“Quiet writing isn’t a genre, it’s more like a style and an approach. For creative nonfiction, it’s narrative that focuses on everyday moments, employs keen observation, and includes details and imagery to demonstrate and investigate the human experience. It reads quiet but still carries the tension and conflict that is fundamental to good storytelling.” — Andrea A. Firth
“As writers, we’re often trained to seek momentum—significant events, turning moments, the big emotional payoff. Especially in memoir, there’s pressure to magnify the trauma or spin a grand arc of triumph. But when I sat down to write, what called to me weren’t the headlines. It was the folds in between.” — Mary Monoky, “What Stillness Taught Me About Story,” August 6, 2025, The Brevity Blog
“A good editor gives feedback that feels less like judgment and more like a conversation—less ‘here’s what’s wrong’ and more ‘here’s where we can dig deeper.’
There is something incredibly satisfying, almost magical, in those small, right-aligned edits that a good editor suggests. A word change here, a rephrase there, and suddenly the piece feels tighter, braver. One editor suggested I cut an entire paragraph detailing a painful memory I thought was essential to the piece. ‘The story feels stronger without this part,’ she said, and once I’d made the cut, I realized the rest of the piece came into sharper focus, allowing the heart of the essay to shine through.”
About a difficult piece she wrote:
“Going into these pieces alone would have felt impossible. I needed someone at the mouth of that cave, someone who could shine a light and pull me back if things got too dark. A good editor does exactly that. I couldn’t have written my most important pieces without knowing that support was there, without that trust.”
Elizabeth Austin’s writing has appeared in HuffPost, Today.com, Thrillist, The Sun, Reactor Mag, and others. She holds an M.F.A. from Vermont College of Fine Arts and lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania with her two children and their many pets.
Note from Marlene: How to find a good editor? Email your ideas to me: mcullen – at – sonic.net
I particularly like Allison’s suggestion about “converting similes to metaphors when possible—saying something is something else is more powerful than saying it’s like something else.”
Complementing Allison’s recommendations is advice given to Anita Gail Jones, author of The Peach Seed about her use of “the.”
Anita found where she overused “the,” there were other problems. Her evaluation of “the” led to stronger writing and improved her story telling.
This advice reinforces Allison’s concept of focusing on one thing at a time when revising.
Another gem from Anita, “Beats: A unit of emotional measurement between people.” Harder to find than the single word “the,” but so important in creating a compelling narrative.
Thank you to Susan and Patricia for helping me to remember what Anita said at her keynote address at Sebastopol’s Lit Crawl, May 2025.
“Most readers know that sensation when immersed in a book of being transported from their couches or chairs into another world, where a film unspools in the mind’s eye.
The engines that power this transport are the smallest components of craft: sensory details. Concrete sensory details paint a story so compelling and vivid that as readers, through the awesome power of our imaginations, see, hear, smell and feel the story. This process is a bilateral exchange that I think of as literary transference: the story enters the reader’s mind, and thus the reader enters the story, as if through a magic portal.
It is during this transference process when mere black and white words—hieroglyphs–are alchemized into the images, smells, sounds, and sensations that transport readers deeply into stories. This exchange yields more than the pleasure of being whisked into another realm; it allows us to flex our powers of empathy as we vicariously experience others’ lives.”
“Quitting Time: Why You Need to Let Go of That Writing Project” by Allison K. Williams.
“As writers, we’re sold on the value of perseverance. Just do another draft. Just keep working. Send another query, another submission. One day you’ll break through. Sit down and finish. Now. Today. This week. In fifteen-minute increments while waiting for carpool, or in one wild coffee-fueled weekend. I think I can, I think I can.
I can get to the end of this sentence. This paragraph. This page. This essay. This book.
But there’s value in quitting, too.
Click “Quitting Time” to read the rest of Allison’s Blog Post.
“Alternate versions of past events are common, because it is human nature, especially where childhood memories are concerned, to move ourselves—over time—to the center of a story. We are hardwired to see the world through our own points of view, and increasingly so with the passage of time. Memory is a river, not a block of cement.” — “But My Sister Remembers It Differently: On Working with Contested Memories,” by Dinty Moore, Aug. 15, 2024 Brevity Blog.
Note from Marlene: I am very excited to share Jennifer’s post with you. Since my passion is how to write about difficult subjects without adding trauma, I am especially grateful to Jennifer for addressing this topic.
Jennifer’s eloquent writing on what she doesn’t know about her father is outstanding and an example of how you can write about “what you don’t know.”
Guest Blogger Jennifer Leigh Selig:
When I lead memoir writing retreats, I like to kickstart the mornings with writing prompts. One of the tricks of my trade is a manilla envelope stuffed with images I’ve printed out of vintage and iconic toys and games from across the decades. It’s a ritual I cherish—spreading these images out on the long conference room tables, imagining my students’ delight as they light upon a special toy or game that brings back fond memories, and then watching them begin to furiously write.
