake I made was allowing Avoid the trap of thinking you must do
something a certain way because some-
authors’ well-intentioned advice to become one told you to do it, no matter how suc-
“rules” for how I must write. We all seek cessful they are. All brains are different.
Just because it works for them doesn’t
answers to our writing questions – how to guarantee it will work for you. Writing
PREVIOUS SPREAD AND OPPOSITE PAGE: MARIE MAERZ/SHUTTERSTOCK
write better, faster, more often; how to sell advice is just that: advice. Take it, leave
it, or tailor it to fit your needs.
what we produce. But those rules – those If the COVID-19 pandemic taught
answers I sought – ultimately turned into us anything, it’s that life is uncertain.
Things happen that can throw a monkey
chains that imprisoned my creativity. If wrench into all your fine writing plans.
you, too, feel trapped by your own set of Life on this planet requires flexibility, as
we must adapt to new information and
rules that stifle your creativity instead of situations. Why shouldn’t writing be the
sustaining it, here’s how to break free. same? Why shouldn’t it be flexible?
Granted, I don’t mean “don’t write as
much as possible.” I do mean to create
a routine that works for you and your
lifestyle. The most important lesson
I’ve learned: There’s no one-size-fits-all
solution in writing. For me, when I was
working a day job, writing after work
was impossible. I was too exhausted.
For many years, I didn’t write at all be-
cause my priority was on other things,
namely my family while my children
were younger, and I was just exhausted
by life. I’ve learned, after years of guilt,
that this was OK, too. Now, my children
are grown and leaving the nest, and I’m
gaining my time back for writing.
2
Avoid guarding your writing time
like a dragon guards gold.
I realized if I got up a little earlier every

day, I could squeeze in several hours of
writing time before work. The house is
quiet and peaceful before the sun is up.
Life will throw pressure that brings. Or maybe you’d
relish writing on your lunch break. Try
The energy is just different. At first, this you curveballs; different times of day, session lengths,
was so hard for me. It felt impossible. My
mind and body hated me. I kept at it be-
the only or locations. Whatever works for you,
do that deliberately – but stay flexible.
cause writing is important to me. It got predictable thing Life will throw you curveballs; the only
easier. Eventually, I began getting up at
5 a.m. every day and writing. I made sure
about it is its predictable thing about it is its unpre-
dictability. Expect your precious writ-
I went to bed at a time where I would unpredictability. ing time to be derailed from time to
get eight hours of sleep (yes, this means I time. Forgive yourself when other pri-
went to bed at 9 p.m. every night). orities get in the way. Life is messy. If,
Best of all, my writing became more right now, yours is too busy, or you just
cohesive and stronger than it had been don’t feel like writing, that’s OK, too. It
when I was forcing myself to write at will pass, whatever you’re dealing with,
night, exhausted. I no longer dreaded and you will feel like writing again.
sitting down to my computer. My writ- The great thing is, writing will al-
ing flowed easier, and I looked forward ways be there, like a loyal friend, wait-
to sitting at my keyboard every morning for you to return. I’ve learned no
ing. Create a routine and schedule that matter how long of a break I take (days,
works for you and feels good. Writing weeks, even months), writing comes
should feel like fun, not torture. back to me as if I never left. Writing
I usually write for at least two hours doesn’t know I took a break. Now that
every morning but sometimes as long as I’m self-employed, I write whenever I
six hours. Maybe for you, a 20-minute want, but that early-morning routine is
race against the clock is better. Maybe still with me – and I don’t sweat it if I
you write best with a deadline and the miss the occasional 5 a.m. session.
WRITERMAG.COM 51
3
couldn’t find the energy, interest, or later. I use Scrivener and have a dedicat-
motivation. Then one day, out of no- ed project for story ideas. I read a lot all
where, I woke up and wrote three blog the time, and I listen to audiobooks to
Accept creative burnout & entries and an article in three hours. help boost creativity in leaner times.
replenish your inspiration My creativity was refilled. The break I learned I need always to have a way
was exactly what I needed. Trust your to refill the creativity well inside me.
Recently, I finished my first draft of a instincts – if you don’t feel like writing, How do you replenish yourself creative-
literary novella called Cherry Blossom don’t. It could be precisely what your ly? Because that’s important to know.
Tree. From start to finish, it took me body and mind need. Forcing yourself For me, it’s painting, coloring, and
three weeks to write 16,000 words. I will make the writing feel forced. reading. Enjoying movies, blogging,
spent a week on the outline. I cranked That doesn’t mean you can’t learn and getting my nails done. Taking long
out thousands of words a day in a from your dry spells, including how to showers and listening to music. It’s the
rush like a waterfall of words onto the better guard against them in the future. magazines I subscribe to, convenient-
page. My fingers could barely type When I finished my story, there was no ly delivered every month (it’s the only
fast enough to keep up. After such a plan for what to do next. I’d never writ- time I’m happy to open my mailbox).
high-energy, high-octane period of ten that way before. I expected the story It’s book tours to promote my work.
creativity and effort, I was both deliri- to take me six months, not less than 30 Or random writing prompts that some-
ously excited from the writing high and days. After all the intensity, I felt empty times hit the sweet spot and fire up my
massively drained. I felt depleted. Emp- and adrift. This taught me to have plans brain. This very article was inspired
ty. Nearly two months passed without for lots of projects at once. Keep notes by another article I was reading about
writing a word. I stopped blogging. I on potential projects you can pick up writing essays. I wasn’t looking for in-
spiration. But I had only read a para-
graph of the article when this essay idea
popped into my head like a beautiful
gift. Inspiration can come from any-
where if you keep yourself open to it.
4
Be flexible when your source
of inspiration changes
Your sources of inspiration can shift,

too. I used to find inspiration in the
news, but that no longer works (likely
because it’s too depressing). I do, howev-
er, have countless short stories inspired
by prompts, which remain a reliable
source of inspiration for me. The key to
creativity and inspiration is to find what
works for you, but don’t expect it to stay
constant forever. You’ll change as a per-
son and a writer over time. It’s OK if
someone’s method doesn’t work for you,
even if everyone else you know swears
by it. Figure out what you need at this
MARIE MAERZ/SHUTTERSTOCK
point in time. Take the time to experi-

