When, and How, to Change Names in Nonfiction
March 13, 2026 § 13 Comments
With Some Help from the Social Security Database
By Sarah Beth Childers
When I write creative nonfiction, I change names.
Some names are unchangeable. My brother Joshua, for instance, the focus of my book Prodigals: A Sister’s Memoir of Appalachia and Loss, or my long-dead grandfather. No other name gives me the tweed hat, metal cane resonance of Ralph, and my mom, whom I felt bound to consult, told me he was staring down from heaven, insisting I use his real name.
I also keep my children’s names as they are in life, aiming to remind myself of my responsibility to avoid writing anything that might humiliate them when they’re eighteen or forty years old.
But in every book, and in many of my essays, there are people I love who have asked that I change their name, or past friends or teachers I no longer speak to, or characters so peripheral to the story that they aren’t worth consulting, but who nevertheless may bristle to see their names in print. When I’ve used real names in such cases, out of exhaustion, carelessness, or a misguided attempt at journalistic accuracy in a subjective genre, I’ve wished later that I’d changed them. I tell my students: change names.
However, I don’t change names when I’m drafting. Names ring with layers upon layers of history and meaning. If I called anyone something else as I figured out how to tell a story, I’m afraid my brain would go into inventive fiction-mode from the start.
I end up with whole essays, whole manuscripts, with names that need changing. With patterns of sound and meaning built from those names. My first step is to find every instance of a name and analyze my sentences. Does the number of syllables matter? The vowels? The Ls, Ms, or Ds? What is the name’s language of origin? How well do I need to disguise this person? Does the name need to reference—or definitely NOT reference—another bird, land formation, classic car, foreign city, Bible prophet, Greek deity, or English king?
Armed with that information, I head to online name lists. For people born in the United States, I open the Social Security Administration’s names database and look up the person’s birth year. (For other countries, I consult other informal and formal name lists and databases, like the United Kingdom’s Office for National Statistics.) If my character has a top 20 name for that year—my imaginary cousin Brittany, for instance, born in 1987—I’ll try to find another top 20, or another top 50 at least. In that case, Tiffany, a top 20, might be my winner. It screams big hairbow and curled bangs, with the same name as two other girls in her 1990s elementary school classroom, and the slant rhyme would surely fit my essay’s sonics. Often, I’ll comb through a year’s top 1000, reading the names aloud, looking for the right characteristics, listening for the right sound.
Of course, name changing doesn’t solve all ethical dilemmas or prevent all libel lawsuits. For ethical depictions of characters, I recommend the usual soul-searching and attempts at empathy with your villains. I read and reread G. Thomas Couser’s Vulnerable Subjects: Ethics and Life Writing, Faith Adiele’s “Writing the Black Family Home,”and Melissa Febos’s “A Big Shitty Party: Six Parables of Writing about Other People.”
If you need to really disguise someone, for that person’s or your own protection, and they nevertheless have turned up in your writing and you just can’t cut them out, I recommend the advice of Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. She says to tell the story you need to tell, with real things a person said, real ways they acted, then “dramatically” change the “habits and circumstances” that might identify them to their colleagues and friends. She writes, “If he was famous for having long toenails, make them nasal hairs…. Make yourself the first wife or the girlfriend, instead of the third wife, and do not include his offensive children, especially the redheaded twins.”
When I need to change someone’s identifying details, the same principles apply as when I’m changing names. What characteristics might put a spotlight on that person for anyone in a certain graduate program in 2005? How can I make changes but keep the spirit of those characteristics, while telling a story I’m presenting as true? That may mean changing that person’s graduate study from Victorian history to medieval art, moving their hometown from one southern city to another, adding a few inches to their height, shifting them from a rockhound to an amateur ornithologist. For a serious libel concern, I’d consult a lawyer. But the reimagining of a person starts to click into place when I find the right new name.
Many memoirists explain in their books’ author’s notes that they’re changing names and identifying characteristics. These notes feel akin to perhapsing, to using language like “maybe” or “I imagine” to signal that they’re making something up. In Prodigals, I put a disclaimer right in the text: “With apologies to all kind men with this name, I’ll call him Max.”
Sometimes a new name is all I need, and sometimes name-changing is only the beginning of the character disguising process. But when I find the right name, with the right sound and layers of meaning, I find the courage to finish my book or essay and send it out.
___
Sarah Beth Childers is the author of the essay collections Shake Terribly the Earth: Stories from an Appalachian Family and Prodigals: A Sister’s Memoir of Appalachia and Loss. She directs the creative writing program and teaches creative nonfiction at Oklahoma State University. She lives in Stillwater, Oklahoma, with her husband Robert, her daughters Lydia and Miriam, and her old but sprightly dog Peggotty. All of those names are real.
From Substack to Book: How I Got a Publishing Deal from My Newsletter
March 12, 2026 § 8 Comments
By Suzanne Roberts
About four years ago, my friend Kim told me about a platform for newsletters called Substack. I had never heard of it. “And a lot of writers are using it,” she said.
“But what would I send out?” I asked.
Kim said, “You could write about your travels. Or send out advice for writers. You’re the best teacher I know.”
It was the beginning of the year, and one of my new year’s goals was to be of service to other writers and to create more writing community. I said, “Maybe I’ll send out writing prompts for one year. One a week. Each month, I’ll choose a different theme. But I’m only doing it for one year. 52 prompts.”
Hundreds of writing prompts later, my new book 52 Writing Prompts: Inspiration for the Creative Writer, based on my Substack newsletter, is forthcoming.