This last retreat was different. I found myself tearing up as I laid out the pictures of the Kewpie doll and the troll. I found those tears falling as I laid out the pictures of Clue and Yahtzee. So many of the toys and games took me back to my beloved grandmother’s house. This was the first retreat I led since her death at 102 years old. I was blessed with 60 years of my life with her. And now no more.
I wiped my tears away before anyone entered the room. Sitting alone in the circle, I wondered if there was any writing prompt I could give that wouldn’t trigger someone. Even asking: “Write a happy memory about your mother” is fraught with danger. What if someone has no happy memories of their mother? What if someone’s mother has just been diagnosed with a terminal disease? What if someone has no mother?
Then I remembered a writing prompt a teacher gave me that triggered a torrent of furious writing. I shared that piece with my students, to acknowledge that any prompt, no matter how seemingly innocuous, can stir something deep within.
For fifteen minutes, write about your father’s eating habits. Remember the journalistic imperative to include what, how, where, when, and why, all aiming to flesh out a deeper sense of who your father is. Follow the writer’s adage to write what you know.
I don’t know a thing about what my father eats. I don’t know if he peppers everything he eats with tons of salt or if sugar is his road to ruin. I don’t know if he frequents farmers’ markets for the freshest produce or if he stockpiles boxes of frozen food in his grocery store cart. I don’t know if he goes to the grocery store or if that’s the province of his wife. (I don’t know if my father even has a wife.)
I don’t know a thing about how my father eats. I don’t know if he’s a gentleman who savors each bite or a feral animal who wolfs down his plate. I don’t know if he smacks his food with relish, if he rests his elbows on the table, if he licks his fingers or knows to use a napkin. I don’t know whether he dives straight into a meal, or if he stops to thank God first. (I don’t know if my father even believes in God.)
I don’t know a thing about where my father eats. I don’t know if he eats standing up in the kitchen or if he takes a plate to the sofa where he can watch sports on TV. I don’t know if his taste skews toward fine dining establishments or all-you-can-eat buffets or if he prefers eating at home. (I don’t know where my father’s home even is.)
I don’t know a thing about when my father eats. I don’t know if he’s a creature of habit or if he eats when he’s hungry, regardless of the hour. I don’t know if he eats after smoking or smokes after eating, or if a happy-hour cocktail always precedes dinner. I don’t know if his children nag him for skipping a meal, or scold him for snacking all day. (I don’t know if my father even has other children.)
I don’t know a thing about why my father eats. I don’t know if he’s trying to gain or lose weight, to lower his cholesterol, to control his diabetes, or to stave off cancer. I don’t know if he eats when he’s stressed or he eats when he’s bored. I don’t know if he eats for pure pleasure or whether he eats to stay alive. (I don’t know if my father is even alive.)
If my father is no longer alive, I don’t know where he died, when he died, or why he died. I don’t know how he died, or what he was doing when he died. I don’t know whether he is interred in a tomb where coffin flies feast on his corpse or if he was buried at sea where fish nibble on his flesh or if they bled him out before they burned him to ashes and scattered him.
I cannot flesh out my father, Teacher. I cannot write what I know, because I do not know the flesh and the blood of my father.
___
As a writer, I was seething. Not seething at my teacher, though the prompt did seem presumptuous. But in the end, I’m glad I wrote to it. It was good to see how bad I still feel that half of who I came from is a ghost. This is the raw power of writing prompts crafted by others—when we open our memory bank, we have no idea if the coins will fall out heads or tails, or which is best for us.
So I tell my students—I’m going to give you writing prompts this week. Even if I don’t mean it to, any prompt may trigger distressful or traumatic memories. If you go there, it may hurt. If you go there, it may help.
Jennifer Leigh Selig is an LBGTQ+ teacher, book publisher, and author whose writing career spans nearly four decades. Her most recent book is Deep Memoir: An Archetypal Approach to Deepen Your Story and Broaden Its Appeal, a companion to her co-written Nautilus Gold award-winning book, Deep Creativity: Seven Ways to Spark Your Creative Spirit. Learn more about Jennifer and her writing classes and her publishing companies.
Your turn: I don’t know . . .
Choose a prompt from The Write Spot Blog and Just Write!
Guest Blogger Megan Aronson writes about the seasons and cycles of life and being a writer.
“I’ve been lost and reclusive of late as I deal with the most recent iteration of my grief-growth cycle,” my friend Candace Cahill, author of Goodbye Again, wrote in an online writing group I belong to. “Learning—the hard way, mostly—new things about myself and the challenges still ahead.”
My eyes hovered over her words as her thoughts echoed my own. I wasn’t the only one who’d stopped at the words “grief-growth cycle.” Soon the comments were flooded with replies like, “Grief-growth cycle. I feel that. Never thought of it that way before.”
In two sentences, Candace had fully encapsulated the collective experience of being a writer. Continually turning ourselves inside out on the page and off, we each instantly recognized the “grief-growth cycle” as the intersection of life affecting our writing, and writing affecting our lives. I know this cycle: it courses through periods of personal doubt and professional rejection, retreating underground, nurturing the seeds of ideas for another creative phase, and harvesting acceptances and accolades.