ment and try new things, or, alternative-
ly, try things that didn’t work for you at
one point in your writing career but may
You can develop your own rulebook, helps you hone that until the piece is
cohesive, strong, and brilliant. Never
the things you can’t compromise skip this step, no matter how ready you
think a piece is. My work goes through
on in order to thrive. multiple editing passes, until I’m satis-
fied (and there are still things I miss!). I
have readers I trust to provide me with
feedback. This article alone had a dozen
readers and several hours of revision. I
use the Hemingway App and ProWrit-
ingAid to find issues in my drafts and fix
them (but only in the editing phase).
work for the kind of writer you are now. strength is a skill you can learn. You
What happens might surprise you. learn that by reading other writers’
Outlining and planning a book se- work, analyzing it, and then writing Throwing out the rules
ries has given me inspiration and cre- your own work. It’s an organic learning
ativity I never expected. I had been a process, one you can continually im- Amazing things happened when I
pantser for over a decade before I start- prove throughout your life. threw out all the rules I’d created, all
ed outlining my work. I found a whole You can also develop your own rule- the advice I’d heard. My mantra was,
new level of joy in writing because of book, the things you can’t compromise “Just write and see what happens.”
outlining, where I found myself diving on in order to thrive. One element of Writing became a glorious adventure,
deeper into my characters and plots. that is how you choose to organize your and I started naturally writing every
The result: richer stories. ideas, whether on paper or in your head, day because I was excited to do so. I be-
The more I try to write, the more before you sit down to write or some- came so excited to write that I had to
I am writing. And not just fiction but thing done as you go. It’s not easy, but write. I made a promise to myself that
nonfiction, blogs, essays, articles, and it’s critical to figure out what works best I would try to write every day, but also
short stories. Creativity is literally for you. For example, I’ve learned out- that I would feel OK if it didn’t hap-
bursting out of me every day. Because lines can be flexible, living documents pen. I gave myself permission to be flex-
of all this, I’m also thinking about writ- to help me bring cohesion to my story. ible and open. To enjoy the writing pro-
ing differently now and planning my They should work for you in the way cess but to take time to enjoy life, too.
writing in more detail. that suits you best (no roman numerals Once I did, I finished two books
required, I promise). I’ve also learned in three months (a middle grade chil-
5
you can do an outline and be a pantser dren’s book and a literary novella) plus
at the same time; they are not mutual- countless blogs and articles. It has been
ly exclusive. My short and long fiction incredibly freeing. My creativity surged
That said, some rules still has a loose outline of scenes that detail in ways I never could have predicted.
can’t be broken. action, reaction, and conflict. I need to So if you find yourself feeling stifled,
plan my stories before I write them, and blocked, and uninspired, you probably
The one area where rules are important I still create organic and dynamic con- are. You should try throwing out your
is craft. It is an area where you should tent. Outlines are only stifling if you rules, too, and see what happens.
never compromise on being the best make them that way, and if you inter-
writer you can be. Your skills will change nalize that feeling. Creating conflict in Charity Marie is the award-winning
with time. Your writing will evolve and a story isn’t automatic for me; it needs author of Jason & Lizzy’s Legendary
develop only through practice. We deliberate focus and planning. Adventures, a fantasy children’s series,
can only learn some aspects of writing Lastly, no matter how you choose to as well as numerous nonfiction articles
through the actual act of writing. go about it, it’s essential to understand published over a 25-year period. She
Your writing voice is a perfect ex- editing is as critical as the writing itself. lives in San Antonio, Texas, with her
ample of this. Your voice is like your It’s what develops your writing. The family and a pack of canine companions.
DNA; it’s 100% yours. Presenting your initial draft of your work allows you Visit her at charitymarie.com to connect
voice on the page with confidence and to find a way to tell the story. Editing and learn more.
WRITERMAG.COM 53
CRAFT
SECRETS
FROM
10
WRITERS
BOYKO.PICTURES/SHUTTERSTOCK
54
AND WHAT WE CAN LEARN
FROM THEM ABOUT WORD CHOICE,
PLOTTING, PACING, AND MORE.
By Toni Fitzgerald
55
NO
matter what genre
a writer specializes
in – suspense or MYSTERY
fantasy, plays or
picture books – they Kellye Garrett, a veteran TV writ-
er, married her Hollywood insider
all have something knowledge with a knack for writing
in common: devotion to craft. Writing witty women in the critical and com-
craft serves as a catchall for the mercial hits Hollywood Homicide and
Hollywood Ending. Her newest book
elements involved in creating a story. (Like a Sister) branches from mys-
We bake craft into every decision we tery to thriller territory. Despite all
make as writers, and yet so few hard- her success, she says writing has nev-
er come easy to her; her email signa-
and-fast rules exist to guide us. Craft ture for the past 15 years has been the
becomes what you make of it, from Dorothy Parker quote, “I hate writing.
developing characters to refining a I love having written.” Garrett excels
at humor, from zingy one-liners to
turn of phrase to speeding up the pace laugh-out-loud interior dialogues that
of a critical scene. You can hone your build depth to her characters.
craft for decades and still have things
Garrett’s secret to steady
to learn. Yet you can also bask in the improvement
momentary contentment of switching “I’ve taken classes. I’ve taught classes.
out an adverb for an adjective to make I’ve been a mentee in the Pitch Wars
program. I’ve been a multi-time men-
a sentence sing. tor in Pitch Wars. I’ve written books.
We wanted to learn from authors I’ve read books – both other mysteries
who excel at their craft, so we reached and craft books. I’ve been a journalist, a
TV staff writer, a technical writer, and,
out to 10 of them at varying points in most recently, a communications writ-
their careers. One just published her er. Each of those things has helped me
first book; a couple recently switched improve my craft in some way.”
gears to new genres; several have Garrett’s secret to writing dialogue
written for decades. Each imparted “I have an MFA in screenwriting from
hard-earned lessons from their USC’s film school. I also spent eight
years working in TV in Hollywood. I
own careers to help beginning to always say it should sound how some-
experienced writers. one actually speaks but better. There
are no ‘uhhs’ and ‘ahhs.’ We don’t need
the small talk unless it’s because they’re
avoiding some bigger issues they’re not
talking about. One hint is to read the
dialogue out loud. It’ll help you see if
it sounds natural and what you might
stumble over.”
SPECULATIVE
Jewelle Gomez, a self-described au-
thor and activist, has published specu-
lative short stories, plays, poetry, and
criticism. Her 1991 debut novel, The
Gilda Stories, which follows a Black
lesbian vampire through two centu-
ries of eternal life, won two Lamb-
da Awards. In the book’s anniversary
edition foreword, she notes that when
she began writing Gilda, long before
the vampire renaissance of the 2000s,
some people suggested “connecting
the idea of vampires with vulnerable
communities was too negative.” But
she continued to write that way, po-
sitioning vampires as a metaphor to
empower those communities. Gomez
excels at worldbuilding and setting
scenes through descriptions evoking
all five senses.
Gomez’s secret to developing

characters
“You can think about ‘OK, how am I
going to get the spaceship to go from
here to there’ or ‘what happens when
vampires have to cross the street?’ I
do. You should think about all those
things. But it’s the reasons that these
things have to happen that’s interest- keep it almost recognizable, people are vision and infusing her characters with
ing. You have to be in their heads to comfortable when they get it. But it re- hidden depths.
help people understand what they do.” ally has to be specific enough to cover
what you mean.” Huerta’s secret to revision
Gomez’s secret to using language to “I went through a full grieving pro-
build new worlds cess of having to cut entire storylines
“I do love stories that have their own FANTASY and characters and still try to hold
language. And if a writer can create on to the richness of that world.
that language and steep in it enough, Lizz Huerta published her first fantasy And I think there is just a period of
you come to understand it over time. novel, the YA tome The Lost Dream- time where I was just like, ‘OK, I’ve
At one point in the future, Gilda’s at- er, in the spring. Entertainment Week- gotten through the mourning pro-
tacked by someone who tries to capture ly published an excerpt of the Bread cess. Now, it’s just time to be brutal.
vampires. And he uses a narcodart. If Loaf fellow’s work, a dual narrative that What are the bare bones that I need
you say ‘narcodart,’ it sounds like what follows female seers in a Mesoameri- on the page in order to have the nar-
it is. I just pasted together words. You can-informed world before European rative throughline?’ And once I got it
put one thing with another. And if you contact. Huerta worked construction down to bare bones, I was able to kind
for two decades before landing a con- of weave back in things that my head
tract for the two-part series, which she couldn’t let go of.”
wrote on and off for 10 years. The fi-
nal version evolved considerably. She Huerta’s secret to characterization
pitched Dreamer as a trilogy and had “I think every character on the page is
to rework it into a duology during pan- some sort of aspect of self. You know,
demic lockdown. Huerta excels at cre- I placed myself in these characters, the
ating new spaces with a very specific good and the bad and who I hope to be.”
WRITERMAG.COM 57
DRAMA
Dorothy E. King, a retired assistant
professor of sociology at Penn State
Harrisburg, began writing plays as a
response to seeing Black people like
her depicted “in more of a buffoonish
way” in theater and on screens. “Peo-
ple often complain about what they
see. They don’t like this play. They
don’t like this movie,” she says. “And
my response is, well, then do some-
thing about it. If you don’t like it, then
write something you do like.” And so
she did. King founded a theater troupe
and since 1999 has written an annual
play for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
She excels at creating research-based
plays that entertain and inform.
King’s secret to revision

“I want the words to set the mood. I
want the words to be heard. The move-
“I always think of that fairy tale
ment is kind of secondary unless it’s ‘Hansel and Gretel.’ I leave enough
something that is particular to a scene.
We end up changing stage directions
breadcrumbs for the reader to find
all the time. And the actors will some- their way back home.”
times say, ‘I don’t think I would say
it that way, I think I would say it this
way,’ and I’m always open to what they
want to say because they’re presenting
it. I might say, ‘I don’t agree with you. I
think it should still be this way, but do
it your way,’ and the official script will improve: “I’ve tried writing prompts, McCoy’s secret to revision
reflect how I feel.” taken a fast-drafting course, tried some “The opening scene to Savvy Sheldon
of the exercises in craft books like Feels Good As Hell changed at least four
King’s secret to refining her craft Story Genius. I’ve also gone through times that I could remember. Each of
“I don’t read books about how to screenplays of rom-coms to dissect im- them was meant to introduce Savvy
write. I just write what comes to me. portant structural elements and read sort of minimizing herself to fit the
I don’t think it’s wrong to read books. the stories of my peers to study the relationship that she was in at the be-
That’s just not my orientation. I’m not ways that they continue to hit those ginning of the story, but the scene that
a trained writer, my degrees are not in major plot points in fresh and creative ended up in the book was most effec-
English or in literature and writing. So ways.” She excels at building chemistry tive because it showed the dichotomy
I write from how I feel and the research between characters and penning the between the flaws in her that are devel-
that I’ve done.” pulse-pounding bedroom scenes es- oped throughout the story and some of
sential to a good romance. her most endearing qualities. The other
versions of the opener fell short because
ROMANCE they either told too much too soon or
didn’t give the reader enough of an in-
Taj McCoy recently published her tro to the main character.”
debut, Savvy Sheldon’s Feeling Good
As Hell, a funny (and hot!) romance McCoy’s secret to finding the right
about a woman who embarks on an point of view
unexpected affair after a breakup. “I initially wrote Savvy in first per-
McCoy says she’s always trying to son, but as I went through revisions
with my agent, we agreed that the McWilliams’ second novel; the first,
story read better in third. The voice a dystopian YA, follows a girl who es-
remained strong, but the flow felt capes from a cult. She excels at employ-
smoother. The transition was painful, ing language in gorgeous and unexpect-
but I actually really love it in third ed ways.
person and wrote my second book in
third as a result.” McWilliams’ secret to solving plot
questions and not only raise them but problems
answer them, too. Readers aren’t going “An earlier draft of Girls ended really
THRILLER to follow you if you don’t answer some unhappily, and I didn’t want that for a
questions, and then answering them YA audience. But it was hard to get the
Wanda M. Morris has joked her “over- can raise another question, too. ‘Oh, ending I wanted in a believable way. I
night sensation,” as some media outlets that’s why she did that.’” usually outline and sort of take my best
have dubbed it, took more than a de- guess by blueprinting what the new arc
cade to write. The 2021 thriller All Her should be. I choose difficult situations
Little Secrets, a Good Morning Ameri- YOUNG ADULT to put my characters into. I tried a cou-
ca book club selection, follows corpo- ple things, made some huge changes in
rate lawyer Ellice Littlejohn, a Black Kelly McWilliams wanted to write plotting. That doesn’t always work, but
attorney whose carefully hidden past about the concept of “passing” (when I finally hit the right one, and I kept go-
threatens to catch up with her after a person of color “passes” for white ing through it in passes and layering in
her boss is murdered at work. Morris because of their light skin) for years. new things.”
blends flashbacks to Ellice’s past with Her recent YA novel Mirror Girls fol-
her present as the police eye her as the lows twins ripped apart at birth; one McWilliams’ secret to finding the
top suspect. The book also addresses of them can pass, while the other can- right words
corporate America’s rampant racism not. She drew inspiration in part from “For a long time, I focused way too
and sexism, often portrayed as harm- her family’s experience with colorism, much on language. It really bogged
less good ole’ boy fun. Morris excels or discrimination against people of me down and took forever to make
at presenting heart-pounding action color with darker skin. Mirror Girls is drafts. It was very precious and usually
scenes and fleshing out even the most
minor characters.
Morris’ secret to writing dialogue

