“Writer’s block” gets thrown around a lot in writing spaces but is rarely defined. In theory, it doesn’t need to be defined because we all know the feeling…and giving it too much attention is akin to looking at the monster too closely in a horror movie. It invites the bad thing in. But I think it’s useful to actually talk about what writer’s block means, because it comes in many different forms. Acknowledging this can help defeat it.

Despite the trope commonly found in movies, rarely does writer’s block actually look like literally staring at an empty document or page, slack-jawed and glass-eyed, no thoughts arriving. More often, it looks like getting stuck in a novel draft, unsure what comes next. Writing an essay that feels like it’s moving in circles rather than ever arriving at a coherent point. Knowing a sentiment you want to express in said essay but struggling to find the right words to do so. Concocting a character for fiction who you’re not quite sure what to do with. Having some but not all of the pieces can lead one to feeling stuck, uninspired, and overwhelmed by ideas (yes, I believe blocks are born from an abundance of ideas but lack of focus rather than a dearth of ideas). Blocks can take different shapes and sizes. Which is why I also don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all approach to getting yourself out of them.

The most common advice is to read. That is great advice. It works in many cases and for many people. Engaging deeply with literature gets the gears moving.

But what about the times it doesn’t? Or what if your writing practice already builds in plenty of time to read, so doing so isn’t really a change of course? Because that’s what a block often requires: a disruption. You must do or seek out something slightly out of the ordinary. That’s where your creativity lives and thrives.

For this reason, I often go beyond the old “just read” adage when I feel a block looming over my writing sessions; I seek out inspiration and reinvigoration from other artforms. If you’re a multidisciplinary artist, you already know the power of letting different mediums feed each other. But even for those who work in multiple art forms, my advice is to step outside of all of them and seek out art in areas in which you do not work. See what you can learn from the practices you aren’t constantly trying to master. Story is everywhere: in songs, short films, paintings, tapestries, photographs, a child’s mosaic made of shells. Sometimes, looking at stories that take different shapes than your body of work can help you unlock new ideas and pull you right out of that block.

So yes, read a book, but also go to a museum. Maybe one where you live that you have not been to before; maybe one you’ve been to many times. The beauty of museums is that you likely haven’t engaged deeply with every single piece on display; even the small ones usually have rotating exhibits. And yes, I realize “go to a museum with a notebook and find inspiration” is a frustratingly broad prompt, which is why I won’t send you empty-handed. Here is the writing prompt I’ve used time and again, in all kinds of museums, which begins as a sort of straightforward journaling prompt but has often led to fully realized essays, short stories, and flash pieces.

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What you’ll learn

1. Why Stephen King never lets a character just “grab a beer” — and what he reaches for instead

2. The sensory trick that drops readers straight into your scene

3. How to spot the one unique detail that does the work of a whole paragraph

4. Two exercises to train your eye for what you’ve been walking past

By the end, you’ll have a repeatable way to find details that make readers feel a scene instead of skim past it. The three exercises below are where that starts — and they’re yours to keep.

✰

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Why Do Details Matter So Much

Details are the building blocks of description. The words and bits of information you choose can bring characters, settings, objects, and feelings to life on the page. They create the images readers see in their minds and connect them to the story through their senses and emotions. Details also ground readers by establishing the places and people in the story, distinguishing one character or setting from another, and creating a sense of reality, or in some stories, otherworldliness. Details also support the story’s larger purpose and can serve as meaningful touchstones throughout a piece.

As writers, we often become deeply immersed in our own narratives and stories and can forget that the reader can’t see, sense, or feel what we’ve experienced or imagined. We must continually show them through storytelling, with the action, scenes, and carefully chosen details.

How to Mine for Details

To find the right details for your writing, you need to pay attention, observe closely, and notice what’s happening in the world around you that might otherwise be overlooked or ignored. This takes practice.

Here are two exercises to get you started.

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Hey friends, welcome to The Forever Workshop. First time? Read this. Back again? Here’s what we’ve got for you today…

A workshop for:

Poets who want to learn the fundamentals of sonnet structure and how to break all the rules to create boundary-pushing, emotive poetry.

Your instructor:

Madeleine Bazil: poet, writer, filmmaker, and author of Field Guide, an ecopoetics newsletter.

Key takeaways:

• Learn how the sonnet works as both a formal container and a site of experimentation

• Learn how to make the volta the emotional engine of a sonnet

• What contemporary poets borrow from traditional sonnet structure (meter, rhyme, 14 lines) and what they deliberately break

• Why constraint in poetry can sharpen language and deepen invention, rather than limit expression

By the end of this workshop, you’ll have a new understanding of how the sonnet structure can be transgressed, manipulated, and played with to create emotionally affecting poetry.

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Hey there, welcome to The Forever Workshop.

First time? Read this.

Back again? Here’s what we’ve got for you today…

A workshop for:

Short fiction writers who dream of seeing their work in the Wigleaf Top 50 (and want to peek behind the curtain to find out how it all happens).

Your instructor:

Shome Dasgupta — former Wigleaf Top 50 series editor and author of 13 books

Takeaways:

• How the Wigleaf Top 50 actually works, from reader nominations to the final shortlist

• What one series editor looks for: opening lines, language, and rhythm—and why the first line isn’t a dealbreaker

• What reading thousands of flash pieces taught Shome about his own writing

• Why the Top 50’s annual release brings Shome to tears every year

Few people have seen the Wigleaf Top 50 from both sides. In this Q&A, Shome Dasgupta gives us a peek behind the curtain. You'll walk away with a clearer sense of what the selection process asks of a story, and what the literary community asks of all of us.

So, without further ado, over to Shome…

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Welcome to The Forever Workshop’s MFA Newsletter, a monthly column about career advancement in the literary space. Everything published here is free to enjoy, courtesy of our partnered universities. (Not interested? Turn off emails from this column here.)

