More Than a Hook: How to Open with the Heart of Your Memoir
January 16, 2026 § 5 Comments
By Arya Samuelson
Where to start and where to end poses a unique challenge to the memoirist. When working with the raw material of our lives, we must make a deliberate decision about where to place the brackets, because the question isn’t about where your life begins, but about where the deeper story of your memoir begins.
Editors, agents, and even teachers stress the importance of opening with a “hook” that grabs the reader’s attention as soon as possible. TV does this all the time with its blaring sirens, blazing fires, and dead bodies—a combination algorithmically guaranteed to make you need to know what happened.
While intrigue is undoubtedly important at the start of many stories, I want to call for a different way to think about what a hook really means—not just as a cheap plot thrill or a salacious kick-off, but as a way to introduce your reader right away to the story at the heart of your book.
One of my favorite ways to imagine narrative beginnings is to study independent and foreign films, many of which open with image rather than plot, a technique that immediately introduces viewers to the visual logic of the story. We glimpse the film’s pacing, quality of attention, emotional textures, and the questions and themes at the core of this film.
We may not know what all these (more or less) subtle clues mean until later, but once we watch the film and then go back to the beginning, it almost always makes a completely different kind of sense—why the film opens with that field where so much pain will transpire, or those clouds that convey so much of the moral murkiness the story will grapple with, or that love letter to a house that will no longer exist by the end.
Even plot-driven films can benefit by opening with images. Take Back to the Future and what its “title sequence” teaches us even before Michael J. Fox waltzes into Doc Brown’s house, skateboard in tow:
The tick-tick-tick of various clocks of different shapes, sizes and degrees of modernity—some old-fashioned pendulums or gilded carousels, others blinking crude digital numbers.
A procession of synchronized inventions: a coffee machine sans pot, boiling water hissing on the hot plate as the TV reports on breaking news; a toaster that repeatedly pops up burnt toast; a malfunctioning automated dog feeder that fills Einstein’s bowl with a week’s worth of brown sludge overflowing the brim.
We know immediately that this movie will have something to do with how time and technology succeed and fail to line up across the complicated journey the characters are about to navigate. The comedy in these innovations gone wrong tells us the narrative will be messy, heady, and entertaining.
If Back to the Future can accomplish this in two minutes, I guarantee that we can convey just as much—about tone, texture, theme, and stakes—in the first two pages of our books.
Take T Kira Madden’s unforgettable opening to her memoir, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls: “My mother rescued a mannequin from the J.C. Penney dump when I was two years old.” Consider the impact not only of such an unusual image, but the choice of verb, rescue—how it pulls on your attention like a spool unraveling.
Lidia Yuknavitch’s Chronology of Water opens with a stillbirth, a visceral and narrative collision between death and birth, and of course water—the horror of such an event, and yet the way that that event has radiated into a whole new way of understanding what is possible about survival and transformation.
Terese Marie Mailhot’s Heart Berries, a fragmented account of the trauma and abuse she suffered as an Indigenous woman, begins with the personification of story itself: “My story was maltreated. The words were too wrong and ugly to speak.”
Ingrid Rojas Contreras, author of The Man Who Could Move Clouds, talks about opening with the crux of your “poetic argument” or the “poetic knot.” She urges authors to begin with the most urgent question driving them, the question that this narrative may never untangle, but whose labyrinth nonetheless haunts and compels the attempt.
What makes it so hard to write memoir beginnings is that we usually can’t write them until the end—or until we truly know what is at the core of our story. Because the core is what’s most important to the story: not the hook, but the heart. Or perhaps another way to see it: the hook of the memoir is the heart.
Whether you’re just embarking on a memoir, or have been deep at work for years, here are some questions that may offer a new way in:
- What are the core themes of your book?
- If you had to distill your book into its strongest three to five film reel images, what would they be?
- Write a scene / memory / moment during which your core themes and images are at their strongest. Try starting your book here.
- What is the knot at the center of your book? How might you bring this central struggle to life through your opening?
Even if you have always imagined your book starting in a particular place, there is profound value to asking your story these questions and experimenting with new possibilities. Maybe you’ll find a fresh opening, or maybe you’ll understand its heart in a new way.
And because all beginnings live inside endings, and vice versa, you may even find your ending, too.
___
Arya Samuelson—writer, educator, editor, creative coach—has been awarded nonfiction prizes from New Ohio Review, Lascaux Review, and CutBank. She has been published in Fourth Genre, Bellevue Literary Review, Columbia Journal, and elsewhere. Her January 25 class, How to Begin (Again & Again), 1-4pm ET, addresses how to investigate your memoir’s core themes and images and open with your story’s heart in surprising and compelling ways. Learn more about Arya.
Two Rules for a Better Author Newsletter
January 15, 2026 § 10 Comments
By Stephen Knezovich
I sent my first email newsletter nearly 20 years ago, in 2007. And it was awful—not just the content (which wasn’t great), but everything about the process of writing it, designing it, and sending it.
