In his newly-released craft book, Truth Is The Arrow, Mercy Is The Bow, subtitled “A DIY Manual for the Construction of Stories,” Steve Almond offers essential lessons on the basic building blocks of storytelling such as plot, character, and tone, alongside less technical essentials like mystery, intuition, bravery, and authenticity. He offers this advice with his signature clarity, and often wit, alongside specific examples from books and writers he has learned from along the way. Brevity editor Dinty W. Moore recently interviewed Almond about his latest book and that “magical, elusive state ..read more

By Brooke Champagne Writer Nora Ephron said of the difference between tragedy and comedy: “When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you. But when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it’s your laugh.” Comedian Norm Macdonald said of dying: “Death is a funny thing. Not funny haha, like a Woody Allen movie, but funny strange, like a Woody Allen marriage.” The character Marie, played by Carrie Fisher in When Harry Met Sally, said of self-awareness: “Everybody thinks they have good taste and a sense of humor, but they couldn’t possibly all have good taste…” The Harry cha ..read more

By Carlos Greaves Simone Biles had just withdrawn from the women’s gymnastics team event at the Tokyo Olympics, and reading Piers Morgan’s tweet made my blood boil. “Are ‘mental health issues’ now the go-to excuse for any poor performance in elite sport? What a joke.” How someone with zero experience competing in elite sports — let alone Olympic gymnastics — could say something so heartless and ignorant about an athlete’s struggles was baffling to me. So, as a satirist, I did what I normally do when I read something that makes me incandescently angry — I tried to write something funny about ..read more

By Samantha Ladwig A blank page never scared me until I bought a bookstore months before the pandemic—an endeavor that pushed me into retail hell, the stress of which sucked all the air out of my creativity. I didn’t want to admit my reality because I didn’t know who I would be without writing and that scared me. But after a year of trying to force ideas out onto paper, I put the pen down; my job needed me to be all in, and I had a responsibility to show up. Those in between, writing-less years were difficult. Even though I committed myself to the bookstore, I couldn’t stop worrying about my ..read more

By Amy Roost “Nothing has really happened until it has been described.” ~Virginia Woolf Surely everyone knows the feeling of having experienced something so disconcerting or shocking they ask themselves, Did that really happen? But that’s not what Woolf was referring to. She was emphasizing the describing not the happening. She was referring to trauma, her own. Specifically, the sexual assault she endured. I too suffered sexual abuse by my older brother, and for decades I’d described it to no one. The events, isolated in my memory for so long, faded like the dates on a tombstone. I began to ..read more

By Karen Rizzo I saw an acquaintance at a coffee shop the other day—a funny screenwriter I worked with briefly—and his partner, also a writer. Of course, I wondered how he was doing during this Hollywood writers/actors strike. After all, we were kind of in the same boat. My husband, James, who usually makes his living as an actor, was working only the picket lines. As a freelance writer, I was in In-Between Gigs Purgatory. As I approached my acquaintance’s table we made eye contact and I put my hand up to wave. He frowned and seemed to swallow hard. Huh, I thought, maybe a piece of his croiss ..read more

By Jenn McKee Early this year, when my family agreed on a new-to-us spring break destination, my first thought was, “Oh! I know a local writer who’s super-familiar with that part of the world. I’ll ask for recs.” I’d gotten to know this author in recent years, having interviewed her a handful of times about the women’s novels she published each year. I’d pitched (and landed) a newspaper feature when a celebrated movie star optioned one of her books for film; and I’d written additional book previews and author profiles focused on her. So when I found that my only remaining Facebook link to her ..read more

By Shannon Reed They will expect that you will be funny. As in, they expect you to be funny, to them, right now. Context will not matter, by the way. You are supposed to be hilarious, even if you are, say, about to be sedated for a colonoscopy. To be fair, that is a pretty funny situation. But maybe not to you. Still, you should have a joke ready. People will be disappointed if you don’t. “Make sure I’m still hooked up to the heart monitor when you give me the bill” is a decent – not great, but okay – joke here. Okay is good enough, though. Context is important. Let’s be honest, you don’t wa ..read more

Rejections and Setbacks Hurt, But Given Time, They Make Great Stories By Pamela Jane Before I began writing full-time, I pictured the glamorous life of a published children’s author waiting for me just around the corner. My author fantasy seemed to be set in the 1940s: I work quietly at home, I don’t have to market or promote my books, and I’ve had the same editor for twenty years.  She publishes everything I write, and my books stay in print forever.  If I need a little extra money, I simply pick up the telephone and call her. She drops everything and rushes over to my office where ..read more

By Erin Hill An open “Grades” tab on the computer balanced precariously on my lap. An open student reflection one tab over. Word Feud game with a friend on the iPad to my left. Indiana basketball on the TV in my sightline. Group chat on the phone to my right about our team’s poor shooting and lack of effort on defense. And I wonder what my problem is. I blame my atrophied focus and my mental fatigue on lots of reasonable things—my relentless schedule, my students’ needs, perimenopause, pizza for the third meal in a row. But a gnawing knowing: I’m contributing to the problem. My five-tasks-at ..read more