“I think most memoir writers write first of all for ourselves, not for any specific audience. We write for our own clarity. The painful admissions, the ways in which we are upset by ourselves, our actions, things we did, things we failed to do, all of that has to be honestly faced. No point in skirting the truth. Who would we be fooling? Ourselves?” — Abigail Thomas Excerpt from “Memoir is Exploration, So Keep Yourself Open: An Interview with Abigail Thomas” By Dinty W. Moore, Brevity magazine Abigail Thomas is the author of many acclaimed memoirs, including A Three Dog Life, Safekeeping, and What Comes Next and How to Like It. She lives in Woodstock, New York, with her dogs. Dinty W. Moore is the founder and editor of Brevity magazine and is likely out in his garden at this very moment.
Tag: Dinty W. Moore
Submit. Yay or nay?
Excerpt from “Submission Control” article about submitting your writing to publications, in the March/April 2019 issue of Writers Digest magazine, by Dinty W. Moore. Sending your work to literary magazines puts you at the whim of editors—but there’s more in your power than you may realize. Every few months, ask yourself why you’re doing this [writing]. If writing, waiting, and facing rejection make you truly miserable, maybe you should stop. But if you don’t want to stop, if writing is necessary, like breathing, then change your way of thinking. The long wait, the long odds, the sometimes inscrutable aesthetic taste of the editorial staff: You have to put all of that aside and write new poems, essays and stories. And that’s a good thing. Because the more you write, the better you get. Dinty W. Moore is the author of the memoir Between Panic & Desire, the writing guide Crafting…