At the time, you had to hand-code the message, send it through a PHP list, debug broken layouts, and pray nothing exploded when you hit “send.” I was working in a small office and that newsletter got passed around like a hot potato among the staff and a rotating cast of interns.
No one wanted it. It felt tedious, technical, and disconnected from the “real” literary work we cared about.
And yet, no matter how hard I tried to get away from the task of sending out the newsletter, I kept getting caught holding that goddamn potato.
Eventually, I realized that when life gives you, um, potatoes make…the best of it, right?
So I started paying attention to other newsletters: the consistent generosity of Seth Godin, the fearless curation of Austin Kleon, the thoughtful exploration of Craig Mod, the staggering openness of The Daily Rumpus. I got curious about and played with the form, injecting some voice and personality and flavor into our spud-like email: letters from the staff and micro-essays from our readers and links from stuff around the web. And over time, I saw firsthand how creative and personal and even—sometimes—easy a really good email newsletter could be. The more we pushed and played, the more every conceivable metric increased: subscribes, opens, clicks, sales—and even direct replies from readers. (Worth noting here that ease and enjoyment do tend to correspond with list growth … but not always.)
Now, much of my work—and creative—life centers around email newsletters. Since 2019, I’ve personally sent or assisted others in sending thousands of email newsletters. Not only do I curate two personal newsletters, one focused on my creative practice and one on my professional practice, but I’m the co-founder of a literary magazine that publishes a flash essay every week directly in our subscribers’ inbox. I also work one-on-one with writers and artists, and consult with publishers and organizations, to help them start, build, and/or grow their own email newsletters. And guess what:
Email newsletters are still one of the most powerful, versatile, and human tools we have for finding readers and keeping them close.
Look, I get it, every “build-your-author-platform” article ever written since the dawn of the internet has said very clearly: YOU MUST HAVE AN EMAIL LIST!! There’s no shortage of prescriptive advice and templates and “best practices.” But honestly, that much advice often just creates confusion.
Instead, I think we can start with two simple rules:
RULE 1: You have to *want* to newsletter. It has to be a choice, not a chore.
Interest is contagious. So is disinterest.
You don’t need to love every send. But you do need a genuine reason for showing up. Curiosity. Enjoyment. A sense of ownership. A feeling that this newsletter gives you something, not just your audience.
When a newsletter works, it’s usually because the person writing it finds the format meaningful. They see it as a space to think out loud, share ideas, tell stories, connect dots. Not as a box to check or a series of marketing announcements when you have something to sell.
If you don’t want a newsletter, don’t start one. And if you already have one you dread, that’s not a discipline problem—it’s a signal that something about the format, frequency, or focus isn’t aligned with your goals.
RULE 2: Readers have to *want* to be on your list. You must offer something of value, and people must choose to sign themselves up.
Your value doesn’t have to be flashy or transactional. But it does have to be clear: insight, perspective, entertainment, usefulness, reassurance, inspiration.
And crucially, readers have to choose.
No scraping email addresses. No adding people “just this once.” No treating your list like a captive audience. A healthy newsletter is built on consent and expectation: readers know what they’re signing up for, and they want more of it.
These rules are complementary. You’re interested enough to show up consistently, and they’re interested enough to invite you into their inbox.
When both sides want to be there, everything else—open rates, growth, longevity—gets easier.
Two rules. No “hacks” required.
You don’t need to master every tool or follow every trend. You don’t need to “optimize” your landing pages or start a Substack. You need alignment: between you and the work, and between the work and the reader.
I don’t have all the answers when it comes to email newsletters. In fact, I have yet to discover some perfect formula. But I know this:
Interest is everything.
When I’m interested, readers can feel it. When they’re interested, I can feel that too. And that’s enough to keep me sending.
________
Join Stephen Knezovich January 21st for the CRAFT TALKS webinar Newsletter Better: The Art & Craft of Sharing Your Work with Others. Explore your newsletter as a durable creative practice that supports your writing life, your career, and your sense of connection in a noisy digital landscape. Find out more/Register now ($30)
Stephen Knezovich is a marketing strategist who works with writers, artists, and arts nonprofits. He is the co-founder of the literary magazine Short Reads, the marketing director and co-founder of Ascender Book Services, the marketing strategist for Off Assignment, a collage artist, and the curator of two email newsletters: Read This and Gluu. He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife and two kids.
The Year the Pause Became a River: On Writing Beyond the Memoir
January 14, 2026 § 40 Comments
By Maria B. Olujic
Earlier this year, I had an essay published in The Brevity Blog about the role of pause in my writing—how stepping back from my memoir allowed something deeper to emerge. When the piece was accepted, I felt pride and relief, and a quieter clarity.