“I think dialogue comes to me the eas-
iest because I tend to be on the nosy
side. I’m eavesdropping on conversa-
tions when I sit in a restaurant or wait
in a line at stores. I think it’s just kind
of the nature of the work I do as a law-
yer. I’m in meetings, and I’m listening
to the way people talk and interact
with each other. I don’t have this kind
of woo-woo ‘people talk to me in my
head’ thing. When I’m writing, I do
hear people talk to each other, and I try
to be the vessel to capture that.”
Morris’ secret to building suspense

“I always think of that fairy tale ‘Han-
sel and Gretel.’ I leave enough bread-
crumbs for the reader to find their
way back home. This method leaves
enough questions and red herrings
and clues along the way for the read-
er to go where you want them to go.
I try in every chapter to raise some
WRITERMAG.COM 59
LIKE Jewell Parker Rhodes and
Kelly McWilliams share
McWilliams says. “She
was always out there doing
That is such a great piece
of wisdom.”
MOTHER, more than just a talent

for words and storytelling.
that.” Of course, mother
and daughter have differ-
The daughter remem-
bers accompanying her
LIKE They are a mother and

daughter who have both
ing styles. “My mom never
had much tolerance for the
mom when the latter was
researching a book on the
DAUGHTER published books to ac-

claim. McWilliams says her
mushier aspects of being a
young writer,” McWilliams
Tulsa race riots. McWilliams
began to recognize the
mother has been “a source laughs. “She writes politi- power that books had to tell
of constant guidance and cal books, activist books. necessary stories. “I was
mentorship” who encour- I’d be like, ‘what about this maybe 9 or 10,” she says.
aged her to read widely as flowery phrase or image?’ “We saw a Klan rally when
a child. And she’d say, ‘Honestly, it we were there, and my mom
“It was never a question doesn’t matter. You write said, ‘I’m so glad you’re
for me of, ‘oh, can women because you can act on here to see this.’ It was the
write books, can Black girls the world, tell the truth, strangest experience. It
grow up to write books?’” and make real changes.’ was really powerful.”
overdone, and when it was just right, Finally, you get to this point where
it took a lot of time. It made me very you know it’s going to burst. It’s like
grumpy. Now, I think the language is blowing up a balloon and letting the
something that is, of course, super im- air out, and everyone is waiting for it
portant, but it doesn’t have to be per- to pop. You’re taking the reader on a
fect the first time through.” roller coaster, and after 18 books, I
know how to do it. You should see me
at my computer – I laugh, cry, act out
MIDDLE GRADE all the parts.”
Jewell Parker Rhodes, the author of Rhodes’ secret to writing dialogue If You’re a Kid Like Gavin, recounts
the New York Times bestselling middle “I think of the way our family talks at events that led to a landmark Supreme
grade novel Ghost Boys and many oth- home. The way the community tells Court decision on trans rights. Lukoff
er books for kids, tells stories that she stories. I marry that with what I was worked as a children’s librarian for
feels passionate about. Her characters taught in school and with the African years, and back then, he read books
are drawn so precisely, you can almost American oral storytelling tradition. to his elementary-aged classes, which
hear their voices in your head as you I’m trying to give my dialogue a sense helped him learn what stories and lan-
read. Rhodes’ most recent book, Par- of orality. I want kids to hear voices the guage resonate with young children.
adise on Fire, tackles climate change way I heard my grandmother talk and He excels at clarifying concepts for
and racism, among other key issues. tell stories on the porch.” kids using simple, relatable explana-
She connects the themes to things tions they can understand.
kids can understand, such as present-
ing environmental disaster through a PICTURE BOOKS Lukoff’s secret to revision
raging wildfire. Rhodes excels at me- “With picture books, revision tends to
ticulously researching and presenting Kyle Lukoff has published pic- look like tinkering with one word or
topics in a way that appeals to 8- to ture books as well as middle grade one sentence or making sure that you
12-year-olds. novels. His 2020 Stonewall Book don’t repeat these two words or mak-
Award-winning picture book, When ing sure that you do repeat these two
Rhodes’ secret to perfecting pacing Aidan Became A Brother, tells the sto- words. I really like condensing and
“You have to build tension and release ry of a transgender boy who welcomes crystallizing into the purest and most
tension. Every time you release it, you a younger sibling and how his family refined form that a story can take. I
decide for how long, and then you’re helps him navigate his excitement and describe picture books like putting to-
inspired to build it even further. nervousness. His latest picture book, gether a watch where every single tooth
of every single gear has to perfectly in-
terlock, and if there’s like one part that’s
missing, then it jams.”
Lukoff’s secret to plotting

a picture book
“For me, the hardest thing in picture
books is the conflict. When I’m writing
a novel, I usually know what the prob-
lem is that’s trying to be solved. Where-
as in picture books, I usually have like a
cool idea. But I don’t have a plot, really.
I generally have the story in my head,
and then I write it down and then the
rest of the work is organizing it into
page numbers and making sure that it
flows and making sure that each ele-
ment is well described.”
GRAPHIC NOVELS
Last spring, popular YA fantasy author
Roseanne A. Brown published her first
graphic novel, Into the Heartlands, a
prequel to Marvel’s Black Panther fo-
cused on Wakandan siblings Shuri
and T’Challa as kids. If you are one of
Brown’s more than 22,000 followers on
“I’d ask, ‘What is the most
Twitter, you know she writes magnifi- important thing that needs to
cent short, pithy takes. She embraced
the new opportunity to use illustra- come across to the reader at this
tions to help tell a story. Combining
the visual and the verbal helped Brown
moment? And how do I say that in
flex literary muscles she didn’t know the least amount of space?’”
she had, and she notes the need to lim-
it her words ultimately improved her
writing in other genres, too. Brown ex-
cels at using storytelling to create high
emotional takes.
Brown’s secret to showing, not telling