Ciera here! I’m the newest addition to the MFA team at Chill Subs. In our previous newsletter, former Tin House editor Elizabeth DeMeo explained how valuable it was to work for her MFA program’s literary magazine while she earned her degree, and I can only echo her sentiment. If I hadn’t worked for Ploughshares while earning my Master’s, I never would’ve met the Chill Subs team and consequently, landed this job only a few months after graduating.

Working for a literary magazine demystifies what happens after you hit submit. You learn who reads submissions (hint: it’s not just the editors!), and the process for deciding whether a sub is chosen or not. You spend hours achingly formatting a piece so that it’s just so and proofread it not once, not twice, sometimes even more than three times…and hope that no errors are found in the polished product. You promote the issue online, in emails, tell everyone in the world about this masterpiece you’ve helped create. You learn how to become a better writer, garner hands-on skills to help you enter the “real world”, and make some pretty cool friends along the way (:

So without further ado, here are some MFA programs that offer students a chance to work on literary magazines, and who you should factor in when application season comes around. Make sure to check out the Chill Subs blog for even more programs!

MFA Partner Programs with Literary Magazines

University of Alabama

Black Warrior Review

Black Warrior Review is the oldest journal to be continuously run by graduate students in the U.S. It nominates and has won awards for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, PEN America, and Wigleaf’s Top 50.

Arkansas Writers MFA Workshop

Oxford American, Arkana

The Oxford American explores and celebrates the American South's cultural heritage. It received the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2016.

Arkana fosters an inclusive literary tradition that “asks questions, explores mystery, and works to make visible the marginalized, the overlooked, and those whose voices have been silenced.” It nominates and has won awards for Best of the Net and Best Micro Fiction.

University of North Carolina, Wilmington

Ecotone, Chautauqua

Ecotone is a place of danger or opportunity, a testing ground, and welcomes perspectives of historically and currently marginalized writers and artists. It received the AWP Small Press Publisher Award in 2022.

Chautauqua believes that “everyday life should integrate leisure, education, fine arts, and spirituality.” It nominates for the Pushcart Prize.

Northern Michigan University

Passages North

Passages North is run by undergraduate interns, a volunteer graduate student and alumni editors, a graduate assistant, and English department faculty. It nominates and has won awards for the Best of the Net, Best Micro Fiction, Best Small Fictions, Pushcart Prize, and Wigleaf’s Top 50.

Bowling Green State University

Mid-American Review

Mid-American Review publishes contemporary fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and translations. It nominates and has won awards for the Best American series, Pushcart Prize, O. Henry Award, New Stories from the South, Poetry Daily, and Harper’s Magazine. Every fall, it hosts the Winter Wheat Festival of Writing, bringing together BGSU writers and widely published guests, for a series of lectures and workshops.

University of Minnesota

Great River Review

Great River Review seeks to publish a diverse range poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and special features that foster connection between local, national, and global communities. In 2002, the journal received the Minnesota State Book Award. It also nominates and has won awards for the Best American series and the Pushcart Prize.

University of Nevada, Reno

Sierra Nevada Review

Sierra Nevada Review believes all art is political. They’re on the search for daring poetry, fiction, literary nonfiction, and visual art—urgent writing that makes us feel alive and contends with the present cultural moment.

McNeese University

The McNeese Review, Boudin

The McNeese Review is made possible by faculty and graduate students at McNeese University. Recent issues have featured interviews with Michael Martone and George Saunders, and writing from Gabrielle Bates and Ada Limón, among others.

Boudin is the “spicy online cousin” of The McNeese Review. It publishes fiction and poetry, but welcomes hybrid and other non-traditional forms. Boudin seeks work from women, people of color, LGBTQ+ writers, people with disabilities, and other underrepresented groups.

University of Idaho

Fugue

Fugue biannually publishes poetry, fiction, essays, hybrid work, and visual art. Its Annual Writing Contest has been judged by nationally known writers, such as sam sax, Doiranne Laux, Patricia Hampl, and others. It accepts 3.15% of submissions and makes for a damn good read.

Whitworth University

Rock & Sling, Image Journal

Rock & Sling is a Christian literary journal that searches for work which bears witness. They believe that every person is made in the image of God and, for that reason, any witness to a lived human life may let us glimpse a reality beyond us, to catch sight of existence itself.

Image Journal publishes fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and visual art that explore the intersection of art, faith, and the human experience. Author Annie Dillard says the work it publishes is "simple, direct, and without pretension—like the best of all American writing."

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Massachusetts Review

Massachusetts Review publishes work that “provokes debate, inspires action, and expands our understanding of the world around us.” Of the journal, the New York Times wrote, “It is amazing that so much significant writing on race and culture appears in one magazine.” In 2008, MR was named one of the top ten literary journals by The Boston Globe.

Emerson College

Ploughshares, Redivider, Page Turner Magazine

Founded in 1971, Ploughshares is one of the most prestigious literary journals in the U.S. It publishes fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, including longform poetry and prose. It nominates and has won awards for the Best American series, Pushcart Prize, O. Henry Award, PEN America, and more.

Redivider is operated by graduate students in the Writing, Literature, and Publishing program at Emerson College. Each issue features a diverse array of content, including short stories, flash fiction, cultural critique, personal essays, and poetry. Its special summer Blurred Genre issue seeks hybrid works.

Page Turner Magazine seeks to spotlight the diverse creativity of students from colleges and universities across the U.S. It publishes student-made art and genre fiction pieces online and in print, and runs a blog that contains reviews, interviews, and articles relevant to genre fiction and the publishing industry.

Colorado State University

Colorado Review

Colorado Review is a national literary journal featuring contemporary fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and book reviews. It nominates and has won awards for the Best American series and the Pushcart Prize.

Butler University

Booth

Booth is run by students, faculty, and alumni from the Butler University MFA program. It nominates and has won awards for the Best of the Net and Wigleaf’s Top 50. It’s bold and weird in all the best ways.

Florida Atlantic University

Swamp Ape Review

The Swamp Ape is the smelly southern equivalent of Bigfoot, and Swamp Ape Review works to reflect this creature in its fiction, nonfiction, poetry, visual art, and “‘swamp’—a fifth category for works that defy form to the extent that the piece’s creator might be unsure of where it belongs.”