Around the same time, my father turned ninety. He still works ten-hour days outside—building, repairing, planting, constructing. I didn’t suddenly become aware of my own mortality or feel the pressure of time running out. But seeing him move so vigorously into his tenth decade made me ask: How do I want to spend the rest of my years? Until that moment, I thought of myself as someone trying to become a writer. I’d finished a memoir draft, agonized over it, and revised it again, and again. My gut told me the manuscript was almost ready, but still falling short.
Then, when that pause essay was published, something foundational shifted in me. For the first time, I wasn’t waiting to become a writer—I began living as one. It wasn’t permission; permission is too small a word. It was recognition: the creative part of me I had long shut down returned with a clearer voice asking to be taken seriously. And this time, I listened.
The pause I took didn’t lead to stillness——it created room for me to hear what I had been pushing aside. I realized how strongly I wanted to keep writing, not only the memoir, but about the many other questions, images, and stories orbiting it. The pause didn’t stop me; it set me in motion.
A couple of months later, I attended a writers’ retreat led by Allison K Williams. By then, I had sent my memoir to a developmental editor and was waiting for their feedback. During the retreat, Allison said: While your memoir is with your editor—write. Write essays. Write small pieces. Write op-eds. Send them everywhere. I went home and began writing short pieces immediately, including an op-ed that got declined. I didn’t yet have the stamina or structure for that form, but these early attempts showed me that my creative nonfiction writing could move in many directions. Allison’s advice took root in me—like a seed that already knew how to grow.
I took themes from my memoir—war, migration, grief, language, spiritual bewilderment—and let them lead me into the smaller form. Not chapters, not revisions, not the architecture of a book, but essays that allowed me to explore these ideas.
Each piece called to the next.
I didn’t strategize. I didn’t craft a plan. I followed the currents tugging at me from within: writing about the myths I grew up with, my memories of the war, and the small moments of tenderness that had shaped me.
To my surprise, the pieces began to land: AGNI, The Common, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, 100 Word Story, and other journals I once considered out of reach.
Then came the OpEd Project Fellowship. The project—a national effort to amplify underrepresented voices—supports people across professions in bringing their ideas into the public conversation through publishing opinion pieces. When I applied for the followship, I did so with a steadier voice. I was accepted and I kept writing.
More essays. More acceptances. More invitations to write.
In the past, writing had always felt like pushing—straining to shape the memoir into something whole, something finished. These smaller pieces felt different. It felt like breathing. I realized I didn’t have to force the story forward; I could simply tell the truth of my lived experience. The pieces didn’t require perfection. They required presence.
Dinty W. Moore talks about “the invisible magnetic river”—a current beneath the surface of our work that pulls everything toward the central emotional truth. But I’ve come to believe the river doesn’t just carry the writing. It carries the writer too—pulling our real work out of us when we stop trying to control the flow, guiding us back to the self who already knows the way.
I spent years writing toward legitimacy and a finished manuscript. But the pause piece, my father’s vitality, Allison’s invitation, and those early acceptances all nudged me toward a different orientation.
I stopped writing toward something.
I started writing from something.
From my breath.
From my body.
From my memory.
From the place in me that already knew.
What surfaced were images and threads that kept returning—an icon, a lake, a flicker of folklore, a fragment of language—each one asking to be explored on its own terms. My work was to follow them, to excavate what they held, and give each its own shape. The river flows, but the writer paddles.
Writing still required effort. But it began to flow when I stopped resisting the pull. The pause taught me to stop holding my breath, because even in stillness, breath remains. What followed—the essays, the publications, the fellowship—rose from what had been there all along.
__________
Maria B. Olujic is an anthropologist and writer whose work explores gendered violence, inherited silence, and the stories held by land and language. Her work appears in AGNI, The Common, Lit Hub, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, and 100 Word Story. Her memoir, Fields of Lavender, Rivers of Fire, about war, womanhood, and witnessing, is in its final stages of revision. Find her on Instagram @MariaOlujic.
Resolve to Publish a Book? Here’s How to Make That Resolution Come True
January 13, 2026 § 11 Comments
By Melissa Petro
For years, I made the same secret New Year’s resolution: to become a published author. Some years it appeared as an embarrassing hope tucked into the private lists in my journal; other years it surfaced as a quiet mental promise I made to myself while grocery shopping or dodging fellow “resolutors” at the gym. Year after year, it went unfulfilled—not because I didn’t want it badly enough, but because publishing a book felt more like a fantasy than a plan. It was something that happened to other people.
That tension became the premise of an essay I wrote in 2014 for The Hairpin about the difference between wishes and resolutions. In it, I argued that most New Year’s resolutions fail not for lack of desire, but because they’re wishes masquerading as commitments. Nearly half of us make resolutions each year—to lose weight, save money, or finally do the thing we’ve always dreamed of—yet roughly 88 percent of them fall apart within months. I understood this intellectually. I even wrote about how resolutions can function as a kind of performance: aspirations that feel good to imagine but never quite translate into sustained action. And yet, for another decade, my goal of publishing a book remained firmly in the realm of wishing.