“I was definitely someone who, be- actions and demonstrations that make heart of the matter in each panel in
fore writing a graphic novel, leaned that clear.” the script. I’d ask, ‘What is the most
heavily on narration and pretty words important thing that needs to come
and pretty prose, which is not a bad Brown’s secret to writing short across to the reader at this moment?
thing. That’s still a good skill to have. “When any character in a graphic And how do I say that in the least
But my dialogue and character inter- novel speaks, they’re saying maybe amount of space?’ It definitely made
action chops weren’t as strong as they 25 to 30 words max. Working in this me realize how wordy I am. But it was
could be because I didn’t work in that medium made me realize how many a good skill to practice.”
muscle for so long. And since I could words are actually in a sentence be-
not lean on that for the graphic nov- cause at first, I was like, ‘OK, that’s a Toni Fitzgerald is the copy editor for
el, I had to really step up the charac- lot,’ and then I started writing, and I The Writer. She also edits books for
ter interaction and showing who the was like, ‘Oh wait, that’s actually not self-published and querying authors.
character is right off the bat and with a lot.’ I realized I needed to get to the Find her online: tonifitz76.com.
WRITERMAG.COM 61
HOW TO COMBINE
LIVED EXPERIENCES
WITH RESEARCH TO CRAFT
A MEMOIR THAT COVERS
NEW GROUND.
By Melissa Hart
63
A
uthor and journalist The result was Sweet Spot: An Ice apologizing to her son, and a man who
Amy Ettinger never Cream Binge Across America, a re- lost his family to a drunk driver.
expected to get car- searched memoir that weaves the au- A veteran teacher of memoir, both
jacked in Milwau- thor’s childhood experiences with ice short and book-length, Shapiro be-
kee while reporting cream as emotional solace into anec- lieves research adds depth to memoir,
on frozen custard dotes about ice cream truck turf wars offering readers insight into a top-
for her researched memoir about her and brutal competitions among arti- ic beyond the author’s own story. A
lifetime love of ice cream. “When I set san ice-cream makers and the history glance at this year’s bestselling titles
out to write my book, I imagined a lot behind the country’s adoration of this confirms the popularity of researched
of eating and talking,” she says. “That frozen dessert. memoirs, among them Danyel Smith’s
turned out to be the case, but I also had Writer and professor Susan Shapiro Shine Bright: A Very Personal History
adventures that were both scary and has been writing book-length memoir of Black Women in Pop; Imani Perry’s
thrilling.” for two decades. She’s the author, most South to America: A Journey Below the
Ettinger initially planned to write recently, of The Bosnia List: A Memoir Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of
a memoir about growing up in Sili- of War, Exile, and Return, co-written a Nation; and Danica Roem’s Burn the
con Valley in the 1980s as the young- with Kenan Trebinčević, as well as The Page: A True Story of Torching Doubts,
est child in a dysfunctional family, a Forgiveness Tour: How to Find the Per- Blazing Trails, and Igniting Change.
kid who felt like an outcast at school. fect Apology. She tried for 10 years to Intrigued about how to blend your
When she realized she didn’t have write the latter book as a memoir about personal narrative with research, inter-
enough material to fill a book, she dealing with a bitter personal betray- views, and boots-on-the ground inves-
changed her focus. “I noticed all these al by a trusted advisor before realizing tigation? Read on!
artisanal ice cream shops opening up,” she needed to expand the book into an
she says. “I’d read Steve Almond’s Can- exploration of how to forgive someone Invoke the reader’s memory with
dyfreak – which is a blend of memoir who refuses to apologize. She ended up your own
and reporting – and I thought that I interviewing religious leaders for their Ettinger found herself leaning heavily
wanted to do something similar with views on forgiveness as well as victims of on her master’s degree in journalism
ice cream and bring out the rich history sexual assault and genocide, a Holocaust when she considered how to structure
of the dessert in this country.” survivor, a mother who spent eight years her memoir. “There was the trend sto-
ry of artisanal ice cream. But there were
also the newsy stories of ice cream truck
wars and extreme flavors like foie gras
that I wanted to incorporate as well,”
she explains. “I included stories of soda
fountains and little-known novelties.”
She knew that she had to tap into
readers’ own nostalgia around ice cream
if she wanted her book to be successful.
“I wanted to share my childhood mem-
ories, but I wanted the book to invoke
the reader’s memory, too,” she says.
In the service of her readers, Etting-
er enrolled in an ice cream boot camp
and visited Milwaukee, the unofficial
“Frozen Custard Capital of the World,”
where custard is made in a machine so
large, it’s nicknamed the “iron lung.”
It was here that she got carjacked, just
weeks after signing her book contract.
“It was one of the most frightening
moments of my life and one I decided
that I needed to include in the book,”
Ettinger says. “I made a decision to keep
reporting the book the way I originally
envisioned, and so within the month, I
traveled across the country again.”
Offer insight into little-known Stories and Recipes from Poona to LA. food in France, that’s what you have in
stories Along with family stories and In- my state, times 10.”
Chef and cookbook author Kaumudi dian myths and legends, Marathé also
Marathé grew up in India and Cana- wanted to teach readers about the his- Make a big story palatable
da, surrounded by stories. Both of her tory of India before and after it gained and interesting
parents were professors of English lit- independence in 1947. “I discovered Keith Mason, author of the memoir
erature; her mother told tales of living that in my family, there were freedom Please Stand Up, never intended to
in India, and her father acted out his fighters and activists fighting to pre- write a personal history. He started
childhood stories along with the books vent child marriage and to encourage out as a newspaper journalist, then
he read to her and her brother. widow remarriage. Women used to be worked in public relations and non-
Marathé began compiling her fam- married very young to much older men profit development. And then, five
ily’s narratives in a friend’s cottage and widowed by the age of 16,” she years ago, he discovered something
on Lake Michigan, writing down the says. “I’m hoping my storytelling will that compelled him to put his person-
amazing anecdotes she’d heard from provide insight into how my ancestor al story down on paper.
her mom for decades. “But when I helped change that history that wasn’t “Some people seek out the memoir
wrote the first one down, it was just known before.” form, and others have memoir thrust
two paragraphs,” she confesses. “I real- Because Marathé works as a chef, upon them,” Mason says, referring
ized I had to do something in order to she also incorporated a wealth of food to the moment he was idly scrolling
flesh out the story.” details and recipes from her grand- through the results of some keywords
Like Ettinger, Marathé has a back- mothers and great-grandmothers. “I on his basement computer and dis-
ground in journalism. She began to wanted to introduce Americans to real covered YouTube footage of the fa-
research the stories she’d grown up regional Indian food,” she says. “People ther he’d never known, in a clip of the
with. “I talked to my father and talk- generally lump Indian food into one long-running game show To Tell the
ed to my mother and delved into the category, which there isn’t in India. My Truth from 1961.
family archives,” she says. The result state, Maharashtra, is the size of France. “He’d left before I was born, and I
was her memoir Shared Tables: Family So if you imagine the diversity of the was raised by my single mom and my
WRITERMAG.COM 65
grandparents,” Mason says. “I knew
only a little – that he was a deep-sea
salvage diver who searched for treasure
and bodies on sunken U-boats, but I
never wanted to dignify this man with
my curiosity.”
That all changed when he saw his
father on the vintage video. He spent
three years investigating the man and
uncovered his journalist grandfather’s
murder, his father’s seven marriages,
and eight siblings he’d never known ex-
isted, including a brother who worked
as an Ohio homicide detective.
“I was living through this process
and furiously scribbling notes,” Mason
says. “I said to myself, ‘Well, I’ll give
it three months and come up with 12
pages, and some magazine will buy
it.’ And that turned into four or five
months and 20 pages, which turned
into a short story, which turned into
a year and a half and a novella length
and then became a four-year experience
of research, meeting relatives, living it,
and writing it day by day.”
He tracked down his father’s div-
ing colleagues and interviewed them
about their work in New England in
the 1960s. “They gave me what I need-
ed to illuminate a new world for myself
“If you’re trying to River: A Memoir About a Very Open
Adoption, did just that. She wrote a
and the reader: what a diver’s solitary figure out what short personal essay for the parenting
life was like, the water pressure and the section of the New York Times, titled
equipment to deal with it, the sharks should be in your “The Birth Parents Move In.” In it, she
and the fatalities,” he says. “They de- memoir, write down described how she invited her daugh-
scribed what they did when they got ter’s birth parents to move in with her
past 30 feet in the North Atlantic and the stories that you after they became homeless.
you couldn’t see your hand in front of
your face.”
tend to tell at a “It felt like something people hadn’t
seen much before,” McGrady explains
Mason ended up telling his story dinner party or the of the memoir that took her five years
in a non-linear style, jumping between to research and write. “There’s a lot
various time frames to illuminate his
stories that come of misinformation about who birth
father’s life and work, his grandfather’s up in your family parents are and why people choose
as a crusading reporter, and his own. “I to place their children for adoption.
did my best to take this huge story and over and over again.” One common misconception is that
make Please Stand Up interesting and they don’t love their children. That is
funny for your average reader,” he says. so patently, ignorantly false because it’s
such a heartbreakingly loving choice
Start small and expand as needed to make, to realize the limits of your
Shapiro advises that if you’re not sure own capacity and to hand the child to
whether your story would be appeal- somebody else.”
ing as a book-length memoir, pub- Her memoir takes a deep dive into
lish a three-page version of it and see the lives of her daughter’s birth par-
whether it resonates with readers. Va- ents. She shares insights into what it
nessa McGrady, author of Rock Needs means to be homeless in Los Angeles,
explaining how her daughter’s birth oneself from a memoirist writing for
mother tried to get a job at a super- MORE other people with the goal of creating a
market or fast food restaurant, but no RESEARCHED remarkable story.
one would hire her. Readers learn that Marathé urges writers to keep copi-
most shelters ask residents to leave ear-
MEMOIRS ous notes about their lives. “If I read a
ly in the morning with their suitcases
TO EXPLORE journal entry, it brings back smells, mu-
or backpacks. “You can’t go to a job sic, the tastes of what I’m writing about,”
American Gypsy: a Memoir
interview like that,” McGrady notes. she says. “I can remember my grand-
BY OKSANA MARAFIOTI
“There are so many systems that need mother’s skin just by looking at a journal
to change.” ◆◆◆ entry that I once made about her.”
The narrative in her memoir is also The Cooking Gene: Marathé also suggests writing at least
informed by details about open adop- A Journey Through African 500 words a day. “If you’re trying to fig-
tion – that is, an adoption in which American Culinary History ure out what should be in your memoir,
birth parents and adoptive parents and in the Old South write down the stories that you tend to
the child all know one another. “Adop- BY MICHAEL W. TWITTY tell at a dinner party or the stories that
tion is everywhere. It’s in every epic sto- come up in your family over and over
ry, it’s in every epic myth,” McGrady ◆◆◆ again,” she says. “Those stories with vis-
points out. “But I don’t think people Flying Free: My Victory ceral memories are probably visceral for
always have a mature understanding of Over Fear to Become a reason. Don’t worry so much about
what open adoption means.” the First Latina Pilot on how the story will progress at first. Just
She hoped her blend of research and the US Aerobatic Team get the scenes down.”
personal anecdote would offer readers BY CECILIA ARAGON Ettinger points out that memoir-
insight into the motives of someone ◆◆◆ ists spend a lot of time alone with their
placing a child up for adoption. “There manuscripts. “The great thing about
are so many systems that work against A Honeybee Heart Has immersive journalism,” she notes, “is
new parents in this country,” she says. Five Openings: A Year of that it forces the writer to talk to oth-
“I hope my readers will become more Keeping Bees er people and engage in conversations
compassionate around the idea of BY HELEN JUKES with the world. I always tell writers to
birth parents and more compassionate ◆◆◆ start there, even though it can feel scary
around adoption in general. It has so to call up a stranger.”
The Master Plan:
much nuance.” Calling up strangers led her to one
My Journey from Life in
of the most thrilling moments of re-
Prison to a Life of Purpose
Read, research, and write porting her memoir – riding on the
BY CHRIS WILSON
Mason suggests that writers embark- back of an ice cream truck in Benson-
ing on a book-length memoir learn ◆◆◆ hurst, Brooklyn, with “Maria the Ice
as much as they can about the art of Old in Art School: Cream Truck Girl.” “It was a childhood
constructing real life for readers. For A Memoir of Starting Over dream come true,” Ettinger says, “but
him, that meant seeking out perspec- BY NELL PAINTER also nothing like I expected, which
tives that helped him improve on his made for great writing.”
prior short-form storytelling skills, in- ◆◆◆ She found that people across the
cluding Rebecca McClanahan’s Word Once I Was You: country were eager to talk with her
Painting: A Guide to Writing More A Memoir of Love and Hate about their passions – in this case,
Descriptively and Roy Peter Clark’s The in a Torn America frozen desserts. “I started Sweet Spot
Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets BY MARIA HINOJOSA by spending the day with a fascinat-
of 25 Great Works of Literature Will ◆◆◆ ing ice cream maker in my hometown
Improve Your Writing. who didn’t hold back on his opinions
“Maybe you grew up on a farm Tastes Like War about the dark underbelly of the ice
and had an interesting life. Maybe you BY GRACE M. CHO cream world,” she says. “Find those
went to Madagascar and learned how ◆◆◆ people and give them a chance to tell
to make pottery. To relate that in ways you their stories.”
Uncovered: How I
that will help the reader care, you have
Left Hasidic Life and
to bolster your own insights and devel- Contributing Editor Melissa Hart is
Finally Came Home
op your writing skills as much as pos- the author of two memoirs: Gringa and
BY LEAH LAX
sible,” he says. The attention to craft, Wild Within: How Rescuing Owls
he adds, separates a person writing for Inspired a Family. melissahart.com
WRITERMAG.COM 67
My book took me 30 years to finish –
and I’m glad it did. Here’s why.
By Susan Ito
68
My memoir in essays, detailing my life as an adopted, biracial Japanese American, began as
my MFA thesis back in the early ’90s. My plan was to take a year post-graduation to polish
up the manuscript, send it out to agents, and have it snatched up by a publisher. If you had
told me then that my book wouldn’t be published for another 30 years, I’m not sure what I
would have done.
Perhaps I should have listened more carefully to my thesis advisor, Sheila. After congratu-
lating me on the successful completion of my 90-page manuscript, Sheila offered, gently, that
perhaps the book “wasn’t ready to be out in the world yet.” I vaguely recall her using words
like “premature,” “needs time to marinate,” and “distance.” I was indignant. Furious, actually.
“Maybe you’re too close to the story to be able to write about it right now,” Sheila suggest-
ed. “Or maybe the full arc of the story isn’t complete yet.” I vehemently disagreed. I’d searched
for and met my birth mother over 20 years earlier, and the roller coaster of our reunion al-
ready seemed to contain a thousand arcs.
Of course, Sheila was right.
The story was incomplete – until now. medical records from my birth out of an unsus-
I had no way of knowing it at the time, but the pecting gynecologist’s office and then using sever-
long arc of understanding the nature of family and al pre-internet sleuthing methods – including por-
identity would be many more years in the making. ing through hundreds of tissue-paper-thin pages
It took the deaths of several important relatives, of phone books. Even though she’d initially been
as well as the birth of a grandchild, before I fully taken aback at being discovered, my birth moth-
grasped what the circle of life was all about. These er eventually warmed to me, and we became pen
elements focused my adoption story into crucial pals with occasional visits. I was largely a secret to
perspective and gave my book the depth and layer- most of her family. But I felt hopeful that eventu-
ing it really needed. ally, my existence would be shared with more peo-
When I began my book, I was starry-eyed about ple in her circle. The decades since then have in-
my birth mother. I had located her by stealing the cluded hurt, outrage, multiple estrangements, and
fragile reconnections. I learned that a simple word
like “reunion” wasn’t a one-time thing and wasn’t
sufficient to encompass the complicated nature of
meeting ambivalent biological kin.
Since the first book draft, I have grieved the losses
of both of my adoptive parents, given birth to two
of my own children, experienced two very different
abortions, and welcomed a grandchild into my life.
My definition of family and my beliefs about repro-
ductive choice have also deepened and expanded in
every direction and given me more appreciation for
the nuance of my birth mother’s life and choices.
Back when my book was in its earliest stages, I
was impatient to just get it done. I eyed those cov-
eted “30-under-30” lists (and then 35 and eventu-
ally 40). But those literary accolades slipped away
as I blew out more candles on more cakes. My hus-
band, trying to console me, once murmured, “But
honey, look at Frank McCourt. He was in his 60s
69
when he published Angela’s Ashes. There’s no hur- When my own first short story was published a
ry.” I almost threw a book at him. I yelled, “Don’t few years later, I didn’t hold back. It was a self-pub-
talk to me about Frank McCourt! He’s ancient!” lished, little-known anthology that I’d discovered
Now that I am edging close to the age that Frank in the back of a writing magazine, but it didn’t mat-
McCourt was with his first book, I see him as a kin- ter. There was no byline too small or unimportant.
dred spirit, not as a symbol of imminent mortality. My name was in print. I invited everyone I knew
to come over for champagne and cake, and I read
I am a better writer than I was when my story to everyone assembled in my living room.
I first started. It was a milestone I never thought I’d accomplish.
This might seem obvious, but when I look back on I started signing up for writing classes wherever
some of the things I wrote decades ago, I experi- I could find them, from the local university’s ex-
ence more than a little cringe. I was fresh out of an tension program to writers’ living rooms. Sharing
MFA program and felt like I was a real writer! I was bits of our souls on paper was shockingly intimate.
an expert at my craft! Such naïve confidence. Many Until I started meeting with other writers, I didn’t
years of practice have not only improved my sen- realize how deeply personal it was. After several
tence-level skills, but I have had countless opportu- years, I gathered enough courage to apply to grad-
nities to hone my writing, often through teaching. uate school. Eventually, my MFA cohort became
I have learned from my hundreds of students as some of my closest friends. My writing circle ex-
well as from talented and generous colleagues, and panded from casually being acquainted with one
my work is better for it. When I have the chance to writer to a larger and ever-growing community.
take a class from another writer whose work I ad- In 2012, I joined the Writers Grotto, a writing
mire, I jump at it. I have taken brief as well as lon- community and co-working space in San Francis-
ger workshops on everything from point of view co, and my sense of connection and community
to voice to the issues of writing about family. Each grew even more. This bustling hub of journal-
one of these has enriched my sense of craft. ists, novelists, poets, and other freelancers was
electrifying as we gathered in the lunchroom to
I now have a much more established talk about our current projects. In the entry hall,
network and community of writers. framed covers of books that had been written in
While writing is a solitary activity, a writer’s life the Grotto made a stunning mosaic on the wall.
depends so much on community – and that’s An annual tradition celebrating all the published
something I’ve built up over decades. Back in the books of the year involved all 100-plus members
early ’90s, before I became serious about writing, I crowding into the conference room to cheer and
worked primarily as a physical therapist and an or- the lauded authors climbing onto a coffee table to
ganizer in a health-related nonprofit. I didn’t per- speak a few words and raise their books in the air.
sonally know other writers. I remember scribbling Every time it happened, I murmured, “I want my
excitedly in my journal, “I’ve met a real writer!!!!” coffee-table moment!” and others would assure
after my husband and I had brunch with one of me that it would come. (Alas, the Grotto had to
his co-workers and their partner Jane, who had a vacate its prior space due to the pandemic, and
byline in a local weekly newspaper. When I recog- that coffee table ended up at the dump.)
nized Jane’s name in print, I leaped out of my chair. It was at the Grotto that I began to truly under-
“I know her! I know her!” with the fervor of a dev- stand what it meant to be a literary citizen – inte-
otee. I knew a WRITER. Someone whose words grated into a hive of other writers who were there
and name were actually printed in the newspaper. to encourage, support, attend each others’ book
launches, champion each other on social media, them will share the news when my book enters
read and give feedback on works in progress. I am the world. I enjoy interacting with others on so-
infinitely grateful that my book will be launched cial media and have built relationships there. I am
when I have this invaluable community to sur- relieved not to be starting out just months before
round me on the figurative coffee table of honor a book launch. When asked when a writer should
and to help me navigate the daunting channels of join social media, a panelist at a writers’ confer-
publication, publicity, and events. ence I attended answered, “Ten years ago.”
Speaking of social media – there was no Finally, I am 30 years more mature