More MFA Programs, More Lit Mags

Texas Tech University | Iron Horse Review

Iron Horse Review was founded as an inexpensive way to bring literature to serious readers in the West Texas panhandle, and to provide a space for local writers to be read alongside well-known authors. Today, they’re on the search for energizing work, and pushing to include more women, LGBTQ+ writers, and writers of color in their pages.

Boston University | AGNI

Named after the Vedic god of fire, AGNI is an award-winning literary journal known “among readers around the world,” as PEN America wrote, “for publishing important new writers early in their careers, many of them translated into English for the first time.”

Florida State University | Southeast Review

Southeast Review is a national literary magazine managed by graduate students at Florida State. SER nominates and has won awards for the Best American series, Best of the Net, Best New Poets, Best Small Fictions, and the Pushcart Prize.

Portland State University | Portland Review

Portland Review publishes prose, poetry, art, and translations that reflect diverse perspectives from both established and emerging writers. It has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Oregon Arts Commission, and CLMP/Amazon Literary Partnerships.

Eastern Kentucky University | Jelly Bucket

Slang for a lunch pail and formerly used by Appalachian laborers, Jelly Bucket is also a literary journal that publishes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art. It is especially committed to publishing writers from, and writing about, marginalized and underrepresented communities.

Bennington College | Bennington Review

Bennington Review publishes “sharp, unexpected, original poetry and prose from a geographically broad and culturally rich spectrum of prominent, up-and-coming, and new voices.”

Speaking of Bennington College… Did you know its MFA program is low-residency? If you’re interested in low-res programs, make sure to check out next month’s newsletter, which will spotlight the benefits of them!

Tell us which literary magazine you’re most eager to work for (:

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Heya, welcome to The Forever Workshop. First time? Read this. Back again? Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

A workshop for:

Historical fiction writers who want to find richer story material in their research.

Your instructor:

Emma Darwin - Sunday Times bestselling historical novelist and author of This Itch of Writing

Takeaways:

• A practical guide to unearthing nuggets of inspiration from your research

• A sharper eye for the unexpected details you can develop into scenes

• Ways to develop characters from historical figures without losing your own voice

• How to know when you’ve found something worth following — and when to let it go

• A new habit of noticing you can apply to books, museums, podcasts, and beyond

By the end of this workshop you'll be better equipped to discover the rich seams of material that can be mined from research — and ready to dig into history for new story ideas!

Where to Start with Historical Fiction

We historical fictioneers talk endlessly about doing research to get specific things in our stories right. But when you open a history book or set out to explore a historical site, there’s so much more to be found and worked with, not just for your current story but for future projects. What’s more, because you didn’t find such material in the obvious places, it can bring a real originality and energy to your storytelling.

Whether you have lots of delicious historical sources and material but don’t know what to do with them, you’re on the hunt for new inspiration for your next story, or you don’t feel confident about digging into a history book, this is the workshop for you.

We’ll start by seeing just how many useful, inspiring nuggets we can find in a short extract from a non-fiction history book. We’ll then explore the different ways these nuggets could be useful to a writer, and you’ll then try your hand at growing some of your own writing from what you’ve found.

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Hiya, welcome to The Forever Workshop.

First time? Read this first »

Back again? Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

A workshop for:

Writers who want to translate their feelings around grief onto the page with sensitivity and resonance.

Your instructor:

Helene Kiser — certified grief coach, memoirist, creative writing teacher and editor

Takeaways:

• How to convey real emotion to your readers through concrete details

• How to use imagery to create impactful comparisons

• How to capture a devastating moment with quietness

• How to preserve the messy texture of grief with subtlety

• How to use the body to render emotion without naming it

By the end of this workshop, you’ll have the practical tools to write about deeply meaningful experiences with nuance and authenticity, so that readers think, “Yes, that’s exactly how it feels.”

Getting Right (on the Page) the Things Went Wrong

Grief and trauma are among the most universal human experiences in existence, which is precisely what makes them so difficult to render on the page.

When we sit down to write about grief or trauma, we might believe the subject matter alone will carry the writing. Our loss is so enormous, the wound so deep, the reader won’t be able to help but feel our pain. Its weight will transfer automatically from the page to the chest, the way a stone drops into water.

It doesn’t.

Readers don’t share the experience of our suffering simply because it happened. But they do disengage if that experience is written predictably.

Here’s another inconvenient truth: While enormous and all-consuming to those of us in their grip, both are, on the surface, boring. “Someone I loved died and now I’m broken” may be true, but it sure isn’t interesting for a reader. Neither is “a terrible trauma happened to me and it changed my life.” As pieces of writing, they’re locked doors. The reader knocks, waits, and eventually walks away.

Pouring grief or trauma into a journal or talking it through with a therapist serves a real and important purpose. But it isn’t the same thing as crafting an experience for a reader who wasn’t there, doesn’t know you, and owes you nothing.

Getting this right isn’t about being brave enough to go there. It’s about being precise enough, patient enough, and honest enough to stay there and to resist every instinct that pulls you toward the comfortable, the familiar, and the safe.

Before we get to the principles, one structural idea worth holding onto throughout: Grief and trauma writing operates on two levels at once. The first is the surface — what happened. The sequence of events, the basic storyline, the facts as they unfolded. This happened, then this, then this. That layer matters. It’s the architecture your reader moves through.

The level that makes this writing worth reading runs underneath. It’s the meaning layer: what the loss or violation revealed, how it broke the world open, how it rearranged the way you move through your life. The best grief and trauma writing isn’t just a record of events. It’s an attempt (often struggling, often unresolved) to understand what those events did to you. Not to report the wound, but to trace its shape.

With that architecture in mind, here’s where the writing most commonly goes wrong — and how to fix it.

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Hiya, welcome to The Forever Workshop.

First time? Read this first »

Back again? Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

A workshop for:

Writers who struggle with starting a new idea and need some surefire methods of jumping right in.