My debut book, Shame on You: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification, was published in 2024 by Putnam Books, a division of Penguin Random House—ten years after I first publicly named that desire. The book is not radically different from the memoir it began as. When I compare the published version to the manuscript I couldn’t sell, it’s clear that what held me back wasn’t a lack of talent or tenacity. It wasn’t for lack of wanting, or even trying. What I lacked—what many of us lack when we set out on big creative goals—was a process that could turn desire into something concrete.
Here’s what I know now that I didn’t know then: the creative process and the publishing process are not the same thing. When you’re deep in the creative process, you’re writing primarily for yourself. You’re following your obsessions, your questions, your memories. Publishing, on the other hand, requires identifying an audience and shaping a book that a specific group of people wants—no, needs—to read.
Something else I didn’t know: I knew I needed an agent, but I didn’t know how to get one. I assumed that repeated rejection meant my pages weren’t good enough. I didn’t understand how books are positioned in the marketplace, how proposals work, or how editors think about readership. I wasn’t thinking about comparable titles, category, or where my book would sit on a shelf. Only after my book was published did I begin to think concretely about who might buy it or how those readers discover books.
Marketing and publicity do come with a publisher, but a large part of that work ultimately falls to the author. And to get a publisher in the first place, it helps to demonstrate that you’ve already thought about these questions. What begins as a purely creative endeavor eventually becomes a business proposition. I didn’t know what large publishers expected—or how to meet those expectations strategically rather than emotionally.
Finally, I didn’t know how to ask for help. Sure, I sent Hail Mary emails and DMs to writers I admired, and many were generous enough to respond. But I wasn’t in relationship with them. I didn’t have the kind of professional network I have now—weekly meetings with peers at a similar level, with similar goals. Keeping my ambition secret was a way of protecting myself from shame and vulnerability, but it also kept me isolated.
What I tell writers now is this: when you hit a wall, as I did, there is no shame in getting support. That might mean hiring a developmental editor or a book coach. It might mean joining a serious writing group or learning the mechanics of publishing alongside the craft. The shift that finally changed everything for me wasn’t more wishing or more willpower—it was treating my resolution like a real commitment, one supported by structure, strategy, and community.
A book doesn’t get published because you want it badly enough. It gets published when desire is paired with a process that can carry it forward. This New Year, don’t just make a wish—make a plan.
________
Melissa Petro is a freelance writer and the author of Shame on You: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification. As a workshop facilitator, she’s helped hundreds of people push through fear, write, share, and even publish their most vulnerable stories in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, Salon, The Washington Post, and elsewhere.
Join Melissa Petro and literary agent Laura Mazer for the CRAFT TALKS 2-day seminar Nailed It: Conceptualizing Your Nonfiction Book. Explore your publishing options, identify your audience and discover your comps. Clarify your book’s purpose, identify its core message, and develop an outline or structure for your book that aligns with your purpose. Find out more/register now ($175).
The Dammed River: On Writing and the Work of Bleeding
January 12, 2026 § 19 Comments
The time between drafts is where truth has room to settle
by Michael Sean Collard
My process begins the same way my healing did—by returning to the wound.
When I sit down to write, I’m not reaching for answers. I start with the ache that won’t leave me alone. The first draft is what I call a dammed river: not a stream of consciousness, but something natural that’s been shaped and contained. It’s raw, but not chaotic. The current already knows where it wants to go; I just let it move through me. The writing at that stage isn’t thinking—it’s remembering in motion. It’s the mind narrating its own survival in real time.
Then I walk away. That’s the part people don’t see—the waiting. I leave the piece alone until I can return with enough distance to hear the voice beneath what I wrote. Sometimes that takes five minutes. Sometimes it takes ten years. That’s how long it took me to pull an early draft called “Crack Alley” back out and turn it into the essay “Six Blocks from the Federal Reserve.” I didn’t just need better craft; I needed the courage to look directly at that part of my life and tell the truth without blinking. That’s what the space between drafts is for: the time it takes to be ready to face what’s really there.
The time between drafts is where truth has room to settle, where the memory can speak without collapsing. You can’t rebuild the house while it’s still on fire.
When I come back, the second draft begins—the architecture phase. I revise not to beautify but to clarify, to reveal the truth hidden under the noise. I carve away disguise and defense until what’s left feels inevitable. I want the reader to feel the cold tile, the weight of silence, the pulse in my throat. If I’ve done it right, the words breathe on their own.
And eventually, I bleed.
That’s how I know I’m close to done—not when the sentences shine, but when they cut. When I can feel the wound pulsing again, but this time in a way that serves meaning instead of consuming it. That’s the moment when craft becomes communion—when language holds what the body couldn’t. Sometimes I leave that moment in. Sometimes I take it out. But either way, that’s when I know the work has told me what it needed to say.