such thing when I began my book. as a human.
Thirty years ago, many publishers spent big bucks Thirty years ago, even though I thought I was, I
sending authors out on tours. It was often hit or wasn’t emotionally ready to be a published author
miss that a bookstore in another city would attract sharing a vulnerable story. Not only did the outer
an audience. Today, with social media, podcasts, story need completion, but so also did my inner
and Zoom, books can be targeted to specific au- journey. Now, I am ready to have this story out in
diences – e.g., the adoptee community – and au- the world, and I feel prepared to weather the storm
thors can connect directly with readers. of what it might mean to share such an intimate,
I had the opportunity to co-edit an anthol- vulnerable, and personal part of myself. I also feel
ogy in 1999, and the modest book tour that my like it matters less. I don’t need the book to be a
co-editor and I organized was a sad and laughable bestseller (although I wouldn’t mind!). I have ful-
(or weepable) effort. We were invited to one book filling and meaningful work as a teacher, and I’m
event in a city on the day of a blizzard, and we sat not relying on book sales for financial survival. Be-
on a stage in a 500-seat auditorium with a dozen ing a writer is important to me, but it’s not all of my
audience members. Although we had discussed identity, and my definition of “success” is different
the event on a radio show that morning, and it had than what it was decades ago. At this point, if I am
been featured in a tiny clip in the Entertainment able to connect with and move even a modest num-
section of the local newspaper, the snow seemed ber of readers, I will feel successful.
to have scared everyone away. And so our little My 30-years-ago self would never have believed
book tour debut simply came and went. There was it if I had told her that waiting this long for my first
no way to broadcast the event over Zoom or to book would have been acceptable, or even prefera-
post details on social media. We had no Twitter, ble. I understand the frustration that many writers
Facebook, or Instagram. Now, it has taken a long feel when it seems that their literary dreams are tak-
13 years (Twitter just told me about my Twitter- ing forever. “Better late than never” for me has re-
versary), but I have amassed a solid 7,200 follow- ally been a case of “better late than earlier.” It’s sad
ers, many of them writers, readers, and others who that I won’t be able to invite my MFA mentor Sheila
are interested in adoption, reproductive justice or to any of my book events; she advised me well, but
multiracial experience, and I hope that some of she didn’t live to see this moment. In a beautiful full
circle, though, I’m now teaching and mentoring stu-
dents in the same MFA program, and some of my
other prior professors are now treasured colleagues.
I’m scouting around at garage sales for a sturdy
coffee table to climb on next year to celebrate this
book that came when its time had finally arrived.
Susan Ito is the author of The Mouse Room.