Your instructor:

Erin Karbuczky — writer, workshop facilitator, and creative process expert

Takeaways:

• Explore the question at the heart of your story

• Discover how conflict creates structure

• Use your protagonist’s “authority” to shape their character arc

• Create tension and surprise with cleverly placed details

• Set the mood with atmosphere and tone

• Layer up meaning with symbols and motifs

By the end of this workshop, you’ll have six new clever hacks to help unlock your story, build your plot, and develop your characters, until you’re ready to write!

Find A New Way into Your Story

When it comes to writing prose, I’ve always had an affinity for beautiful sentences and an intuition for voice. That all lent itself well to writing poetry, which is where I got my start, but when I decided I wanted to be a novelist, I had a bit of catching up to do in terms of things like structure, conflict, and characterization.

Always a good student, I spent my time reading a lot of craft books and tried my best to internalize the advice. But the more I read, the more I noticed that many craft books teach the various components of fiction and writing entirely separately from one another, with a chapter or so on each component.

This confused the heck out of my brain, because while I understood what they were saying about each part, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to get the parts working together — as a whole body, like a piece of writing should — until I developed my series of “story equation” hacks, which put corresponding elements together from the start, taking out the guesswork. I hope they can help someone else out there who also needs to see it presented differently.

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Hiya, welcome to The Forever Workshop.

First time? Read this first »

Back again? Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

A workshop for:

Any writer who wants to make their characters’ first encounters feel memorable, engaging, and full of possibility.

Your instructor:

Steve Chang (fiction editor at Okay Donkey) in conversation with Autumn Watts (former editor at Guernica) — co-founders of Lit Match Collective

Takeaways:

• A guide to basic 4-phase scene construction

• The essentials of pre-meet setups

• How to converting passive readers into participants

• And what every writer should know about tension and consequence

In this workshop, fiction editors Steve and Autumn explore the fundamental elements of a successful meet-cute and break down a real life story excerpt to show you how it all works in real time. By the end, you’ll know how to craft a character encounter that hooks the reader and leaves them feeling invested — earning tension rather than announcing it.

The Art of the “Meet-Cute”

Today you’re getting a masterclass in making character encounters matter as we explore the components of a successful “meet-cute”.

For those not familiar, the meet-cute is the first encounter between potential romantic partners under conditions that are adorable, unusual, or awkward. Basically: they meet. And it’s cute.

The meet-cute is a staple of romance and rom-coms, but can be applied to all genres and make any first encounter more impactful and interesting.

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Welcome to The Forever Workshop’s MFA Newsletter. Today, enjoy an interview with Elizabeth DeMeo, former Tin House editor, about entering the publishing world post-MFA.

Everything published here is free to enjoy, courtesy of our partnered universities. (Not interested? Turn off emails from this column here.)

Justine: I remember when I was interviewing for the Tin House editorial internship, you expressed that you felt your MFA was invaluable in helping you step into the roles you wanted to professionally. Can you first share a bit about your decision to pursue an MFA, including why you chose the University of Arkansas?

Elizabeth: My path to an MFA program was unconventional. I didn’t realize until several years after college that I had an interest in writing, so it was a big change involving a steep learning curve to pursue an MFA. I was pretty into theater and film at that time, so I initially considered studying screenwriting, but ultimately went with fiction because I wanted to learn a broader set of craft techniques.

I chose the University of Arkansas because it was a fully funded program and (at least according to the list I was following at the time) the highest ranked program that admitted me. I’m not sure I chose it for this reason, but it was also helpful that the Arkansas MFA is four years long. Since I had very little experience with creative writing, I needed every minute of instruction I could get.

I was initially waitlisted at Arkansas, which I mention because I want to reduce stigma around this subject. In my opinion, admissions results don’t indicate much about your potential as a writer. Your willingness to learn, to work hard, and to commit to your craft is what’s most important.

Justine: What experiences did you have during your MFA that helped you feel prepared to step into an editorial role at a publishing entity like Tin House?

Elizabeth: The reading I did (both in and outside of class) formed the bedrock of my editorial sensibilities. I learned a lot about what I like in contemporary nonfiction by reading work from Wendy S. Walters, Amy Fusselman, Maggie Nelson, Jeannie Vanasco, Angela Pelster, Elissa Washuta, Jenn Shapland, and Elena Passarello, among others. I believe there is a clear line from writing by these authors to Shze-Hui Tjoa’s The Story Game, a wonderful memoir I acquired and edited at Tin House.

In fiction, my professor Padma Viswanathan assigned us Barbara Gowdy’s The White Bone, which made me fall in love with writing from animal perspectives. Again, there’s a clear line from this assigned book to another book I acquired and edited at Tin House: Talia Lakshmi Kolluri’s amazing story collection What We Fed to the Manticore.

During my first summer in Fayetteville, I met my partner, Anthony Blake, a poet who was a year ahead of me in the MFA program. He had some indie press experience because he’d previously worked at Sarabande Books, and he began to share what he knew with me. Those conversations were my introduction to the publishing world, and then I learned more while working in various capacities for the Arkansas International, our MFA program’s literary magazine. Writing book reviews and interviewing authors, as I did for Ark Int, is something I’d encourage any MFA student to do.

The final experience that really prepared me to work in publishing was an editorial internship with Tin House itself. Through the internship, I learned quite a bit about what an editor does and how I could hone my skills to that end, and also became more familiar with the Tin House list. Having a clear understanding of the press’s mission and the types of books they publish was essential when I began working there full-time during the last semester of my MFA program.

Justine: Many people pursue an MFA in creative writing because they want to be a published, successful author, but of course that’s not a guaranteed outcome for everyone. How do you think students can maximize their experience in an MFA program, not just for improving their writing but to develop themselves for professional opportunities as well?

Elizabeth: If your MFA program has a literary magazine, join the staff. Try to gain not only editorial experience but also hard skills like copyediting, proofreading, layout, and design. Publishing reviews and author interviews, as I mentioned above, is immensely helpful, whether you do so in your MFA’s lit mag or elsewhere.