But the process doesn’t end there.
I live with the piece. Carry it in the back of my mind. This is the long haul. The slow orbit. The part that demands patience and trust. I’ll tinker with a finished essay for months—sometimes just a breath, a sharper cut, a pause that lets the reader lean in closer. I’ll reread a paragraph twenty times, trying to hear the silence between the lines.
Occasionally, not often, a complete line emerges whole out of nowhere—a better metaphor, a sharper phrase, a sentence that reframes the entire moment. I know exactly where it belongs. Or I know it doesn’t belong anywhere at all. Because here’s the rule:
It has to fit. I won’t force it in, no matter how beautiful it is, no matter how much I love it.
The piece is more important than the sentence.
The sentence is more important than the word.
And the heart of it all—the ache that started it—has to remain untouched.
I build the story around the wound—not to hide it, but to expose it, and then hold it.
Because the goal isn’t polish.
The goal is clarity. Honesty. Weight.
The goal is to write something that matters.
Because if I do it right, you won’t just understand what I’m saying.
You’ll feel less alone.
_____
Michael Sean Collard is an essayist and memoirist exploring trauma, class, and the myths of meritocracy. His work appears in CRAFT Literary, Argyle Literary Magazine, Months To Years, and is forthcoming in The Manifest Station. A self-taught writer and high-school dropout, he writes about survival, family, and the systems that fail vulnerable people, and is working on a collection, Crack Alley: Merit, Morality, and the High Cost of Living.
The Brevity Blog Needs All Hands on Deck
January 9, 2026 § 6 Comments
Readers of Brevity Magazine and The Brevity Blog – we wouldn’t be here without you! And we want to make sure we’re a valuable part of your literary life. As you navigate the waters of your writing, reading and literary discovery, will you indulge us for a moment with a quick survey?
Just three questions, to help us chart our literary course:
Visit the survey
Found In Translation: Intimacy, Devotion and the Creature of Language
January 8, 2026 § 10 Comments
By Shantanu M
In Marathi, my mother tongue, the word for translation is “bhashantar”—a compound made from two words, bhasha (language) and antar (distance). The suggestion is of a coming together—two estranged linguistic worlds meet halfway to shape themselves into a shared meaning. Translation becomes the desire to bridge this distance. It’s a type of intimacy, an affinity—rescuing a language from its loneliness. But the more I translate, I realize that there will always be an asymmetry of meaning, feeling, and experience in two distinct languages. Translation, then, is a longing for perfect symmetry, living with the lack of it while continuing to reach for it.
When I first started translating the essays of the Marathi playwright Mahesh Elkunchwar, I rendered sentences word-for-word. I believe this approach stemmed from a place of uneasiness or trepidation. However, I was taking English for granted. I’ve always felt a sense of intimacy towards English, which is why I—often thoughtlessly—inflicted lacerations on it. I felt comfortable twisting, slicing, muscling English into behaving the way I wanted, knowing that it would always be amenable and available to me. With Marathi, I felt less assured. The tyranny of grasping at the meaning, feeling, and music in Marathi—which already felt slippery—and then translating it into English tormented me. In one essay, Elkunchwar used the word नदीपण (river-ness) to describe life. I initially translated it as “Life becomes a river,” which didn’t have the resonance, brevity, and meaning of the original. So, I chose “Life has a river-ness” instead.
As the work progressed, I waded into the thorny thickets of fidelity and audacity in translation. The entry point was still the sounds, words, and sentences of the source text and language. However, I now gave in to the possibility of straying from its straitjackets, finding ways to be faithful in English without a militant adherence to the words, sentences, and their uses and structures in Marathi, allowing myself polite, measured leaps.
Rather than blinkered devotion, I wanted to be faithful to the effect of the text and replicate that in English, more than the individual words. I also wanted to reorchestrate my translation with Elkunchwar’s music, his sounds. English has a certain smoothness, a slickness that is often at odds with the jaggedness, the fleshiness of Marathi. The serration of the Marathi consonants is sanded down in English. While I wanted my English prose to have the rhythm, the music that is present in Marathi, I realised that I could not translate the onomatopoeic words from Marathi into English. Instead, I decided to employ alliteration, assonance, and consonance to create the music that English would allow.
In one essay, Elkunchwar used the phrase “रूढी आणि परंपरांची पुटे” (roodhi ani paramparanchi puté)—the sounds “r” and “p” relentlessly repeated in the phrase and in the sentence. Moreover, the use of the word “पुटे” to mean “layer” seemed unusual—in Marathi, the word typically used for layer is “थर”. I looked for a counterpart to “layer” in English that wasn’t immediately obvious: “crust” encapsulated the sense of time associated with the other words in the phrase “customs” and “traditions,” and it was an unusual synonym for “layer.” So, I translated “रूढी आणि परंपरांची पुटे” as “a crust of customs and traditions”—repeating the c, r and t sounds. Faithful to the meaning, while also recreating the acoustic texture and the effect of the sentence.