Over the years, I’ve used my Substack themes to propel my writing. After some blah-blah-blah (my own writing based on the monthly theme), I offer a 20-minute writing prompt—usually one made up on the spot (after years of teaching, this comes easily). Sometimes I borrow prompts from other writers (always providing credit). About two years in, I realized I had enough material for a creative writing craft book, something I had always thought about putting together.
I knew blah-blah-blah + a writing prompt didn’t equal a book, but I decided to use this themed, multi-genre, generative approach.
I wrote to my press, and asked if they might be interested. They were, and signed a contract based on the proposal.
Each chapter provides an introduction to the theme, a pep talk, a specific craft tip, and of course, prompts. Because reading is always the best teacher, I included some of my favorite stories, poems, and essays from other contemporary writers, with prompts based on each piece of literature. Camille Dungy, whose work appears in my book, suggested I ask contributors for their favorite piece of writing advice. I thought this was a great idea, and it has become one of my favorite things about the book.
I wrote the book I wished existed back when I was teaching creative writing full time. Without Substack, I’m not sure it would have happened. By feeling my way through and considering my audience, I realized what kind of book I wanted to write, one for traditional creative writing students but also for my Substack followers; both established authors and those just starting out who are looking for inspiration and friendly coaching.
My small but dedicated following on Substack was also a bonus for my publisher. I asked my editor if they would have published the book without it, and she said, “Your Substack following was definitely a perk.”
Now there are thousands of writers on Substack, and some of these newsletters are leading to books and publishing deals.
Thinking of starting your own Substack?
1) How can you be of service to your reader? While some will be interested in your musings, most people appreciate a takeaway. What is your specific expertise and what gifts can you provide? Too often we think about our own needs when we embark on a book project. Starting with a newsletter forces us to envision the needs of the reader, which always makes a better book. Certainly, my first draft of anything—even my newsletter—is for me. But the finished product is always for the reader.
2) While we all like to think our audience includes EVERYONE, it really doesn’t. It can’t. My reader is someone who wants to write, so every post is clearly directed to that specific reader. Maybe your reader wants to learn how to convert a camper van or weld fire tables or improve her pickleball game. Whatever it is, all your posts should speak directly to that reader. This is a great pathway to a book, because you already know who your reader will be.
3) Be consistent. For the first couple of years, I posted every Friday without fail, writing posts while on airplanes and traveling in my van. Consistency helps build and maintain a following. Self-imposed deadlines are also good practice for actual deadlines for your forthcoming book.
4) Provide free content. My writing prompts are all free for a couple of weeks, then paywalled, so if someone wants all-access, they pay five dollars a month. Paying subscribers also get free virtual generative writing workshops every couple of months. I never started my Substack with the intention of making money, so the small amount yearly feels like a bonus. But I will say this: Substack revenue annually surpasses my yearly royalty checks from all my previously published books (seven of them).
5) Have fun. You may not attract very many subscribers, but that won’t matter if you’re having fun. I have fun taking photographs, so I include them in my newsletter. And anything that’s getting you to write on a regular schedule is a plus, whether or not it leads to a book deal.
Readers: What has been your experience on Substack? What you would tell someone just starting out? Share your advice (and your questions) below in the comments, or if you’re reading in email, reply to comment.
________
Suzanne Roberts is a Lake Tahoe-based travel writer, memoirist, and poet. Her books include the 2012 National Outdoor Book Award-winning Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail, the memoir in travel essays Bad Tourist: Misadventures in Love and Travel and a collection of lyrical essays, Animal Bodies: On Death, Desire, and Other Difficulties. Her Substack is 52 Writing Prompts.
From Never to Yes: How and Why I Self-Published My Memoir
March 11, 2026 § 38 Comments
By Deborah Sosin
I have an ego. We all do. Who doesn’t want to shout to the world, “Behold! I created this!”? The desire for recognition and validation is natural. And for us writers, publishing a book can be the ultimate boost.
But, if we’re being honest, the boost comes from more than just publishing a book. It comes from signing with a bona fide publishing house, then sharing on social media that Publishers Marketplace announcement or “It’s here!” box-opening video or starred review and, eventually, links to events, readings, podcasts—what a trip.
Ego, meet Reality.
We all know the daunting stats about our fickle industry, especially when it comes to non-celebrity memoirs. What are our chances? What are our choices?
You can always self-publish, goes the trope. The proverbial “loser” clause. The if-all-else-fails default.
Oh sure, I follow Jane Friedman and attend Craft Talks webinars. I understand that because of technological advances and less stigma in the literary community, more writers are proudly self-publishing.
But me? Never!
That was my attitude when I wrote in early 2025 about my linked set of 70 micro-memoirs of 70 words each, now titled Escape Velocity: How One 70-Year-Old Push-Pulled Her Way Out of Her Too-Much-Not-Enough Family. The book chronicles my decades-long attempts to overcome my family’s powerful gravitational pull and forge a separate self, capable of a loving, intimate relationship.
To start, I assumed no Big Five would consider my Little Project. Massive research yielded a decent list of small presses, indie houses, or artsy-type publishers that were open to un-agented authors. Of those, many were closed to any submissions. Colleagues suggested aiming for a poetry chapbook. Or a 4,900-word piece in a lit mag.
I envisioned a book.
More researching, networking, querying, submitting, waiting, hoping.
About six months in, with nary a radar blip, ten of my micro-memoirs appeared on Sari Botton’s Oldster Magazine and attracted 59,000+ views and hundreds of comments in one week. My Substack subscriber list shot up by 400 overnight.
Aha! Surely publishers will fight their way to my door!
Nothing.
I broke the “do not nudge” rule and sent “Excerpts went viral!” emails to the places where I’d submitted.
Crickets. My ego went from soaring to sagging.
Still, zero thought of “Should I self-publish?”