Additionally, use summers or any semester where you have the bandwidth to intern in the publishing industry. Don’t feel limited to just working at a press; an internship at an agency or literary arts organization can be incredibly valuable. If you can’t find those kinds of positions, working at a local bookstore is a great first step toward a job in publishing.

Once you begin publishing your own work, make a website so agents and editors can find you. Ask your MFA faculty about scheduling agent and editor visits if your program doesn’t already offer those.

Justine: You’re now teaching creative writing at Towson University. Do you feel like your MFA experience remains relevant in this role?

Elizabeth: Yes, absolutely. I taught composition classes for the first two years of my MFA, and during the first semester everyone in my cohort took a pedagogy class. Though not directly related to creative writing, these experiences helped me understand who I am as a teacher and what’s important to me in the classroom.

Later on in the MFA, I was the director of a program called Arkansas WITS (Writers in the Schools), which was my first experience teaching poetry. As a WITS instructor, you learn a few simple, straightforward rules to share with students as they write poems, and though I have some other tricks up my sleeve now, I still often think about the wisdom of the WITS maxims.

I also learned so much from my MFA professors Padma Viswanathan and Toni Jensen that I try to pass on to my students: specific ways of thinking and speaking about craft, exercises for improving your writing, and best practices during a workshop, among other lessons. Padma and Toni also, of course, introduced me to many of my favorite books and authors, and it’s a joy now to be able to teach some of those same books and authors to my students. This semester, for instance, I taught Rachel Cusk’s Outline, a book I read and loved deeply in a class with Padma.

Justine: For MFA hopefuls—what advice would you offer them, whether related to their goals of being an author or a publishing professional?

Elizabeth: I believe that what I said above is the best advice I can offer: MFA admissions results don’t indicate much about your potential as a writer. Your willingness to learn, to work hard, and to commit to your craft is what’s most important.

More concretely, I read MFA vs NYC before deciding to attend an MFA program and remember finding it useful. I’d also ask to have a call with a current student (or do a campus visit, if possible) to learn more about an MFA program before accepting their offer of admission. Unless you’re independently wealthy, make sure there’s stable funding for your program.

To learn more about the publishing industry in the United States, specifically from the mid-20th century onward, I’d suggest reading Dan Sinykin’s Big Fiction. To learn more about contemporary independent presses, I’d study their online catalogs. The Authors Guild has information on subjects like contracts and copyright if you want to better understand them as a publishing professional or an author yourself.

If you want to learn more about literary magazines, I’d spend some time looking through the curated Chill Subs lists. I’ve been recommending these lately to students who are just starting to send out work for publication, and I don’t know of a better way to broaden your horizons in the lit mag world.

Elizabeth DeMeo is a writer and a former editor at Tin House, where she acquired and edited books of fiction and literary nonfiction. Originally from New Hampshire, she holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Arkansas, where she was Managing Editor of the Arkansas International and Director of the Arkansas Writers in the Schools program. She currently teaches creative writing at Towson University in Maryland.

Entering the “real world” can be scary! Share this with your MFA friends to help them prep for post-grad life.

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Hiya, welcome to The Forever Workshop.

First time? Read this first »

Back again? Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

A workshop for:

Writers who are ready to embrace the constraints of micro memoir and unlock their life story.

Your instructor:

Darien Gee — bestselling author, memoirist, and founder of Writer-ish and Deals, Drafts and Detours

Takeaways:

• Three essential elements of micro memoir and how to put them into practice

• Why writing in micro can break the curse of the blank page

• The snapshot method: focusing on moments to make your life story less overwhelming

• The never-ending bank of micro ideas you can draw from memories, objects, and details

• Turn a collection of micro memoirs into a chapbook — or the seeds of a full memoir.

By the end of this workshop you’ll have a solid grounding in how to use the micro form to create concise, unique, and deeply personal creative non-fiction — one tiny memoir at a time.

Ready to write small but think big? Let’s go!

Why Write Micro Memoir?

We all have stories to tell, but how? Maybe you find yourself paralyzed when staring at the blank page, unsure of where to begin. Maybe you’re overwhelmed at the thought of trying to capture an entire life in a piece of prose. Maybe you have notebooks full of moments that would make good writing, but have no idea how to shape them. Or maybe you’ve started countless memoirs that peter out after the first fifty pages.

After two decades of helping writers tell their stories, here’s what I’ve discovered: the problem isn’t a lack of material but trying to tell too much at once. I’m Darien Gee, and today we’re diving into one of my favorite short forms: the micro memoir.

Our most powerful stories often emerge from small moments and careful attention. Micro prose (300 words or less) is a form that helped me transform a 90k+ novel into an award-winning chapbook of 36 prose poems (Other Small Histories). I’ve also used it to create short vignettes between full-length chapters in my novels, as well as writing and editing micro prose anthologies, including my own collection of micro memoirs, Allegiance.

If you’re new to the micro form in general, you can find my Micro 101 workshop here, but here’s all you really need to know to get started:

“I define micro as 300 words or fewer, not including the title — a simple constraint that changes everything about how you approach your story.

Think of micro as a snapshot, not a movie. You’re capturing one perfect frame that suggests an entire story rather than telling it. Here are a few more elements of micro:

1. Brief but complete: There’s a beginning, middle, and end.

2. Focused on one moment or idea: There’s no room for tangents or multiple stories.

3. Precise in language: Every word must earn its place.

4. Emotionally resonant: It lingers with the reader long after they’ve finished reading.”

Micro is about crafting tiny stories that pack enormous emotional punch — which is what makes it such an impactful form to apply to memoir. It helps with all those stumbling blocks that stop you telling your stories:

Note: You’ll see me use the terms micro memoir, micro essay, and micro prose interchangeably. Much depends on your initial intention and, later, your final draft. What stays constant is honoring the word count constraint and sharing the stories of your life.

Three Essential Elements of Micro Memoir

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Heya, welcome to The Forever Workshop. First time? Read this. Back again? Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

A workshop for:

Poets who want to learn a variety of ways to craft an effective, meaningful (and sometimes unexpected) poetic ‘turn’.