John Berger, discussing his writing process in the Guardian piece “Writing is an off-shoot of something deeper,” says:
After I’ve written a few lines I let the words slip back into the creature of their language. And there, they are instantly recognised and greeted by a host of other words, with whom they have an affinity of meaning, or of opposition, or of metaphor or alliteration or rhythm. I listen to their confabulation. Together they are contesting the use to which I put the words I chose. They are questioning the roles I allotted them.
I want to listen to him. I want my words, my sentences to have a playful, harmonious confabulation—and not lie in the shadow of the source language. Translation is a kind of fabrication, a confabulation. You erase the memory of the source language and attempt to fabricate a new memory for the same text in a new language—hoping that the prose feels endemic to the new language, that the translation belongs to the “creature” of the language itself.
What, then, is translation? Is it an act of intimacy, of affinity, of longing, of desire? Is it blinkered devotion, a confabulation, an act of occasional wandering, unfettered leaping? This is the answer I have for now: On the days when translating feels within reach, feels easy, it’s all these things and more. But on the days when it feels agonizing, unnecessary, and impossible, it is enough for translation to be just one of these.
________
Shantanu M is a writer and translator. His work has previously been supported by the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference and the Tin House Writers’ Workshop. His essay “Mother is a Language is a House is a Poem” placed third in the Plentitudes Journal Writing Prize for Nonfiction in 2025.
Backstory is Not Always Bad
January 7, 2026 § 17 Comments
How Writers Use Layering To Power Their Stories
By Dinty W. Moore
Packing the opening pages of a novel or memoir with dense backstory remains a basic beginner’s mistake.
The impulse to feed readers “everything they need to know” at the very start usually stems from our insecurity, the worry that readers won’t grasp the urgency of our stories “unless they first understand … [x], [y], and [z].”
By now, of course, most Brevity Blog readers know why that is inadvisable, and have benefited from craft discussions of better opening strategies.
But as is the case with much craft advice, it helps to remember that the equation is often more complex than yes or no. Some backstory can be useful. Knowing certain key details can enhance a reader’s experience of the action.
Let’s look at Amy Tan’s wonderful Joy Luck Club, for instance, specifically the first full chapter, from the point of view of Jing-Mei Woo.
Here is what Tan’s opening might have looked like if she somehow missed the lesson and started with backstory only:
My mother’s seat at the Joy Luck Club mah jong table has been empty since she died two months ago of a cerebral aneurysm. My mother was supposed to host the next meeting. She had started the San Francisco version of the Joy Luck Club in 1949, two years before I was born. This was the year my mother and father left China with one stiff leather trunk filled only with fancy silk dresses.
A rather static opening, but some of this rich family history will likely deepen a reader’s experience. Tan knows this, so, in her actual opening paragraphs, she layers these brief snippets of backstory amidst action and emotion:
My father has asked me to be the fourth corner at the Joy Luck Club. I am to replace my mother, whose seat at the mah jong table has been empty since she died two months ago. My father thinks she was killed by her own thoughts.
“She had a new idea inside her head, ” said my father. “But before it could come out of her mouth, the thought grew too big and burst. It must have been a very bad idea.”
The doctor said she died of a cerebral aneurysm. And her friends at the Joy Luck Club said she died just like a rabbit: quickly and with unfinished business left behind. My mother was supposed to host the next meeting of the [San Francisco] Joy Luck Club… [which she had started] in 1949, two years before I was born. This was the year my mother and father left China with one stiff leather trunk filled only with fancy silk dresses.
Not enormously different, but these small additions change everything. In her opening, note how Tan carefully layers in three types of information:
Movement (Action)
Emotion
Context (Backstory and Circumstances)
Let me add color coding to highlight how these three elements appear and interact. The Red sentences indicate MOVEMENT/ACTION. The sentences highlighted in yellow contain EMOTIONAL content. The sentences highlighted in light blue are the BACKSTORY/CONTEXT.
__
Movement, Emotion, Context.
Each of these elements enhances the other.
Each, in succession, grows stronger by the presence of the other.
Or to put it another way:
Context without action is dull.
The MOVEMENT on the page is what allows us as readers to visualize a story unfolding in front of our eyes.
Action without emotion is merely kinetic activity.
But MOVEMENT alone is not enough. The EMOTIONAL content is what pulls us in, making us care about Jing-Mei Woo and her mother, leading us to wonder about the future trajectory of the tale.
Backstory is simply information, not story.
A powerful story is not words, it is not mere information, it is a deeply felt experience. The MOVEMENT and EMOTION carry the feeling of your story, the circumstances do not.
