Craft Essays: Issue 32, January 2010

Excavating a Moment’s Truth
by Kerry Cohen

Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity took five months to write, but I spent almost ten years figuring out what this book was really about. To be honest, I spent almost ten years working on a single scene – the first full scene in the book. I rewrote that scene again and again, each time knowing I had not gotten it right.

Becoming Your Own Best Critic
by Jim Heynen

In truth, most acts of revision are nothing more than attempts to make sure what you have written fits current rules and fashions. Conformity isn’t revision. Real revision is soul-work. It messes with your clear rational intentions and takes you to a much more interesting, and honest, place.

The Necessity of Navel-Gazing
by Lisa Gill

What’s significant about dysfunction is that it can illuminate the function we all usually take for granted. Scientists never underestimate the potential learning opportunity that is inherent in abnormality; medical breakthroughs often begin with careful examination of the break. Writers who engage in navel-gazing with the same scientific spirit of risk-taking and inquiry may also glean discoveries of merit.

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 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

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