Your instructor:

Kelly Grace Thomas — poet, writer, educator, and founder of The Poetry Coach

Takeaways:

• Understand how an effective poetic turn creates movement, tension, and depth

• Identify different types of turns in published poems and your own work

• Practice crafting intentional turns with practical prompts and revision strategies

• Strengthen your poetic craft by using turns to add nuance, surprise, and deeper emotional resonance

By the end of this workshop, you'll have a draft poem built around an intentional poetic turn and feel confident in applying a range of turn techniques to your writing

The Importance of a Poetic Turn

The poetic turn — often called the volta — is the moment a poem shifts direction, deepens, or reveals something unexpected. It’s the hinge that moves a poem from simply describing an experience to transforming it.

A poetic turn reshapes how a reader understands a poem. It introduces a shift that expands meaning, often creating one (or more) of three primary effects:

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Hiya, welcome to The Forever Workshop.

First time? Read this first »

Back again? Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

A workshop for:

Writers applying to residencies, fellowships, grants, and workshops who want their artist statement to actually stand out.

Your instructor:

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya — author, essayist, and editor who spent a year reading residency and workshop applications at Tin House.

Takeaways:

• How to tailor your statement to opportunities (and why the copy-paste approach is costing you)

• The four things to cut from your statement — and what to write instead

• A guide to mixing and matching past statements without starting from scratch

• How to define your work confidently (even if it means inventing your own genre)

• A set of prompts to help you write about your work like the artist you actually are

By the end of this workshop, you'll have a set of practical application prompts, a feel for what readers respond to, and the confidence to write about your work without cringing.

Why Your Artist Statement Matters

If you’ve been in the trenches of Submittable trying to apply for writing opportunities and support — from residencies to fellowships to workshops — then you might have a visceral reaction to the words artist statement. Sometimes referred to as a statement of purpose, the artist statement is an opportunity for the writer to advocate for themselves and their work.

I’ve heard all sorts of complaints about writing artist statements through the years: that it feels cringe or superfluous to write about one’s work and ambitions; or that it feels redundant or repetitive; or as if you’re just stabbing in the dark trying to figure out what it is the application review panel actually wants to hear.

But the artist statement is where you get to showcase who you really are and potentially stand out from other applicants.

I spent a year consistently reading application materials for residency and workshop programs at the literary institution formerly known as Tin House (now known as the McCormack Writing Center). Reading application materials is a much different experience than reading slush. You’re not just looking at the writing itself but at the potential of the project, the full breadth of the writer’s career and goals. Reading the artist statement portion was where I really felt I could get to know the writer as a real person. And after reading so many of them over the course of a year, I felt my practices for writing my own artist statements strengthen.

Does that strengthening mean I get 100% of the opportunities I apply to? Of course not! But beyond helping myself stand out with a strong artist statement, honing my craft (yes, it is a craft!) for these parts of applications has also just made the entire application process so much less daunting and tiresome. I don’t experience application fatigue like I used to, and I feel way less overwhelmed.

And so, with all that in mind, I’m going to be a little blunt and brutal here in my breakdown of what makes a compelling artist statement — and what to avoid including in your application:

Artist Statement Dos and Don’ts

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Hey friends,

Welcome to another edition of Tell Us Something We Don’t Know… where we source a panel of literary experts and ask them questions about whatever the heck. Today, the heck is sample pages and our instructors are a trio of publishing mavens:

The Experts:

• Jane Friedman — Decodes the publishing industry for writers who'd rather not learn the hard way. Featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and the BBC.

• Karin Gillespie — Simon & Schuster novelist, Substack bestseller, and a working writer who tracks the industry at Pitch Your Novel. 20+ years in the trenches.

• Erin C. Niumata — A literary agent at Folio who's been reading queries for decades and representing NYT bestsellers when she finds the good ones.

The Takeaways:

• Why dramatic openings sometimes don’t work

• The line-level test that separates strong writers from polished ones

• The synopsis tell that gives away an unfinished manuscript

• Why overpolished sample pages can backfire

• How to know if you’re querying agents too early

By the end of this workshop, you'll spot the same red flags agents do (before your manuscript hits their inbox).

What agents wish writers knew about sample pages

Sample pages are an important part of your submissions package when sending your novel to agents, along with a query letter and synopsis.

Your sample pages are there to showcase the opening of your story, your fascinating protagonist, your intriguing plot, and the quality of your writing, along with demonstrating you understand structure, pacing, tone, voice etc.

If you get them right, your first few chapters should entice agents to read on, request the full manuscript, and hopefully offer representation. A lot of pressure to put on just a few thousand words, huh?

“As agents, we read so many submissions that certain patterns jump out quickly.” — Erin C. Niumata

So, here’s what agents are actually looking for in sample pages — and the red flags that make them say, “no, thank you.”

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Welcome to The Forever Workshop’s MFA Newsletter, a monthly column about career advancement in the literary space. Everything published here is free to enjoy, courtesy of our partnered universities. (Not interested? Turn off emails from this column here.)

The writing world is full of applications. Applications for MFA programs, for residencies, for conferences, for positions with literary magazines and presses, for fellowships and grants—even querying agents can feel a bit like an application! Yet all of these applications have one thing in common: the writing sample.

Talk to anyone who is on the side of saying “yes” or “no” to your application, and they’ll tell you that the writing sample is what carries the most weight. If you nail it, you have a good chance of a “yes.” And we all like getting that “yes.”

So how do you choose your best writing sample? What even makes a good writing sample? We’ll get into it below, but I want to add the caveat that the literary world is an incredibly subjective place. What reads as the “best” to one person may not read the same way for another. Everyone has their own personal tastes and preferences, and that factors into the “yeses” we may or may not receive. It’s silly to think that we, as artists, exist in an objective space. Still, there are things we can keep in mind when applying to help select our own “best” writing sample to send in.

How to Choose Your Best Writing Sample in Five Steps

(Note: Hopefully you have a number of pieces to choose from—if you don’t, it might mean that you need to keep writing before you’re ready to actually apply to one of these opportunities.)