She co-edited the literary anthology A Ghost At
Heart’s Edge: Stories & Poems of Adoption. Her
work has appeared in Growing Up Asian Amer-
ican, Choice, Hyphen, Hip Mama, Catapult,
The Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. She
teaches at the Writers Grotto, Mills College and
Bay Path University. Her theatrical adaption of
Untold, stories of reproductive stigma, was pro-
duced at Brava Theater. Her memoir in essays is
forthcoming from the Ohio State University Press.
WRITERMAG.COM 71
Join us!
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17
More Than Words Books
Boston, Mass.
Sponsored by
Submit a 10-page fiction or
nonfiction manuscript to receive a
written critique from one of our staff
members. We’ll include in-depth
Located in Boston’s feedback on what’s working well in
beautiful South End, your draft and what perhaps needs
More Than Words some improvement. All participants
Books is a nonprofit will receive their critique onsite in
organization and their conference registration packet.
bookstore that serves
as a job training
and development
program for system-
involved youth.
We have secured a special discounted

rate for conference attendees at the AC
Hotel by Marriott Boston Downtown,
located just five minutes from the
More Than Words Bookstore.
8:30 A.M. REGISTRATION BEGINS
9:00 – 9:40 WELCOME & WRITING WARM-UP
FINGER ON THE PULSE: A BOOKSELLER’S PERSPECTIVE

9:40 – 10:20 ON WHAT MAKES BOOKS FLY OFF THE SHELF
If you’re working on a story and
it’s going nowhere, the problem
PIXELS TO PLATFORM:
10:30 – 11:20 MARKETING FOR CREATIVE PEOPLE may lie with your protagonist,
and not with your plot. In
this generative session, join
11:20 – NOON PANEL: WHAT I WISH I’D KNOWN author, editor, and The Writer
columnist Yi Shun Lai for a
deep dive into your characters’
12:00 – 1:00 LUNCH personalities, their motives, and
their backstories – and learn how
those can drive your plot in true
1:00 – 2:15 FICTION & NONFICTION TRACKS: SESSION 1 page-turning fashion.
2:30 – 3:45 FICTION & NONFICTION TRACKS: SESSION 2
4:00 – 5:00 PANEL: HELP! I NEED SOMEBODY
5:00 – 6:00 COCKTAIL HOUR

Learn more details or register
to secure your spot at
*This schedule is subject to change. writermag.com/twc
The following conferences, retreats, and festivals are a small
sampling of what the industry has to offer. You’ll find more market
listings at writermag.com. Some conferences have been postponed
or moved online due to the pandemic. The information here was
current when we went to press. Be sure to check organizations’
websites for the very latest updates.
THE MONTHS AHEAD

KATSIARYNA PLESHAKOVA/SHUTTERSTOCK; ANYAPL/SHUTTERSTOCK
Aug. 2 Aug. 8 Aug. 9 Aug. 14

American essayist, novelist, poet, In honor of “Sneak Some Zucchini It’s National Book Lovers Day! Happy 75th birthday to novelist
and playwright James Baldwin is Into Your Neighbor’s Porch Day” – Leave an online review of one Danielle Steel, the fourth-best-
born on this day 98 years ago. which, yes, is apparently really a of your favorite recent reads to selling fiction author of all time.
thing – write a cozy mystery story celebrate.
featuring summer’s most prolific
vegetable.
Writing Conferences
Strength
in numbers
Information in this section is provided to The Writer by the individual markets and
events; for more information, contact those entities directly. Writing conferences, retreats,
and festivals are some of the
ARIZONA Monterey Writer Retreat best places to hone your craft
ALTA Conference Monterey, April (date TBA). Author-agent and learn from some of the top
Virtual, April-November. The 45th professionals offer one-on-one sessions names in the field, but they also
annual ALTA Conference will be held with writers, including line editing and offer the unique opportunity to
virtually with sessions each month, mentorship of short stories or novel
meet fellow writers. In what can
with the theme “Values.” Two Thurs- manuscripts.
often be a solitary career, it’s
days each month feature panels and/or Contact: Algonkian Writer Conferences.
roundtables. Bilingual readings will take 2020 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, Suite 443, important for you to network
place the last Tuesday of each month, Washington, D.C. 20006. and get feedback on your
followed by a social hour. Workshops info@algonkianconferences.com writing. Here are three perks you
will take place in August. Pitch ses- montereywritersretreat.com should take advantage of at any
sions will also take place in September. conference:
Check the event website for special Southern California Writers’
programming throughout September Conference – Los Angeles MAKE A FRIEND.
and October. Irvine, Sept. 16-18. Devoted to writers of Finding a like-minded, or maybe
Contact: American Literary Translators all levels and limited to 150 attendees, not-so-like-minded, writer to
Association. The University of Arizona, the SCWC features dozens of interactive bring into your inner circle can
Esquire Building #205, 1230 N Park Ave. troubleshooting and read and critique be priceless. You can each
Tucson, AZ 85721. Communications & workshops. The event has facilitated
help each other brainstorm, get
Awards Manager Rachael Daum, some $4 million in first-time authors’
through rough writing patches,
rachaeldaum@literarytranslators.org book and screen deals since 1986.
and read new work.
literarytranslators.org Contact: Southern California Writers’
Conference. Michael Steven Gregory,
CALIFORNIA executive director.
La Jolla Writer’s Conference msg@writersconference.com LEARN A LOT.
San Diego, Nov. 4-6. Learn about the writersconference.com/la Attend workshops that speak to
art, craft, and business of writing with you – and as many of them as
lectures and workshops. Offers approx- COLORADO possible. Getting advice from
imately 80 classes. Faculty includes Colorado Gold Writers Conference writers who have been in your
authors, agents, publishers, and Denver, Sept. 9-11. This annual three- shoes and learning the methods
publicists. day conference hosted by the Rocky
that work for them can make
Contact: La Jolla Writer’s Conference. Mountain Fiction Writers features a vari-
your entire conference experi-
lajollawritersconference.com ety of workshops, panels, pitch session,
ence worthwhile.
and networking with authors, editors,
Litquake and agents.
San Francisco, October 6-22. The Contact: Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers.
largest independent literary festival on P.O. Box 711, Montrose, CO 81402. WRITE.
the West Coast, this multi-day event in- website_liaison@rmfw.org The whole point of attending a
cludes panel discussions, cross-media rmfw.org conference is to discover more
events, and hundreds of readings, plus about your own writing style. Use
the now-famous Lit Crawl through the Women Writing the West the energy surrounding the event
Mission District. Oct. 20-22. Explore writing and publish- as inspiration and maintain that
Contact: Litquake. 342 Rome St., San ing’s new frontiers while celebrating the
momentum once you get back
Francisco, CA 94112. pioneering spirit of the West. Three days
home and are back to the lonely
415-440-4177. of inspiring, learning, and networking
task of working solo.
info@litquake.org while telling the stories of the women’s
litquake.org West. Theme for the 28th annual confer-
ence is “Red Earth Voices: We All Have a
Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference Story to Tell.”
Mendocino and Fort Bragg Aug. 4-6. Contact: Women Writing the West, Attn:
The 32nd Annual Mendocino Coast Administrator Alice Trego, P.O. Box 1886,
Writers Conference will feature morn- Durango, CO 81302.
ing workshops and afternoon events. www2trego@gmail.com
Karen Tei Yamashita will deliver the womenwritingthewest.org
keynote address.
JESADAPHORN/SHUTTERSTOCK
Contact: Mendocino Coast Writers DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Conference, P.O. Box 2087, Fort Bragg, Library of Congress National Book Festival
CA 95437. Washington, D.C. Sept. 3. This annual
info@mcwc.org event, hosted at the Walter E. Wash-
mcwc.org ington Convention Center, is free and
WRITERMAG.COM 75
open to the public. This year’s theme is KENTUCKY Crime and Mystery Writers of America.
“Books Bring Us Together.” A selection Kentucky Book Fair Features manuscript critiques, agent
of programs will also be livestreamed, Lexington, Oct. 29. A full day of programs pitches, master classes, and plenty of
and video of all presentations can be and more than 150 authors on-site to opportunities to meet with other mystery
viewed online after the in-person festi- meet-and-greet and sign books. Check writers and fans.
val concludes. website for additional information. Contact: New England Crime Bake.
Contact: National Book Festival, Library Contact: Kentucky Book Fair. 206 E. contact@crimebake.org
of Congress, 101 Independence Ave. Maxwell St., Lexington, KY 40508. crimebake.org
S.E., Washington, D.C. 20540. 859-257- 4317.
202-707-5000. kybookfestival@gmail.com Viable Paradise
blogs.loc.gov/national-book-festival/ kybookfestival.org Martha’s Vineyard, Oct. 16-21. A one-
2021 week residential workshop in writing and
Kentucky Women Writers Conference selling commercial science fiction and
GEORGIA TBD. No decision had been made at fantasy. Features extensive time spent
AJC Decatur Book Festival press time about the conference, with award-winning authors and profes-
Decatur, Oct. 1. The independent book which did not take place in 2021 due sional editors in the field, both one-on-
festival also includes a keynote the to COVID. A women’s literary festival one and in group sessions. Must apply
night before the event on Sept. 30. The at the Carnegie Center for Literacy for admission through June 1.
festival will highlight selected authors and Learning featuring workshops for Contact: MVSFA, 351 Pleasant St., Suite
with new fall publications, featured in writers, evening readings, and events B157, Northampton, MA, 01060.
15 sessions and presented in three that are open to the community. Past contact@viableparadise.com
tracks: adult fiction, adult nonfiction, featured guests include Jami Attenberg, viableparadise.net
and children and youth. Mahogany L. Browne, Bridgett M. Davis,
Contact: AJC Decatur Book Festival, and more. The Writer’s Conference
500 S. Columbia Dr., Decatur, GA Contact: Kentucky Women Writers. 232 Boston, September 17. Join The Writer
30030. E. Maxwell St., Lexington, KY 40506. for a day of craft and camaraderie in
info@ decaturbookfestival.com kentuckywomenwriters@gmail.com Boston’s historic South End. Choose
decaturbookfestival.com womenwriters.as.uky.edu from fiction or nonfiction tracks featuring
classes taught by Kerrie Flanagan, Toni
FLORIDA LOUISIANA Fitzgerald, and Gabriela Pereira or opt to
Sanibel Island Writers Louisiana Book Festival attend Yi Shun Lai’s Fiction Masterclass.
Conference Baton Rouge, Oct. 29. Free and open to Optional 10-page manuscript critiques
Sanibel Island, Nov. 3-5. Open to writers the public. Features author readings and are also available.
in all stages of their careers. The event an exhibit hall of booksellers, publishing Contact: The Writer.
offers workshops in fiction, poetry, song- houses, and scholarly programs. conference@madavor.com
writing, children’s literature, journalism, Contact: Louisiana Book Festival. Robert writermag.com/the-writers-conference
screenwriting, and creative nonfiction; Wilson, Assistant Director, 701 N. Fourth
panels in publishing and editing; and St., Baton Rouge, LA 70802. MISSOURI
readings, keynote addresses, and 225-219-9503. American Christian Fiction Writers
concerts. lbf@state.lib.la.us Annual Conference
Contact: Sanibel Island Writers louisianabookfestival.org St. Louis, Sept. 8-11. Network with liter-
Conference, Reed Hall 242, Florida Gulf ary agents and Christian publishing hous-
Coast University, 10501 FGCU Blvd. S, MASSACHUSETTS es. This conference allows attendants
Fort Myers, FL 33965. Tom DeMarchi, New England Crime Bake the opportunity to interact with other
director. Dedham, November, 11-13. Hosted by writers and present their ideas to agents
fgcu.edu/siwc the New England Chapters of Sisters in and editors.
THE MONTHS AHEAD
Sept. 3 Sept. 4 Sept. 6 Sept. 14-16