Weeks later, one micro, “Bosom Buddies,” appeared on Short Reads, a flash nonfiction mag featuring illustrations by Anna Hall. Deeply touched by her evocative rendering, I emailed Anna to say thanks. Turns out she’s also an experienced book designer who collaborates with self-publishing authors using IngramSpark, an online print-on-demand (POD) service that, unlike Amazon KDP, links books to libraries and bookstores.
I mused about how cool it would be if she illustrated all 70 micros, hahaha, as if I could afford that as a single, senior, self-employed freelancer.
Back on the path. More form rejections. Ouch.
More musing: What if I did self-publish and hire Anna just for the book design? Could I make the finances work? Why wait for more declines? Or if I got a yes from an indie house, then what? Wait two or three years to see my book?
Plenty of writer friends and editing clients have produced beautiful self-published books. Why not me? Plus, I’m not getting any younger.
For fun, Anna sent sample interior design ideas and outlined three price tiers for a book with 1) no art, 2) one recurring art element, or 3) 70 total illustrations. In any case, I’d have a say in things like trim size, fonts, cover, and the look-feel, and she’d take care of all that copyright, ISBN, and techie stuff.
Her black-and-white sample drawings knocked me out. I loved her vision, her understanding of my story, her out-of-the-box artistic eye. My self-publishing Never! transformed to Yes!
Anna and I planned a scary-tight deadline of February 27 (my 72nd birthday). Four months, 70 line drawings, one per micro. We Zoomed and emailed regularly. I had creative control, yes, but our collaboration was very much mutual. And, bonus, her illustrations form their own dynamic, often humorous, story arc. Would that have happened if I’d found a traditional publisher?
And the money? I swallowed my pride and launched a crowdfunder to support creative and production expenses, reaching my goal of $5,000 in under two weeks, thanks to generous friends and family.
Now Escape Velocity is out in the world, complete with a stunning cover anddream blurbs from a dream team of some of my favorite authors.
I know what’s ahead: posting, self-promoting, marketing, networking—but the same would be true if I were traditionally published. No matter our path, ego or no ego, the hustle is the hustle.
***
If you’re on the fence about self-publishing:
- Check out Jane Friedman’s brilliant chart, which compares traditional and nontraditional publishing paths.
- Be honest about your emotional needs and professional values. Read Dinty W. Moore’s 2022 blog, which includes thoughtful questions to ask yourself.
- Consider your finances. If self-publishing is feasible, find a workable route—whether POD, hybrid, or a full-service operation. Or try a fundraiser!
- Finally, ask yourself, how long am I willing to wait for a publisher to bite? (See Audrey Shipp’s recent essay about her successful search!) Or can I take the reins and make this happen on my own? If yes, enjoy the ride and don’t look back.
___
Deborah Sosin is a Boston-based writer, editor, psychotherapist, and GrubStreet instructor. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Brevity Blog,Salon, Oldster Magazine, Short Reads, Manifest-Station, Writer’s Chronicle, and elsewhere. Her (traditionally published) books include the award-winning picture book Charlotte and the Quiet Place and the Sober Starting Today Workbook. Escape Velocity is now available here. Visit Deborah’s Substack, Write It Like It Is.
Memoirs RX: A Cure for the Ailing Writer
March 10, 2026 § 38 Comments
By Caroline Wampole
Attention all memoir writers and wannabe memoir writers!
Are you feeling stuck?
Have writer’s block?
How’s that low-level dread about every single aspect of your existence?
At Memoirs RX, we get it.
We know what it’s like to want to tell your story when no one is listening and the marshmallows have all dropped in the fire (and you didn’t even get one). We share your regret about having spent more of your life writing a memoir than you did actually living it. We understand the angst of file cabinets buckling under the weight of half-finished chapters, and we can relate to your insomnia-fueled panic about someone reading your journals if you are suddenly killed by a falling anvil.
That’s why Memoirs RX has created the prescription you need to get out of the ditch of self-doubt and onto the sunny road of success!
(Disclaimer: success will not, we repeat, will not be monetary. Think: vague inner satisfaction and five people clapping for you on a Wednesday afternoon at a Books-A-Million in a strip mall.)
First, our Bowels of Memoir (BM) course will guide you through a series of exercises to unearth what the hell your book is about.
- What are you writing, and why?
- Did you not get enough attention as a child?
- Are you a 7 on the enneagram?
- Other people have normal hobbies, like gardening or Pokémon collecting. Why do you feel the need to tell your story, especially since you can’t remember most of it?
Dig deep to find the root of your neurosis. (But not too deep, or you may not keep paying for our classes.)
Which brings us to our Structure Thy Darlings (STD) course. Are you telling a Hero’s Journey? A braided memoir? Or maybe you should just plunk everything down into an encyclopedia format that no one will ever read? (There is of course the possibility that this is not a book at all, but some sort of highly decorative vase. In which case, you might want to google “community art classes.”)
But if indeed it is a book you are writing, then you will absolutely need help with finding a structure. Our Architecture for Satisfying Storytelling (ASS) course comes with a set of five interlocking whiteboards* that you can use to map out your book, or alternatively, convert to a dining surface.
Perhaps you already have a manuscript. Or a partially written draft. Or 200,000 words of notes across several devices and that folder full of cocktail napkins. Or just some quotes embroidered on a pillow. Wherever you are in the journey, our Mighty Revision Intensive (MRI) course is the perfect travel partner. Buckle up and get ready to scour your pages with a fine-tooth comb for every loose rivet and gaping hole and mixed metaphor in the oozing lava mess of your story and rewrite until the cows come home!