Amy Tan is a masterful storyteller, and though she offers more backstory in the pages that follow, she has been very deliberate in giving us MOVEMENT first, the central action that drives the current moment—“my father has asked me to be the fourth corner…”
Then the EMOTION. The fraught end of the mother’s life, the “very bad idea” that might have killed her, the evocative images of a brain that “grew too big and burst,“ and of dying quickly “like a rabbit.”
Without these, we have nothing to grab at our heart.
Without these, what reason would we have to follow Jing-Mei Woo through the pages that follow?
—
Interested in learning more about the intricacies of layering, and what drives a compelling story? Do you want to apply these lessons directly to your current project? Join the upcoming virtual intensive — FINISH YOUR BOOK IN 2026 — with Dinty W. Moore & Allison K Williams., a weekend of high-level craft advice to identify your manuscript’s needs, and goal-setting guidance to get it done. For memoirists and novelists and anyone with an urgent story they want to share.
There Is No Closure: Stop Organizing and Start Writing
January 6, 2026 § 36 Comments
By Allison K Williams
When people meet my mother, they nod and say, “That explains so much.”
We are a lot alike. Stubbornly persistent. We want to do our A-work, all the time. We want to be kind to other people, even when it interrupts our own work. And we gotta have closure.
I have a manuscript I need to finish. But it’s my work, rather than work for money, and my brain says nuh-uh, you have to finish the client’s manuscript first. I have to empty the inbox. I have to clear my desk and check off my list and organize my desktop and then I’m allowed to do the fun one.
Even if I know I’m not actually going to get to that client’s manuscript right now, I’m actually going to do housework because it’s less taxing. The closure of folding that laundry or running that errand, a task that can be checked off on a list, feels more satisfying in the short term. Writing my own work has no defined deadline and no definite destination.
No closure.
My mom’s house was destroyed by a hurricane more than a year ago. Insurance paid, thank heavens. “Take the money and run,” I said. My brother said. We knew she wanted to leave her red state, that while she’s low on the deportation list as an older white lady on a green card, they’ll be coming for her eventually. But mom doesn’t like to leave a job unfinished, so she’s neck-deep in contractor quotes and drywall. In her early 80s, she often speaks of having more time to travel, but she’s still running a thriving property management business, proofreading contracts that other people messed up, personally fixing badly-installed plumbing, and driving around town to deposit paper checks is six different property-owner banks. Our family has started a betting pool on when she’ll ever actually retire, and at least one of us has bet on “never.”
Closure is getting her taxes done, finishing the drywall, proofreading the contract today and hitting send, instead of making an exit plan with no destination. And the satisfaction of those tasks is more rewarding—short-term—than figuring out where to go, what to do, who she’ll be in a new place.
Closure is the bane of every writer’s existence. That longed-for feeling of “I did it!” is rare in writing, and the I-did-it’s of typing “The End” or applying all the editorial feedback or hitting “send” on 20 queries all have next steps that are a terrifying jump into the abyss. We have little control over the reception of our work, and the longer we delay closure, the less terrified we are of what will happen next.
Sure, I’m going to finish that manuscript. But then I have to send it out, and the agent might not like it, and even if she does the editor might not like it, the publisher might not like it, the book might eventually sit on the half-off table until it’s returned to the warehouse. (The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered, but we have met the enemy and he is ourselves.)
Longing for closure leads us to save another draft, to move files around, to locate all the notes we’ve written on napkins and incorporate them into the manuscript. Actually writing means making hard choices about our time, abandoning some tasks we’re really good at, letting other people screw things up and screw themselves up. Because fundamentally, seeking closure feeds our arrogance. I’m the only one who can do this/fix this/fill this gap.
As a performer, “eternity” is the timespan between the end of one person’s line and the next person speaking. When I was a full-time entertainer working with new performers who were learning the script, I always jumped in too soon and took their lines. I didn’t leave a gap for them to learn the timing, to learn it by screwing up. I wanted to fix the problem then and there, have the satisfaction of doing it right. I took closure at their expense, and it made the show worse until I shut up and waited in the moment of agony. Until I gave them space.
We owe our writing that space. That stretched time of not-knowing, of wondering if we’ll ever be good enough, if we’ll ever solve that scene, finish that chapter. It’s hard to turn our brains away from the easy high of tasks with defined endings, trips with specific destinations. It’s terrifying to set aside jobs we know we’re good at, that we know we can finish, and devote our hearts to the uncertain work of forging a truly new creation, beating a new path, at the end of which is a new, uncertain self.
Stop rearranging folders and step into uncertainty. Let the laundry pile up, let knotweed take the garden. Look at a giant pile of things you can fix and say, “Wow, that’s going to be a tough one, good luck!” to someone less-capable than yourself. Shift your focus from the easy closure of checking off a list better than anyone else, to the harder work of creation that can only be done by you.
There is no closure. Open the door.