“Where are we at in the cycle right now, each of us?” I wondered as I read my friend’s comments.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the seasons of being a writer and how we cycle through them personally and professionally. I know from experience (and science) that when difficult life circumstances trigger my brain into fight or flight mode, the limbic system switches on its red alert button and my creative center is more difficult to access. I know stress can impact my creativity, and a broken heart can either open the flow for writing, or completely dam it. I’ve also seen how a round of rejections on my writing can paralyze me in life, sending me into a phase of reclusiveness that I must slowly nurse myself out of again. It can wreck my confidence not just as a writer, but as a mom, wife, and friend.
Productivity is often praised over personal growth and satisfaction in our society. We’re pressured to relentlessly produce, hustle, grind, and go. But the writer’s life demands time not just to harvest—we also need periods of renewal, recovery, and growth.
Recently, I’ve found comfort in Julia Cameron’s insightful and lesser-known book “The Sound of Paper.” After a series of challenges triggered another grief-growth cycle, I needed time to tend my personal and professional wounds. Julia gave me permission to embrace my place in the cycle with her powerful words: “I am resting, I am gathering steam,” she wrote. “I am in a low cycle, a time of dormancy, a period in which I will come to know exactly how much and how deeply I love the art I am not at the moment able to practice.”
Last week, I ran into a writing friend and instantly recognized on her face the look of panic I’d also been wearing during my months of “dormancy.”
“I haven’t been able to write,” she said, her eyes ablaze. “I’m caretaking my mom full-time. I can’t get myself to put a thing on the page.”
I told her how I’d just barely escaped this space myself, and how, paradoxically, the only thing that had sped it along was not speeding it along at all. My heart and mind needed time to heal, to wander in the woods, to walk the stacks at the library and grab anything that piqued my interest. As we spoke, I remembered the existential angst I’d felt in her shoes. I wished I could have granted myself the peace of accepting my season of recovery, rather than fighting against it the whole way.
I want to live the kind of artist’s life that flows gracefully through its seasons and honors the needs of my creative nature. When I’m incubating ideas for a new book, I live in curiosity—not producing, but gathering notes, ideas, life experiences, and reflections. An ideas file may be scraps and shards of random, unhinged scribbles, but those scribbles will become the words of an essay or book one day. I need time to be unhinged. I need time to wander and weed the corners of my mind and life. The time to harvest and produce will come again soon.
Moving forward now, I wonder: Can I be brave enough to continually honor where I am in the grief-growth cycle? Can we as writers grant ourselves a week, a day, or even a month (gasp!) to heal from life experiences before we write again? Can we go dormant for a winter and simply germinate our ideas, or celebrate a spring of creating just for ourselves, not for the world’s consumption?
I hope we can. I hope my recent experiences have taught me to let life inform my writing gracefully, with time to heal between the living and the writing, embracing the seasons as they come.
I’m coming out of my winter now, grateful for its lessons. The panic is subsiding as new ideas are beginning to burst forth again. Another spring is coming.
I’m a writer, a speaker, an advocate, a mom of four, a #YOLOGirl (You Only Live Once) and a survivor of…just about everything.
In 2011, I wrote a piece called Grim Reaper Girl that went viral, sharing how empathy saved my life after a string of 12 deaths had left me feeling like death followed me everywhere.
Over the next few years, the slew of tragedy continued at a relentless pace. In total, we lost 30 people in 8 years. We moved 4 times. We lost a baby, our home, my daughter’s best friend…and then I discovered my husband’s deadly painkiller addiction had escalated, and we became a miracle in the WE’LL BE COUNTING STARS story.
But my story is not a pity-party-table-for-one-please story. It’s one of triumph in tragedy. Little triumphs that came slowly and carefully while I fought for my life, my joy, and my love.
I’ve written myself through grief upon grief, and brought myself back to life again and again. I am still doing it now, and along the way, I’m sharing my journey, because I have become a self-certified Heal-Thyself Specialist (it’s a fancy title, I know, I earned it with 14 years at The School of Hard Knocks. Did you get a degree from there, too?!).
I’m here to tell you, I see you, I get you, I’ve been through it, too, and here’s how we pick ourselves up and keep moving forward again and again, with our broken, open hearts. I’m here to remind you how to open when you’re closed, to soften when you feel yourself turn hard like callouses.
I’m here to encourage you to dare greatly, even when vulnerability makes you quake in your boots. I’m here to urge you forward into unfolding again and again.
I’m also here to remind myself, and YOU, not to take ourselves or this thing called life too seriously!
Megan’s work has appeared in The New York Times, HuffPost, The Rumpus, and Creative Nonfiction’sTiny Truths. She is currently seeking a publisher for her memoir, We’ll Be Counting Stars, which tells the powerful “love vs. addiction” story she lived with her husband, Kory, a survivor of the opioid crisis.