(Disclaimer: Memoirs RX is not liable for any damages arising from the revision process, including but not limited to: a) your need to take a second job to afford more therapy, and b) the inevitable dissolution of your marriage and/or estrangement from friends who cannot bear to hear one more word about “the book.”)
At a certain point in every writer’s process, there is nothing else to do but turn to the occult. We have designed our Blissful Serenity (BS) course to meet this need, by shamelessly powerfully merging the ancient practices of tarot, Ouija, runes, and the I Ching into a comforting mishmash of symbols and enigmatic phrases to help you forget whatever you were doing before. A large candle accompanies this package, whose melting beeswax can symbolize your own melting dreams and hopes.
Once you have taken all of the above, you will be ready for our Road to Imagined Publishing (RIP) packet, complete with a multi-year timeline that will prove that you needn’t worry about negative reviews: you will be long dead before your book ever hits the shelves.
At the end of all of this, if you are still stuck without a finished book, don’t despair.
Because guess what? Memoir doesn’t sell!
Have you thought of becoming a botanist?
*Whiteboard delivery and mounting not included. Markers sold separately.
________
Caroline Wampole is a writer, artist, performer, and co-founder of the band Big Soul, whose album was recently rereleased after going platinum in France in the 1990s. Her essays have been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, Atticus Review, The Carolina Quarterly, and The Forge Literary Magazine. She is currently seeking representation for her memoir,How to Be a Rock Star in Paris.
While the Memoir Waits: Collaborative Interviewing and Building Platform
March 9, 2026 § 9 Comments
By Mel Williams
As my memoir, Little Flames Under My Skin, an account of sudden paralysis and rebuilding a life inside a disabled body, lingers in publishing purgatory—the uncertain stretch between submission and decision—I’m determined that my identity as a writer isn’t suspended alongside it. What I fear more than the verdict itself is creative paralysis: the risk that a contract, or its absence, might define not just my work, but also me.
So what’s a writer to do while waiting?
Last June, I launched my Substack newsletter Little Flames. It began as personal essays about acquiring a rare auto-immune disease, Transverse Myelitis, and as a way to keep friends and family updated on the progress of my memoir. By September, as the reader community expanded beyond my immediate circle, I noticed that the disability-centered essays were drawing the strongest reader response: likes, comments, shares, and direct emails.
After months of writing about my own body and book, I began thinking about how other disabled/differently abled creatives sustain their creative lives. That curiosity became a new part of my Substack newsletter—a monthly interview series featuring writers, artists and community members in conversation about creativity, access and what it takes to keep making work inside bodies that don’t cooperate.
For me, interviewing is a natural extension of my writing practice because it disrupts the solitariness of memoir. Listening to how others express their lived experience strengthens my own craft by reducing my assumptions and biases and broadening my perspective beyond my writing desk.
My first interview was with a disabled student, an artist who is studying to be a physical therapy assistant despite the obstacles she faces. More recently, I interviewed an actor who survived an apartment fire and rebuilt his stage and screen career after severe burns and hand amputations. Each are expanding visibility and access in their own way.
I spent my pre-illness years on the advertising and account management side of a national community newspaper company––immersed in news culture, though not as a journalist. That role involved client engagement and building long-term relationships. That training influences how I approach interviews now, my method sitting somewhere between reporting and conversation.
I think of this series in my newsletter as collaborative interviews.
Unlike a traditional Q&A, I intentionally invite interviewees to help shape how the conversation unfolds. I come prepared with questions, but I also ask: What feels important for you to tell me about yourself? Or we begin with an initial conversation, and I follow up after with questions built from that first exchange. I resist the hierarchy of interviewer and subject. My goal is to foster mutual inquiry. Questions evolve and the conversation becomes a shared act of making.
Disability further reshapes the interview dynamics. I’ve found a collaborative approach creates space for stories to be told in the way each individual wishes to be seen. With the student artist I interviewed, although I was curious about her medical history and her journey overcoming health challenges, she chose to focus on the mentors who guided her, the balance she maintains between art, school and career goals, and how her experiences inform her view on patient care. Here, I realized that I was shaping the story alongside her rather than imposing a narrative about her.
My interview practice continues to evolve. Shared disability does not automatically equal shared boundaries. What one individual is willing to reveal, another may guard as too personal to disclose. Labels are also personal. Some individuals embrace disability identity wholly while others resist being pigeon-holed into categories that define them on the basis of physical appearance or mobility. Even I waiver on how to label myself––disabled, ill, writer, mother, all of the above. Collaborative interviewing requires an openness to ambiguity––recognizing disability when it is named but also acknowledging it when it goes unspoken. It also requires comfort with complexity––the layered, intersecting identities that exist within a single life.
The series, too, is widening. While it began with disabled/differently abled writers and creatives, it’s broadened to include those who support and work alongside them: a local café which intentionally hires staff with intellectual disabilities; frontline clinicians who sustain bodies in crisis; and community builders who advocate for access and inclusivity. These individuals’ stories matter too, because they make survival—creative and physical—possible.
So while I wait to see what the future holds for my memoir, I’m connecting with readers who care about disability, access and the ecosystem that makes writing and other artistic practice possible. I’m expanding what falls under my creative nonfiction writing umbrella and building a platform. Just as I inhabit a multitude of labels, my writing encompasses a variety of interests and approaches to craft. As memoir writers, especially debut authors, we’re told that we need a platform: a place where readership can grow before a book finds its publishing home. If platform is a way to nudge the gates of publishing purgatory open, collaboration is the way I’m constructing it—interview by interview. And this reminds me that writing––like publishing–– is never truly solitary.
