Craft Essays: Issue 33, May 2010

Flesh on the Bones: Turning Dry Ancestral Details into a Life Story
by Sharon DeBartolo Carmack

Putting flesh on your ancestors’ bones and resuscitating their lives takes time and research. But by tracking down historical documents, discovering relevant social histories, and speculating on what your ancestors’ lives must have been like, you’ll turn sterile names, dates and places into a compelling historical family narrative.

My Muse – He’s Just Not That Into Me
by Drema Hall Berkheimer

Desperate to find a way to jump-start my writing, I decided to journal. I bought a smooth Montblanc pen and a leather binder with creamy thick paper. Oh, I was committed. A glass of cheap red wine close by, I filled page after page with musings and quotes and bits of things remembered. I kept at it for several months. One day, a classmate asked how my book was coming along. “Just fine,” I said, “thanks for asking.”

It was a big fat lie.

Want to write a craft essay, or do an author Q&A or podcast interview for an upcoming issue of Brevity? If so, send your essay topic or author-interview idea and a brief bio note to craft editor Julie Riddle at brevitymag+craft@gmail.com.

Past Craft Essays

Issue 32, January 2010

Excavating a Moment’s Truth
by Kerry Cohen

Becoming Your Own Best Critic
by Jim Heynen

The Necessity of Navel-Gazing
by Lisa Gill

Issue 31, September 2009

To Blog or Not to Blog? Using the Blogosphere to Shape Narrative Voice
by Towles Kintz

Back-Form.: Me ‘n’ Those Manuscripts
Edit: back-form. < Editor
by Stephen Corey

From Confession to Craft: Memoir as Its Own Reward
by Dinah Lenney

To Blog or Not to Blog? Using the Blogosphere to Shape Narrative Voice
by Towles Kintz

Issue 30, May 2009

Balancing Music and Meaning: An Interview with Kim Barnes on Short Nonfiction
by Gretchen Clark

Ten (or Twenty) Points on Publishing, Plus a Few Playful Tidbits
by Judith Kitchen

Rejection: Give Up or Show Up?
by Kelli Russell Agodon

Issue 29, January 2009

Listen: An Interview with Brenda Miller (14:44)

On Practice: Letter to Holly from Cougar Ridge
by Brenda Miller

“Perhapsing”: The Use of Speculation in Creative Nonfiction
by Lisa Knopp

Issue 28, September 2008

Tiny Masters: An Artful Trick to Writing the Personal Essay
by Sherry Simpson

On Bridging the Distance Between Therapist and Theorist
by Barrie Jean Borich

Issue 27, May 2008

The Fact Behind the Facts, or How You Can Get It All Right and Still Get It All Wrong
by Philip Gerard

Issue 25, Fall 2007

Advice to My Friend Beth’s Undergraduate Creative Nonfiction Students
by Dustin Michael

Nonfiction Is Translation
by Brian Goedde

Issue 23, Winter 2007

Of Nails, Nonfiction, and Various Adhesives
by Shane Borrowman

Issue 21, Summer 2006

On Miniatures
by Lia Purpura

Prose Poems, Paragraphs, Brief Lyric Nonfiction
by Peggy Shumaker

Issue 20, Spring 2006

Frelection: The Transformative Power of Reflection in Nonfiction
by Rebecca McClanahan

A Riff on the [NonfictioNow] Writing Conference
by Rosemary Davis

Issue 19, Fall 2005

Writing Brief: Notes on Past and Future Brevity Submissions
by Linda Norlen

On the “Speedy Narrative”
by Jeff Gundy

Copyediting. Vital. Do It or Have It Done.
by Diana Hume George

Innocence & Experience: Voice in Creative Nonfiction
by Sue William Silverman

Laughing through Life: Humor in Autobiographical Writing
by Tim Jackson