1. Read the application guidelines. This sounds simple, but it’s the easiest way to begin narrowing down what pieces might be a good fit. Is there a word count or page limitation? Do they want a complete story, or is an excerpt OK? Do they want multiple pieces or just one? Are they looking for anything in particular, thematically or otherwise? Can your sample have been published before? The easiest way to get a “no” is to not follow the guidelines, so check this first and curate your list of potential writing samples accordingly.
   

2. Choose a sample that feels unique to you. The literary world is competitive, and that means many people applying for the same things all the time. Your best writing sample is going to be the one that speaks to you as an artist, that feels unique to your existence in the world and your vision of what art means and is intended to do. For example, my nonfiction tends to have an ecofeminist bent, and I often choose to submit work in alignment with that as it best represents my vision for my writing. Long story short: don’t choose a sample that feels generic or safe. You want to stand out.
   

3. Show your creativity. Choose a writing sample that feels bold and creative, that bends expectations and genre. If the writing sample allows for more than one piece (or if you’re a poet and can send in a packet of poems), lean into the diversity of artistic expression. Maybe you submit a combination of a lyric flash piece and a researched nonfiction essay. Maybe you submit a free verse poem, a ghazal, and a prose poem. Maybe one piece is in the second-person, and another is from the omniscient third. Showing your versatility as a writer can make your work shine through the slush pile. But a word of caution—don’t confuse creativity with accessibility. Make sure that the readers of your work can still understand and be moved by the writing you create.
   

4. Dig into the details (with a few trusted friends). While writing is largely subjective, there are some objective aspects that make a piece of writing good. These can be hard to notice in your own work, so here’s where bringing in some outside, editorial eyes can really help. Ask your trusted readers/friends for insight on the following questions: What piece (or pieces) has the strongest line-level writing? What piece has the most compelling narrative elements? What piece evokes the most emotion? Listen to any insights you receive—the readers of our work will often see things that we can’t.
   

5. Trust your gut. At the end of the day, your best writing sample is the one you feel the most proud of and confident in. What piece of your writing do you want to read over and over again? What makes you feel moved? There have been times where I’ve written something and known it was really good—that it was one of my best pieces of writing yet—and that instinct was rewarded with publication. Some of my writing friends have told me they’ve felt the same in their own work. These are the kinds of pieces you want to submit in your sample, the writing that makes you feel alive and excited.

There’s nothing easy about putting your writing out there for others to read, especially when that reading of your work comes with acceptance or rejection. But it’s an inevitable part of the writing world, and the best opportunities often come with the hurdle of a lengthy application.

So here’s the deal: Don’t rush the writing sample. Make it the best it can be (i.e. revise, revise, revise!), and try to trust that, even if at first you don’t succeed, there will eventually be a perfect reader for your work who will give you a “yes.”

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Hiya, welcome to The Forever Workshop.

First time? Read this first »

Back again? Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

A workshop for:

Any writer who wants to bring a little ritual to their creative process and manifest the heck out of their writing goals.

Your instructor:

Erin Karbuczky — writer and educator who teaches craft and the creative process with a touch of the mystical. She also writes about pop culture and tech through a queer/feminist lens.

Takeaways:

• Build a practical toolkit of spiritual, ritualistic, and meditative practices for your writing routine

• Draw inspiration from ancient, everyday cycles (ever wonder why poets have a thing about the moon...?)

• Manifest your writing goals with affirmations, scripting, and inspired action, just like Octavia Butler.

• Play with prompts, exercises, and magical practices designed to stretch your creativity

By the end of this workshop you’ll have seven new ways to add a little witchery into your writing process — because, as we all know deep down, words are full of magic…

How to Use Manifestation, Ritual & Spirituality to Enhance Your Creative Process

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Hiya, welcome to The Forever Workshop.

First time? Read this first »

Back again? Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

A workshop for:

Short fiction writers looking for insights, guidance and practical tips on putting together a collection of their work.

Your instructor:

Shome Dasgupta — author of 13 books and former Wigleaf Top 50 series editor

Takeaways:

• Explore four approaches to building a collection — and how each suits your work

• Navigate the logistics: word count, story order, and landing on the perfect title

• Understand the publishing process, from finding the right home to handling setbacks

• Learn from Shome’s transformative experiences with four very different collections

By the end of this workshop you’ll have a clearer idea of what to expect from creating a short story collection, with prompts and exercises to help you shape your own.

Four Ways to Put Together a Short Fiction Collection

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Hiya, welcome to The Forever Workshop.

First time? Read this first »

Back again? Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

A workshop for:

Fiction writers who want to craft three-dimensional, relatable characters that readers, agents and editors will love

Your instructor:

Maurice Carlos Ruffin — award-winning author of national bestseller The American Daughters

Takeaways:

• Five practical methods to elevate and upgrade your characterization

• How to make your protagonist feel distinct and three-dimensional

• How to use your character’s complex inner world to prompt them into action

• How to pile on the challenges and conflict to test your protagonist’s mettle

• An exercise to help you create (or develop) a character with depth and nuance

By the end of this workshop you’ll have a handful of easy ways to deepen your understanding of your protagonist, and be full of brand new character ideas…

Five No-Fail Ways to Create an Amazing Protagonist

Do you find that your protagonist is plain, boring, and uninteresting? Does she refuse to do anything memorable? Is your book petering out as a result?

Today’s workshop will explore different approaches for upgrading your characterization. Because an amazing protagonist is a protagonist that agents, editors, and readers will want to meet.

Here are five failsafe techniques to build a wonderfully engaging main character:

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Hiya, welcome to The Forever Workshop.

First time? Read this first »

Back again? Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

A workshop for:

Writers who want to learn how sentences work (and why sometimes they don’t) so they can self-edit with confidence.

Your instructor:

Helene Kiser — editor, writing teacher and book coach, specializing in personal essays, narrative non-fiction and memoir.