__________
Mel Williams is a Toronto-based writer and disability advocate whose memoir Little Flames Under My Skin was named runner-up for the 2025 Sue William Silverman Prize for Creative Nonfiction. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Fiddlehead, Dribble Drabble Review, Emerging Writers Reading Series, Rollick Magazine and elsewhere. Find her on Substack and Instagram.
Excavate, Scrape, and Shape: Using Discards to Improve Your Craft
March 6, 2026 § 23 Comments
By Kim Pittaway
It was a slushy Saturday in January, and I had a few solitary hours tacked onto the end of a busy conference week to spend wandering in New York before heading home to Canada. The Met beckoned.
I had no particular artwork to tick off a list of must-sees, and I might have missed the canvas that captured me if I hadn’t sidestepped a darting toddler. But then, there it was: a dark image stretching almost seven feet by eight feet, featuring what the card on the wall described as “an imposing and ambiguous mound centrally positioned against a dark backdrop.” To me, it looked like a portrait of a massive stone tablet, its face scarred with age, flecks of blue peeking through and hinting at a hidden and possibly happier past. The title made me laugh: Guano (Menhir). Guano isa synonym for excrement, specifically the shit of seabirds and bats, shit that is especially valued as a fertiliser because of its high nitrogen, phosphate and potassium content, elements that also once saw it used to produce gunpowder. Nutrient-rich and possibly explosive: that was intriguing.
As was the artist’s process. Judit Reigl, who fled Communist Hungary in 1950 (after eight failed attempts) and ended up in Paris, had a habit of reusing her unsuccessful paintings as drop cloths, which “became saturated with pictorial matter and were trampled underfoot,” according to the curator’s wall card. Reigl didn’t simply pick the cloths up and hang them as art though: she used homemade tools to excavate, scrape, and shape what she rescued, turning her discards into something new.
The process made me envious, the idea of combing my discarded words for reuse, reshaping. Images of writers’ drafts from an earlier age, handwritten edits over typescripts and pen scrawls, floated to mind. My discarded words had dissolved in the ether, word-processed into invisibility, leaving just final drafts smooth-faced and ready for presentation to the world.
But were those discards really lost? And what would be the value in retrieving them anyway? Would they be nutrient rich—or just shit?
Did it matter?
Poet, memoirist, and teacher Diana Goetsch contends that writers—unlike painters, musicians, and other creators—often fail to engage in practice. We lean in the direction of product rather that process, working on a story, an essay, a book, rather than taking the time to practice the foundational skills that will ultimately allow us to “perform.” So why not use our discards as an excuse to practice?
Excavate
Finding your cast-offs is the first step. Rather than focusing on lost snippets of text—the paint strokes in this analogy—look first instead for the half-finished canvases: abandoned partial pieces, rejected submissions, the V4s, V7s, “draftdrafts” of your computer files. Still attached to their original possibilities? Leave versions where they sit and copy them over into a new folder as well. Suggestion: keep it process-focused—maybe call the folder “Play.”
Scrape
What about those snippets, the phrases that seemed lovely but not quite right for that last thing you were working on? Start a new document in your “Play” folder—maybe call it “Scrapings”—and keep it open as you edit future work. Paste excised bits over as the mood strikes you.
Shape
And now comes the fun. Dip into your folder and play-practice. Some suggestions:
- Bait your hook: Open one of your excavated files. Choose a page at random. Scan it for a word or phrase that hooks you. Use that word as the prompt for ten minutes of hand-to-the-page continuous free writing. Done? Highlight a word or phrase that particularly intrigues you—and use that as your next prompt for ten more minutes of writing.
- Redact your text: Open another excavated file. Print out a random page. Using a marker, “redact” text to create a found poem or word set. If so inspired, use those words as a starting point for new piece.
- Imagine a past…or future: Working with fiction? Pull a character from your page and subtract or add twenty years to their age. Who are they now? What do they hope or know that the original version of them didn’t? What possibilities have opened or closed? What does this newly aged version think of the person you’d originally shaped—and what would that original think of this alternate? Alternatively: whether with fiction or nonfiction, look at your setting and dig into its past. What was this place like ten, fifty, one hundred, one thousand years earlier? What does its past tell you about its present?
- Pick a word, any word: In your Scrapings document, pick a word or phrase. This is your new destination—give yourself one hundred words to write toward it, with your chosen word or phrase as the endpoint of your writing.
- Argue against yourself: Scan your files or Scrapings document for an assertion or conclusion—a point you were trying to make. Now, set yourself the task of counter-arguing: why is that assertion wrongheaded, incomplete, naïve? Finding it hard to write against yourself? Adopt a persona, a character who would argue against you, and write in their voice.
- Put the backgound front and centre: Look for a section of context or background, or a secondary character or bit player in a scene. Pull that person or material into the foreground. What happens if that is your focus?
Has your play-practice fertilized the seed of an essay or the development of a fresh character? Has a new idea gunpowdered its way to the fore? Whether, like Riegl, your once-discarded drop cloth develops into something gallery-worthy or remains simply a tool for tidying your creative space, one thing is certain: it’s not guano anymore.
_____
Kim Pittaway teaches in the MFA in Creative Nonfiction at the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She is the co-author, with Toufah Jallow, of Toufah: The Woman Who Inspired an African #MeToo Movement (Steerforth Press, 2021), which the New York Times Book Review described as “riveting” and “propulsive”; and, with Dr. Samra Zafar, of Unconditional (Collins, 2025). Visit her Substack “I Have Thoughts” exploring writing craft.
Hustle and a Spreadsheet: A Debut Author’s Blueprint for a Book Launch
March 5, 2026 § 24 Comments
By Amy Shea
In September 2025, my debut book, Too Poor to Die: The Hidden Realities of Dying in the Margins, was published. In the five months since, I have done thirteen in-person events across the country and seven online talks, recorded three podcasts, wrote four book-adjacent pieces, and posted 180 Instagram posts plus countless reels. I’m not going to lie—I’m tired.
