Think of an experience that happened at least 10 years ago.
Something you keep thinking about; something that holds your attention, something you can’t let go of, something you can’t shake.
The experience hangs around, reminding you of that time.
It could be a positive thing, or it could be a difficult thing.
Something that has energy for you.
Write the experience in the voice of younger “you” when it happened. Write only what you knew at the time. “This happened, then that happened.”
You don’t have perspective of time having gone by.
Write from the point of view of your younger self.
Prompt 2
That younger person is thought of as the voice of innocence, when you only knew what you experienced at that age, at that time. Since then, you have had more experiences and time to reflect.
Write the experience again using a persona that represents you now, after you have had time to think about what happened.
Prompt 3
Weave the two freewrites together, combining the voice of innocence and the voice of experience.
Innocence “reveals the sequence of events, the particulars of your experience,” while Experience “reflects back on the story, the past, and guides the reader through the maze of the experience.”
“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.”
“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.
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