The two-day Library of Congress The winners of the 2022 Hugo The Booker Prize shortlist The longlists in the National
National Book Festival kicks Awards will be announced at a picks are scheduled to be Book Award categories will be
off at the Walter E. Washington ceremony at Worldcon in Chicago. released today. announced during this time.
Convention Center in Washington,
IRINA STRELNIKOVA/SHUTTERSTOCK
D.C., today.
Contact: Robin Miller, Conference Direc-
tor, ACFW, P.O. Box 101066, Palm Bay,
Summer Fishtrap 2022
Enterprise, July 11-17. Choose a week- Classifieds
FL 32910. long nonfiction workshop focused on your
director@acfw.com favorite genre: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, READERS: Use caution when entering into any
acfw.com/conference memoir, short story, or children’s liter- legal contract with a literary service offering
ature. Aspiring and established writers agenting-type assistance or publishers who
MONTANA welcome. charge for publication. If you have any con-
cerns regarding the advertiser’s commitment or
Montana Book Festival Contact: Fishtrap, Inc. PO Box 38, claims, please contact the advertiser directly.
Missoula, Sept. 15-18. Features authors Enterprise, OR 97828.
with readings, panels, exhibits, demon- 541-426-3623. ADVERTISERS: We do not accept ads from
strations, workshops, and receptions. Email from website. agents or businesses that charge a reading or
marketing fee. For our private records, please
Contact: Montana Book Festival. fishtrap.org provide us with a street address and contact
montanabookfestival@gmail.com telephone number. The Writer reserves the
montanabookfestival.com Southampton Writers Conference right to reject or cancel any advertising which
Southampton, July 6-10. Offers intensive at its discretion is deemed objectionable, mis-
leading, or not in the best interest of the reader.
NEVADA workshop sessions led by distinguished
Las Vegas Book Festival authors as well as readings, lectures, SEND YOUR AD TO: The Writer, Sales Account
Las Vegas, Oct. 22. A celebration of the panels, and discussions. Focuses Manager, 35 Braintree Hill Office Park, Suite
written, spoken, and illustrated word. include novels, short stories, poetry, cre- 101, Braintree, MA 02184 or call (617) 706-
9089. Email: teunice@madavor.com. Major
Offers a wide range of programs built ative nonfiction, memoir, and children’s credit cards accepted.
around sharing resources, develop- literature intensive.
ing audiences, advancing the craft of Contact: Southampton Arts, Stony Brook
writing, and sharing the joys of reading. Southampton, 239 Montauk Hwy., CONFERENCES
Most events are free and open to the Southampton, NY 11968.
public. 631-632-5007. CAPE COD WRITERS CENTER
Contact: Las Vegas Book Festival. christian.mclean@stonybrook.edu
59th Annual Writers Conference
Email from website. stonybrook.edu/commcms/writers/ Hyannis, Cape Cod
vegasvalleybookfestival.org about.php Virtual: August 4-6, 2022
NEW JERSEY OREGON