Launching a book is a marathon. I began campaigning over a year out. One of the first things I did was join a local writing network that met monthly to discuss book marketing. That’s where I acquired many of the ideas that I share with you here. Additionally, my publisher, Rutgers University Press, had me complete a comprehensive author questionnaire to help guide them in their marketing efforts. This generated action items including reviews and interviews to request, awards to apply for, conferences to attend or present at, and more. For me, a spreadsheet was a better way to visually process all the information and make it actionable. Then I imported all of the tasks from the spreadsheet into Asana, a project management tool, where I could organize myself with to-dos and deadlines.
But I knew I couldn’t rely solely on my publisher to promote my book. If I wanted it to be a success, I had to get my hustle on. Rutgers’ goal was to sell 1,500 copies in the first three years. For my book—a collection of essays bearing witness to disparities in death and dying faced by some of society’s most marginalized and vulnerable and often homeless—that projection felt low. For a narrative nonfiction book with a timely topic, I felt it could do more. I wanted it to sell more. This would allow me to write and publish a second book. I set a goal of 1,000 copies sold by the end of the year. My plan: build interest and work toward consistent, steady sales with each marketing activity.
I wish I’d logged the amount of time I spent on everything. I took to joking, “I have two full-time jobs: the one I get paid for and the book launch, plus a part-time job as an Instagram influencer.” I met with event collaborators; prepped marketing materials; researched event opportunities and spaces; identified people to promote the book to and events to make that happen; organized my travel plans; and emailed everyone I’d ever known asking them to come to events, buy the book, request it at their library, and provide reviews—and I reminded myself to breathe.
My book’s topic led to multifaceted conversations and connections with a diverse range of folks. Those connections led to hosting different types of events—solo presentations, in-conversations, panels—and opened the door to a variety of event paces: bookstores, cemeteries, and arts-based venues. Each event had a different vibe. Some focused more on end-of-life and hospice care, some on writing craft, others on homelessness and advocacy.
As the pub date drew closer, my Type A, Virgo brain drove me to feverishly prepare. As though I was redefending my doctoral dissertation (where the first draft of my book was born), I wrote fifty pages of questions and answers, covering everything from why I’d written the book, to policy issues the book addressed and craft techniques I used. Although helpful and comforting, I realized about three events in that I no longer needed to study so intensely. Everything I needed to say was already there inside of me.
In addition to events, an effective way I promoted my book was through book-adjacent writing. I wrote a blog post on incorporating research into a creative practice, an OpEd on the harms of homeless encampment sweeps and a blog post on the same topic, and this blog post you’re reading now!
I recognize the immense privilege I had to embark upon this kind of promotion: I work for a supportive organization, used hotel and airline points to defray travel costs, and was able to support the book launch financially in many ways, including revising my website; printing bookmarks and postcards; hosting giveaways on StoryGraph and Goodreads; and eating out the two months while I traveled. Not every writer can do this, and not every writer needs to. Book marketing depends on your goals, your audience, and your access. Keeping the launch local and adding online events is a great way to engage an audience that requires much less bandwidth, travel, or money.
Yes, I’m exhausted, but it’s a good kind of exhaustion. I now know what it feels like to be a rockstar (on a slightly smaller scale): getting nerves before an event, being highly engaged during, and being wired and tired after. And, I received so much joy from this experience. I basked in the support of good friends and family who showed up with their beautiful smiles and faces to cheer me on, I visited new-to-me places, reminisced in old haunts, and toured so many cool cemeteries. Promoting the book was full on, controlled chaos, and at the end of 2025 I nearly hit that 1,000-book goal!
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Amy Shea is an essayist and the author of Too Poor to Die: The Hidden Realities of Dying in the Margins. Her work has appeared in The Missouri Review, Portland Review, The Massachusetts Review, the Journal of Sociology of Health & Illness & others. She works as the Writing Program Director for Mount Tamalpais College, a free community college for the incarcerated people of San Quentin.
Creating the AWP Magic At Home
March 3, 2026 § 22 Comments
By Allison K Williams
Are you going to AWP, or sadly/gratefully watching it happen on social media? The Association of Writers & Writing Programs’ annual conference and bookfair is in Baltimore this week: four glorious days of trudging through a fluorescent-lit convention center with gray concrete floors, trying to match real live faces with social-media names, and perpetually looking for a snack that isn’t a $16 tunafish sandwich.
Writer friends and writer acquaintances are coordinating meet-ups and announcing their readings. Editors I admire are posting about their panels, and offering themselves as last-minute panel replacements. Everything is liminal. Or intersectional. Or intersectionally liminal. In a few days, countless editors, writers and journal staffers will head back to their home institutions with swag bags, connections and newly autographed books.
But even if we’re not meandering the aisles of the giant book fair, awkwardly avoiding eye contact with big-deal writers we admire (we don’t want to look like fangirls) or hoping the staff of the magazine that just published our work will spontaneously recognize us (because introducing ourselves might be bragging), we’re still in this together. And if you’re at home watching the literary world scroll by, you can still recreate the AWP experience.
First, you’ll need wine. Pour half a plastic cup of unfortunately-sharp white, and sip politely (hide those winces!) as you pull from your shelves every literary journal, small-press book, and poetry collection. Arrange the books on your dining-room table in a pleasing display. Rearrange three times. Settle on the original arrangement—it should be about the work.