________
Allison K Williams is Managing Editor of The Brevity Blog. Want to refocus for 2026? Join her for a creative reset (and her 10-minute hack to painlessly organize your desktop!) in Organize Your Writing Life: Get UNstuck, a CRAFT TALKS webinar this Wednesday ($30). Find out more/register now.
Recording My Audiobook—Baby Steps and a Stretch
January 5, 2026 § 5 Comments
By Deborah Jeanne Weitzman
Audiobooks have exploded, and when my new book launched, I wondered: why not mine? My publisher doesn’t do audio, which meant it was up to me. Should I hire a narrator or record it myself? Would I be good enough? Should I cobble together a home studio, or go fully professional and pay for a studio and engineer?
This is how I went from being an absolute beginner to standing behind a microphone in a soundproof booth—and getting my audiobook into the world. While this book is fiction, I also write memoir, and I’m confident that my experience translates to recording nonfiction as well.
I started with three options: hire someone, DIY at home, or book a studio. Serendipity nudged me forward when I was a guest on a podcast in Oslo, where I’m based part-time. Afterward, I lingered in the studio to record a passage from my novel. Maybe it’s the writer in me or the former actress, but I often find I have characters talking in my head. Hearing them come alive on the recording was both thrilling and daunting.
Inspired to continue, I found a New York audiobook actress and booked a few coaching sessions. Then came the gear: a good mic and stand, an interface box that connects the cables to the computer (hardware essential for good sound), recording software, and––crucially––a quiet location. My husband and I transformed a spare room into a fort of blankets, pillows and yoga mats. Early recordings sounded fine, but the weak link was me trying to be both narrator and engineer. I knew I needed a real engineer so I could focus on voice and pacing.
The Work
My coach and I listened to my first trials. Too slow? Too unclear? Were the characters distinct? After years living abroad, my accent isn’t quite New York anymore. My book includes English, Australian, Italian, Dutch, and American characters. Developing the different voices was challenging. I practiced constantly, recording friends from different places and mimicking subtle cadences.
My coach advised against caricature: a hint or nuance would do. Most of the people who populate my book are travelers; their accents are a mix like mine. That freed me to lean into their personalities more than their accents. I approached voicing the characters in the same way I wrote them.
Learning on the Road
August took me to Edinburgh and Belgium for other work. I packed my mic, interface, cables and a portable stand my husband built. Hoping to find walk-in closets in the apartments where I stayed, instead I ended up practicing in small, free-standing wardrobes stacked with pillows and draped with a blanket, hoping the neighbors would ignore the fact that the renter next door talked to herself for hours.
Then an acquaintance introduced me to a professional sound engineer in Edinburgh who offered me a free trial hour. His studio was straight out of the movies—plush, immaculate, intimidating. I slipped on my glasses, opened my book, and read.
“You’re a natural,” he said. “You can do this.” And for the first time, I believed it. He also warned that for every hour of finished recorded audio, expect at least two or three hours of work in the studio. (This didn’t include my own practice time.) There wouldn’t be time to finish the recording in Edinburgh, so I booked into a studio in Oslo for September.
In the Booth
I hadn’t realized how much stamina the audio recording would require. Years abroad had slowed my speech, so what felt thoughtful in the booth played back like molasses. Add asthma, and every paragraph became a workout. Still, scene by scene, I grew stronger. I started with three-hour recording slots but soon upped it to four or even five hours. Each session needed time to get into the flow, but once flowing, it got easier. And hour by hour, we got through the entire manuscript!
Recording an audiobook is a technical challenge, a performance, and a pilgrimage. The narrator breathes life into each moment. It isn’t reading the book aloud––it’s living the book for the listener.
Switching Hats
I was both the narrator and producer of my audiobook. That meant listening to the recording multiple times, fixing issues and––after everything sounded right––figuring how to upload the chapters to ACX, the system you need to get your final product out into the world. ACX is connected to Audible. (Here I was rescued by my husband’s son, who is wonderful at all things technical.) Even then we still needed to make a few last-minute tweaks.
That green light flashing when each chapter’s file was accepted, what joy!!
The audiobook stretched me in ways I didn’t expect and made me fall in love with my novel all over again. Although I sometimes felt I wasn’t up to the task, I learned that making the audiobook became possible when I took one baby step at a time. Early listeners tell me my voice is soothing, that it sweeps them into the story. After all the cupboards, blankets, pillows breathwork, edits, and late-night doubts, that feels like the most extraordinary reward.
__________
Deborah Jeanne Weitzman is a writer, teacher, performer, and adventurer. She leads workshops in the Alexander Technique, vocal activation, movement, and creative writing. She is the author of the memoir Pandora Learns to Sing, and her new novel The Sinking of the Leonardo da Vinci, is available in all formats and as an audiobook she narrated. Originally from New York, she divides her time between Norway and points south. Find her on Facebook, Instagram and Substack.