www.capecodwriterscenter.org
Murphy Writing Conferences Portland Book Festival
Various dates. The program run through Portland, November, date TBA. No CONTESTS
Stockton University now includes in- decision had been made on this year as
person and online-only events. Check of press time. Portland’s famed literary Call for entries: 2023 Colorado Prize for Poetry.
$2,500 honorarium and book publication. Submit
website for schedule. community thrives during this one-day book-length collection of poems by January 14, 2023.
Contact: Murphy Writing of Stockton event (formerly called Wordstock) that The $25 entry fee includes one-year subscription
University. 2200 Fairmount Ave., Atlantic includes author events, workshops, to Colorado Review. Obtain complete guidelines by
City, NJ 08401. readings, concerts, a book fair, and sending SASE or visiting website. Colorado Prize for
Poetry, Center for Literary Publishing, 9105 Campus
609-626-3594. more. Delivery, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO
info@murphywriting.com Contact: Literary Arts. 925 SW 80523-9105. https://coloradoprize.colostate.edu.
murphywriting.com Washington St., Portland, OR 97205.
503-227-2583 EDITING/CRITIQUING
NEW MEXICO la@literary-arts.org PROFESSIONAL EDITOR, Award-winning Author
Green River Writers Memoir literary-arts.org (Bantam, Berkley/Ace, others) offers extensive
Writing Workshop critiques, respectful in-depth editing. Fiction,
Las Vegas, July 16-17. Writing-intensive Willamette Writers non-fiction, juvenile/YA. Carol Gaskin 941-377-7640.
Email: Carol@EditorialAlchemy.com or website:
program using memoir as a starting Portland, Aug. 5-7. Happening in person www.EditorialAlchemy.com
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Contact: Green River Workshops. Alice Contact: Willamette Writers. and bring them to fruition in the world before depres-
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carney.aw@gmail.com mention Writer ad. Email: jilldearman@gmail.com.
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Highlights Foundation Workshops SERVICES
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Contact: Brooklyn Book Festival. writers, art directors, publishers,
and agents. See website for list of It’s possible to learn to be funnier.
Email from website. Visit www.ThinkingFunny.com humor-writing resources,
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WRITERMAG.COM
Contact: Highlights Foundation, 814 and writing retreat for women entering
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Email from website. – the perfect time and place to inspire
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GET
Lancaster, Aug. 12-14. Hippocampus Contact: Page Lambert.
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writing conference features notable pagelambert.com/river-journeys
speakers. Also included are attendee-
led breakout sessions in four VERMONT
SOCIAL
tracks, interactive panels, readings, Brattleboro Literary Festival
social activities, and networking Brattleboro, Oct. 13-16. A four-day cele-
opportunities. bration including readings, panel discus-
Contact: HippoCamp. sions, and special events with emerging
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SOUTH DAKOTA Contact: Brattleboro Literary
Follow us on South Dakota Festival of Books Festival, P.O. Box 1116, Brattleboro, VT,
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well-known authors participating in
05302.
802-365-7673.
and Instagram book signings, presentations, panel vtbookfest@gmail.com
discussions, and readings on topics brattleboroliteraryfestival.org
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Brookings, SD 57006. professionals will also offer their feed-
@TheWriterMagazine 605-688-6113. back and expertise.
info@sdhumanities.org Contact: Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference,
sdbookfestival.com 204 College St., Middlebury College, Mid-
dlebury, VT 05753.
TENNESSEE 802-443-5286
Southern Festival of Books blwc@middlebury.edu
Nashville, Oct. 14-16. Free and open to middlebury.edu/bread-loaf-conferences/
the public. Features readings, panels, bl_writers
performances, and book signings with
@TheWriterMag approximately 200 authors in a wide VIRGINIA
range of genres. Fall for the Book
Contact: Humanities Tennessee, PO Box Fairfax, October, 12-15. Celebrate lit-
60467, 807 Main St., Suite B, Nashville, erature at this literary festival held at
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615-770-0006. tions in Northern Virginia, Washington,
info@humtn.org D.C., and Maryland. All events are free
sofestofbooks.org and open to the public.
@TheWriterMag Contact: Fall for the Book, Inc., 4400
TEXAS University Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030. Kara
Texas Book Festival Oakleaf, Festival Manager.
Austin, Nov. 5-6. Free and open to the 703-993-3986.
public. Includes sessions, book signings, kara@fallforthebook.org
and an evening lit crawl. Some events fallforthebook.org
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Springdale Rd., Bldg. 14, Unit B, Austin, Richmond, Oct. 7-9. Offers meetings
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texasbookfestival.org Contact: James River Writers, 2319 E.
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UTAH 804-433-3790.
Page Lambert’s 21st Annual River Email from website.
Retreat to the River jamesriverwriters.org/
Moab, Sept. 18-24. A six-day rafting conference2022
Hampton Roads Writers 14th Annual literature, film, art, and performance. setting in workshops, panels, classes,
Writers’ Conference Free to attend. Currently presenting and more. Enrollees read peer
Virginia Beach, Sept. 22-24. One evening online year-round as well as in-person in manuscripts in advance, then compare
and two full days of workshops, best- October. their conclusions with those of editors
selling keynote speakers, first 10 lines Contact: Wisconsin Book Festival. and agents in a collegial, open-clinic
critique sessions, workshops, and agent 608-266-6318. format. The conference also features a
pitches. Writing contests, social events, bookfest@mplfoundation.org teen workshop.
and open mic sessions. wisconsinbookfestival.org Contact: Nancy Sondel, founding director.
Contact: Hampton Roads Writers. P.O. Email from website.
Box 56228, Virginia Beach, VA 23456. INTERNATIONAL childrenswritersworkshop.com
Email from website. Swanwick Writers’ Summer School
hamptonroadswriters.org/ Swanwick, Alfreton, Derbyshire, En- Poets on the Coast
2022-conference-home gland, Aug. 13-19. Also referred to as TBD for 2023. A weekend writing retreat
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features seminars, forums, and appoint- Cost includes full board and evening workshop, one-on-one mentoring, and
ments with agents and editors. Partici- entertainment. morning yoga.
pants can practice pitching. Contact: The Writers’ Summer School. Contact: Poets on the Coast, Susan
Contact: PNWA, Writers’ Cottage 317 The Hayes Conference Centre, Swanwick, Rich, P.O. 16037, Seattle, WA 98116.
NW Gilman Blvd., Suite 8, Issaquah, WA Alfreton, Derbyshire, DE55 1AU. poetsonthecoast@gmail.com
98027. Email from website. poetsonthecoast.weebly.com
425-673-2665. swanwickwritersschool.org.uk
pnwa@pnwa.org Power of Words Conference
pnwa.org The Vancouver Writers Fest Oct. 13-16. Offers workshops, perfor-
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, mances, talking circles, celebrations,
LiTFUSE Oct. 17-23. The 33rd Vancouver Writers and more, featuring writers, storytell-
Tieton, Sept. 23-25. A poets’ workshop Festival will offer a forum for authors ers, performers, musicians, community
that combines writing, exploration, im- to connect with readers in a vibrant leaders, activists, educators, and health
provisation, meditation, camaraderie, exchange of ideas and conversation. professionals.
natural beauty, and readings to ignite Celebrates authors, poets, spoken word Contact: Transformative Language Arts
your muse. Offers master classes and performers, and graphic novelists. A Network. TLA Network, P.O. Box 873,
breakout sessions. Will feature poet Kim helpful event for teachers as well. Lansdowne, PA 19050.
Addonizio. Open to poets of all ages and Contact: Vancouver Writers Fest, 202- tlan.wildapricot.org/POWConference
styles. 1398 Cartwright St., Vancouver BC, V6H
Contact: LiTFUSE. P.O. Box 171, Tieton, 3R8. Write on the Sound Writers’
WA 98947. 604-681-6330 Conference
Email from website. Email from website. Oct. 7-9. Choose from a variety of top-
litfuse.us writersfest.bc.ca ics, with Zoom breakout rooms also
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WISCONSIN VIRTUAL Contact: Edmonds Arts Commission,
Wisconsin Book Festival Pacific Coast Children’s Writers Novel 700 Main St., Edmonds, WA 98020.
Madison, October 13-16 and year-round. Workshop & Retreat 425-771-0228.
Features local literary talents alongside Sept. 29-Oct. 2. Limited attendance wots@edmondswa.gov
national voices, with events incorporating makes for an intimate and focused writeonthesound.com
THE MONTHS AHEAD
Sept. 17 Sept. 18 Sept. 19 Sept. 22

Join us for craft and camaraderie It’s the first day of Banned Books Happy birthday to award-winning On this first day of fall, write
at The Writer’s Conference, our Week, billed as “an annual cele- American sci-fi and fantasy something from the point-of-
first-ever in-person event, which bration of the freedom to read.” author N. K. Jemisin. view of a decidedly autumnal
will be held at the More Than Check bannedbooksweek.org for object, whether it’s an apple cider
LULUS BUDI SANTOSO/SHUTTERSTOCK
Words bookstore in Boston’s a list of supportive resources and doughnut, a warm puffy vest, or a
South End. 2022 programming. pumpkin spice latte.
WRITERMAG.COM 79
Gigi
Will Know
Complexity is part of a book’s voice,
and so, yes – your ensuing books in the
series will have to be as complex.
Dear Gigi,
I’ve got two questions.
1. I’m setting up what appears to be quite a complex novel that
is the first in a series. I was wondering: in making it so complex, am
I setting reader and editor expectations accordingly for the following
books? Do they have to be as complex?
2. I am thinking of writing some pieces of flash fiction about the
above-mentioned series. I don’t think I will include these smaller piec-
es in the series itself, but if any of them get published, would it be OK
to use them in the series proper if I change my mind, or would they be
regarded as previously published and therefore untouchable?
—A LITTLE CONFUSED AND WARY
Dear Confused and Wary, from a great many characters within a

You don’t need to be either con- narrative work, you can introduce some
fused or wary just yet. You are wayyyyy of them on a cursory level in book one
ahead of yourself. Here, have a cookie and then delve more into them in book
and some hot, milky tea. two, where you introduce still more
Okay? characters, whose arcs you can then re-
Breaaaaaaaaaaathe. solve in book three.
All right, here we go. You say you are However, your question was about
writing what appears to be a complex whether or not your follow-up books
novel. You don’t say how far along you would have to be as complex. I’d say
are in this work. I’m going to suggest that complexity is part of a book’s voice,
that it feels like you’re at the first-draft and so, yes – your ensuing books in the
stages, and here’s why: I think a lot of series will have to be as complex. They
your complexity will fall out in the revi- will have to read in the same voice.
sion. You will begin to see that there is a Your second question was about
certain amount of complexity that will short stories stemming from the main
work in any narrative work and that too work. No, you do not have to wor-
much complexity will either not suit ry about them being unpublishable.
your personal style, or it will not work They’d fall under the same rule as short
Have a query about craft?
within the container of one book. stories being published in literary maga-
Need some clarification on You’ve already started to see this zines before being gathered into a book
an aspect of the publishing because you say you know it is part of of short stories that is later published.
industry? Looking for career a series. Some of this complexity can Still, don’t put your cart before your
ILLUSTRATION BY YI SHUN LAI
advice? Email your queries probably be fanned out over a couple of horse. Write for now. Remember that
to tweditorial@madavor.com
with the subject line “Advice
books, so as to not dump all of the com- revision is a key part of any writing.
Column.” We can’t wait to read plexity on your reader all at once. For And have another cookie.
your questions! instance, if the complexity is stemming —Gigi
GE T
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What strategies are discussed for crafting an effective opening?

What strategies are discussed for crafting an effective opening?

What tips are shared for creating a strong narrative structure?

What tips are shared for creating a strong narrative structure?

FICTION & NONFICTION

VOLUME 135 AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2022 NUMBER 8

writing Long way home

Want to write a good book?

Art & Production

Sales & Marketing

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p. 4 Filling our creative stores p. 5 New craft books for writers

p. 16 Ellen Meeropol on resolving unanswerable questions in fiction

Memory Into Memoir: A Writer’s Handbook Upcoming calls

West Trade Review:

FOR THE PAST FOUR DECADES, LIN-

someone your story while sitting at a

Anthology magazine: An-

gaged fiction manuscripts

THE WORD “SOLARPUNK” REFERS TO communities and futuristic technol-

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don’t see on that immediate list is, “Be-

What you can’t find in research –

FICTION WRITERS ARE TAUGHT

Getting to know Caribbean literature

TS: When I’m thinking about the Carib-

Cocina Criolla, Nitza Villapol.

Brother, I’m Dying, Edwidge Danticat.

Novelists share their best tips for

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• CreateHER Stock was launched by Neosha Gardner

One of the biggest pieces of advice we

I realized if I got up a little earlier every

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Gomez’s secret to developing

King’s secret to revision

Morris’ secret to writing dialogue

Morris’ secret to building suspense

MOTHER, more than just a talent

LIKE They are a mother and

DAUGHTER published books to ac-

Lukoff’s secret to plotting

Brown’s secret to showing, not telling

Speaking of social media – there was no Finally, I am 30 years more mature

Susan Ito is the author of The Mouse Room.

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THE MONTHS AHEAD

Sept. 3 Sept. 4 Sept. 6 Sept. 14-16