Find the last free tote bag you got from a conference, NPR funding drive, or those Girl Scouts at the Super Walmart when you bought six boxes of Thin Mints. Fill the bag with twelve bookmarks, two souvenir magnets, five pens bearing the names of businesses you don’t remember patronizing, and some sticky notes. Print out the first fifty pages of your newest manuscript, just in case, and slip it into your tote bag while reciting your elevator pitch like a mantra.
Browse the books in your pleasing display and ask yourself of each one: Do I know this author personally? If so, why did they only sign their name on the flyleaf and not something that says how great I am and how much they can’t wait to be beside me on the bestseller list?
Download photos of Lucy Sante, Ken Liu, the Cave Canem Poet Laureates, the editor of any literary magazine you’ve ever wanted to be published in, and all your writer friends on Facebook. Create a slideshow, setting the time to 1 second per photo. As the pictures flash, guess who each person is. Each time you get one right, choose a book from your pleasing display and put it in your tote bag. Each time you get one wrong, practice saying, “So great to see you! How is your work going?” and estimate how many minutes of conversation it would take to identify the person you’re talking to and whether you have in fact met before.
Turn the lights down. Put on a smooth jazz playlist. Go to that YouTube video of the coffee shop sounds and turn it all the way up. Pour yourself a beverage you actually like and call a writer you met anywhere last year, on speakerphone. Count how many times one of you says, “I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” As you converse, look through your display for any journals in which that writer’s work appears and add them to your tote bag. When you hang up, flee to the bathroom, lock yourself in and look through your tote bag journals. Find a piece so powerful, all you can do is lean your forehead against the coolness of the wall and wish you had written it, even though you have never even contemplated making a poem in Sapphics.
The next morning, visit the nearest coffee shop and order your usual. Go to Brevity’s list of craft essays and read six of them. Every time you find the word “ruminate,” drink. Scan the coffee shop. Does anyone look like they might be a writer? See if you can work up an excuse to talk to them without looking like a doofus. If they refuse to start a conversation, slink away, then drink. If they chat enthusiastically but are not a writer after all, drink. If you can’t figure out how to end the conversation gracefully, drink. Eventually you can excuse yourself to pee.
Go back home on foot. Enjoy the blissful silence. Leaf through the last few books in your table display and just take anything you want (the last day of AWP is a free-for-all, nobody wants to pack it all up and take it home again). Look at the Acknowledgements and start writing down agent names. One of them’s gotta be right for you. Carry the tote bag around your house for the next two days until you set it down to pick up something else and forget where you’ve left it. Gently mourn.
When you trip over the bag on the third day, find the poem you loved in the bathroom and read it again. Imagine the writer you love most in the world feeling that way about your work. Imagine AWP happening in your house, and know that it kind of is, that you are a ‘real’ writer, that you’re allowed to talk to any author you want via social posts or emails or handwritten cards, that it doesn’t matter whether or not they talk back. Know that you’re part of this world, no matter where you are.
If you’re heading to AWP, please say hello at Bookfair Booth #353!
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Allison K Williams is Managing Editor of The Brevity Blog. Yes, she sure will be at AWP–find her with literary agent Jessica Berg for (free!) feedback on your pitch and query at Bookfair Booth #353. Or catch them March 10 on Zoom for Writers Bridge: Pitch & Platform (live only, no replay).
When a Poet Writes a Memoir Then a Novel and Returns to the Memoir
March 2, 2026 § 30 Comments
By Lisa Rizzo
- When your father begins to fade into dementia, you find yourself writing a memoir about your distant relationship and how illness is taking away any chance of reconciliation. Surprisingly, your grief leads you to write prose instead of poetry. You have a lot to learn about this new genre, so you take numerous classes and workshops, work with four developmental editors and coaches and attend at least five writing retreats.
- Because you have always been a poet, you think small and choose to organize your memoir as a collage, weaving short pieces together à la Safekeeping by Abigail Thomas or Maggie Smith’s You Could Make This Place Beautiful. You think this will make it easier to write, but you are wrong. It takes you almost ten years to write 70,000 words, which you edit down to 58,000, but finally you believe you are done.
- Knowing your memoir has a challenging structure and you are not famous, you don’t try to get an agent. Instead you submit your manuscript to small presses. Two of those submissions are to editors who requested your work.
- You hit send and wait. The rejections roll in—even from the editors who had asked to read your manuscript. As always, you are stung by the form letter no’s, but the personal rejections from those two editors devastate you.
- Your fingers shake on the mouse as you scroll through comments like: characters not as compelling as I hoped, unsympathetic narrator, loose story development. Reading these words hits hard and you feel your confidence shrivel in your chest.
- You believe all your hard work is for naught. You can’t write about how your father’s silence and distance affected you. You can’t express your struggle to understand him—and yourself. You cannot bring your emotions to the page to get your meaning across. No one will ever read this book. You have failed.
- You tuck your manuscript away and start a new project. You write about your Sicilian ancestors, people you discovered while researching your father’s family. You turn their story into a novel since you know few facts about them, freeing you to make up anything you want. After working so long on a memoir (once an unfamiliar genre), you feel brave enough to tackle fiction and liberated by the new form.
- Words pour out of you at an astonishing rate. After years of digging into your own psyche, it is a relief to write from the point-of-view of a narrator who is not you. You give your main character a secret love affair and create conflicts with her children. You write her as a parent who doesn’t know how to open up to her children and the damage that does. In one year, you write as many words as it took you a decade to write before. This feeling of success not only soothes the pain of those rejections but also renews your belief in your writing ability.
- In your novel-writing workshop (of course you sign up for another workshop!), readers tell you that they enjoy the imagery and setting descriptions. They find the dialogue realistic. And you hear one comment over and over: you write about grief so well. At first you are confused, how could you write your fictional character’s grief so well but not your own? Was that what was missing in your memoir?
- You close the novel file and re-open your memoir manuscript for another edit (who knows what number it is!). Now you understand that you must write yourself as a narrator with the flaws and desires and fears of any main character. You must trust your readers enough to lay yourself on the page.
- You must create sympathy for that sometimes unsympathetic narrator by showing your pain, how you yelled at your father for not helping with housework, how you moved far away instead of telling him how it hurt you when he wouldn’t listen. You cannot hide behind silence like your father did.
- You need to write the scenes—like watching your father lose his words from dementia, which reminds you of the times he hid behind his newspaper instead of talking to you—that draw the reader into the story and create connections between the pieces of your collage to make the story whole. You will use your craft, employing sensory details and descriptive language, to make your sentences resonate.
- Buoyed by your new awareness you feel ready to face your memoir again. You look at your work with new eyes, the eyes of a writer. Not a poet or a novelist or a memoirist, but a writer who can use the imagery and lyricism of poetry, the storytelling of fiction and the honesty of memoir to bring your words into the world.
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Lisa Rizzo is the author of the poetry collections Always a Blue House (Saddle Road Press, 2016) and In the Poem an Ocean (Big Table Publishing, 2011). Her nonfiction appears in journals including The MacGuffin, Rain Taxi, Brevity Blog and The Sun. A retired teacher, she spends her mornings working on a novel in between edits to her memoir Half-Orphans: A Poet, Her Father and the Silence Between Them.
Fishing With Pelicans: Lessons in How to Hook a Publisher
February 27, 2026 § 17 Comments
By Liz deBeer
Overhead, a pelican circles, exhibiting its huge wing span, big beak, guttural grunt, and prehistoric vibe. It glides above the cove, searching for flashes of movement before diving straight down. I hold my breath, silently cheering for the bird. But it’s a miss. The pelican tries again. And again. Finally, throat pouch bulging, the large bird swallows its prey.
Watching from the shore, I’m struck by how this scene resembles my pursuit of publication and inspires me to keep trying.
Spot the Prey
Pelicans hunt by skimming water surfaces, searching for bubbles or splashes. They maximize their chances by avoiding choppy water and deep depths.
My hunt begins by skimming through guidelines, wish lists, updates, and open calls to augment my prospects for publication. If something’s not a match, I move on. I wouldn’t market a memoir to fiction agents, just like pelicans won’t hunt in deep, rocky, open ocean waters.
Seize the Moment
Pelicans are opportunistic feeders. They forage for schooling fish, like sardines or anchovies, but are willing to consider less appetizing prey like crustaceans or even frogs.
Hungry for publication, I consider myself opportunistic too. When I began seeking publication of my longer manuscripts and my collection of flash (both fiction and creative nonfiction), I thought I needed a literary agent. But after multiple rejections and receiving feedback from a few agents online or at conferences, I’m now casting a wider net that includes small niche publishing houses.
Some writer friends have received contracts for memoirs or novels via small presses, and a few have had modest success with self-publishing, so I recognize the benefits of expanding my search.
Dive and Scoop
When pelicans decide to dive, they position themselves and go for it, grabbing their prey without comparing it to another pelican’s.
When writers plunge into their publishing quests, they too should avoid comparison. Each of us has original stories to share, in authentic voices and styles.
Pelicans’ quick decision-making nudges writers to advance when opportunity arises. Once, I waited too long, not realizing the call had a cap. The window closed before I could submit, so now I’m determined to be better prepared and to move fast when reentering the submission process.
Gulp and Swallow
Once pelicans scoop a fish, they swallow it whole, without picking it apart.
Writers must swallow self-doubt to avoid choking caused by chewing too long or worrying about rejection. Just gulp those fears down; take a risk and learn in the process.
After no bites on a recent manuscript submission, I’ve decided to rework it entirely, including the title and format. In the past, my willingness to rewrite has reaped rewards, like the time I revised a previously rejected flash piece, which was subsequently accepted.
This past year, I participated in a 100-rejections challenge: a big gulp. Taking this risk led to double-digit literary journals publishing my creative nonfiction and flash fiction. In the process, I’ve gained confidence as I seek publication for my longer works.
Work Cooperatively
Some pelicans form a group to herd small fish into a confined space before scooping them up together. They reap more when they work collaboratively.
Groupwork helps me as well, such as book inc, which describes itself as “a dynamic writing collective” that supports “authors through the entire journey of crafting memoirs and novels – from initial concept to final publication.” Participants write about different topics and genres, but we share ideas and support each other. For example, several of us practice pitches together before attending Pitch Fest events.We also offer feedback on one another’s manuscripts and query letters.
I’m also a member of Flash Fiction Magazine’s Authors Only Collective, an international online “community feedback exchange” where writers of both fiction and nonfiction share prompts, editing advice, open calls, and publications. We purchase, read, and review one another’s work, as suggested in Heidi Croot’s recent Brevity Blog essay. Workshops and classes in both writing groups have helped me improve my skills.
Rest
After pelicans eat, they relax by floating on gentle waves or sleeping on rocks and piers. No guilt, as an exhausted pelican is unlikely to catch dinner.
Writers need to recharge too. That’s why I’m often walking on a nearby beach while watching pelicans. During this time, I determine seasonal objectives, preparing myself for my next round of fishing for a publisher.
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Liz deBeer is a teacher and writer with Project Write Now, a writing cooperative based by the Jersey shore. Her flash has appeared in BULL, Fictive Dream, Does It Have Pockets, Bending Genres and others. She has written essays in various journals including The Brevity Blog and is a volunteer reader for Flash Fiction Magazine. She holds degrees from University of Pennsylvania and Rutgers University. Follow Liz on her Substack.