Takeaways:

• Identify the eight common weaknesses that drain your sentences of power

• A 6 step self-editing framework you can use on any piece of writing

• Recognize when breaking the rules might strengthen your work

• Edit your sentences without losing what makes your writing sound like you

• Diagnose whether a sentence problem is about clarity, rhythm, or voice — and fix it accordingly

By the end of this workshop you’ll have learned how to transform barely functional sentences into lines that sparkle with hands-on exercises to sharpen your editorial eye across poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.

Self-editing — Sentence by Sentence

Why self-editing is the most important skill to learn as a writer

The cold truth is that readers don’t owe us their time. We have to earn it, sentence by sentence.

But here’s the thing about sentences: they’re sneaky little devils. When we’re drafting, we’re focused on getting the story down, the argument made, the image captured. But sometimes when we go back and read, something feels... off. Sentences that felt perfectly fine while we were writing them now sound flat. Or muddy. Or like they’re trying to run a marathon while wearing concrete shoes.

But that moment when you reread your work and think “why isn’t this working?” isn’t failure. It’s the beginning of real craft. And improving our editorial eye really is the key to producing good (or great!) writing.

The problem is, well, self-editing can be hard.

As writers, our noggins autocorrect mistakes and fill in gaps before we even notice they’re there.

Or maybe we’re too close to our work to be truly objective. What structural problems? Plot hole where? No logical flaw in that! Whaddya mean I haven’t clarified Aunt Suzie’s obsession with button collecting?

Or we’re just too attached, Gollum-style: My precious, precious, precious words!

The good news? Self-editing at the sentence level stands as one of the soft AND hard skills you can continually improve with practice. And today we’re going to learn some quick, easy strategies to get you started…

The 8 Enemies of Strong Sentences

Before we talk about what makes sentences work, let’s identify what makes them stumble. This is of course not an exhaustive list but a round-up of the usual suspects — the patterns that sneak into our drafts and sap our prose of energy.

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Heya, welcome to The Forever Workshop. First time? Read this. Back again? Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

A workshop for:

Memoir writers who want to write truthfully about their experiences but are worried how people in their life might react

Your instructor:

Lilly Dancyger — essayist and author of the memoir Negative Space and essay collection First Love, which was a LAMBDA Literary Award finalist.

Takeaways:

• Common concerns for memoir writers during writing and revision

• Important questions to ask when writing about sensitive topics in non-fiction

• How to navigate telling your truth with fairness and nuance

• Advice on representing real people in a multidimensional way within memoir

Today’s workshop is free for all subscribers. By the end of it, you’ll know what to consider as you write and revise your creative non-fiction, and feel more confident about approaching difficult subjects in memoir.

How to Write About Real People in Memoir

The fact that the characters in our stories are real people (some of whom might actually read what we write!) is one of the most challenging aspects of writing memoir. The fear of getting it wrong—of representing people in our lives unfairly, or of representing them perfectly fairly but still pissing them off in the process—is enough to keep tons of would-be memoirists from writing a word; and enough to keep those brave enough to write anyway up at night.

Through the process of publishing two very personal books of nonfiction (and writing a third, which will be out next year), I’ve learned something that has made this minefield a little easier to navigate: the challenges of writing about real people fall into two distinct categories—writing problems, and publishing problems—and keeping them separate can make them much easier to manage. Letting these very different concerns get tangled up in your mind is a surefire way to get overwhelmed and stuck: worrying about publishing problems before you’ve even begun writing, editing yourself for public reception when you should be focused on craft and getting to a version of the story that feels true to your own experience.

Determining whether a story is yours to tell or if you’re veering too far into other people’s privacy, making sure the story is true and fair and that every character (even those who have harmed you) comes across as a multidimensional human instead of a stock villain, implicating yourself in descriptions of conflict as much as you implicate others—these are all writing problems.

How people in your life will react to what you’ve written is a publishing problem.

Like most big challenges, in writing as in life, this jumble of writing and publishing concerns becomes much easier to manage when you break it down into smaller challenges to deal with one at a time, in order.

Here’s a loose breakdown of when in the process to ask yourself these big questions:

Before you start writing:

Whose story is this to tell? (writing question)

When you first have an idea of what you want to write about, it’s always good to start with a gut check on whether the story is yours to tell in the first place. Memoir inevitably includes other people—pretty much every experience we write about is a shared experience in some way. But where’s the line between what’s yours and what’s theirs?

I think of it like this:

• Anything that happened primarily to me is fair game to write about, even if other people were involved.

• Anything that was an equally shared experience is also fair game, but might require a little more tact in making sure I’m representing only my perspective and not speaking for anyone else.

• And anything that primarily happened to someone else and impacted me in a second-hand way requires the full informed and freely-given consent of that someone else.

This is the loose rubric I start with, at least. There are exceptions that have to do with power dynamics—for example, children and my students get more protection and anonymity than my peers. (There’s a whole long-ranging debate with various strongly-held beliefs about whether it’s ever ok for parents to write about their children. Like pretty much every writing “rule,” I tend to think there’s no one size fits all right answer, but that the power dynamic should absolutely be taken into account, and writing about children and anyone else the writer has any kind of power over requires even more care than writing about people with whom they’re on a level playing field.)

While writing & revising:

Am I representing everyone as accurately as possible? (writing questions)

While writing (and revising), ask yourself:

• Have I portrayed everyone in this story as a multidimensional human being rather than a stock character or villain?

• Have I implicated myself in conflicts rather than putting all the blame on others?

• Have I represented the people in this story in a way that feels fair and complete and true from my perspective?

These are all difficult questions to answer and difficult things to achieve in writing, but they’re much easier—or at least, they’re possible—when you think of them as craft questions, completely separate from how the people you’re writing about will react to the finished work.

To the best of your ability, work through these questions without thinking at all about how your writing will be received. Try to write as if nobody will ever read what you’re writing! (This is easier to do if you can reassure yourself that the time will come to address concerns about how people will react; it’s just that now, while writing, is not that time.)

These are also things to ask for feedback on from other writers who don’t know the people you’ve written about—people who can judge the complexity and vividness of your characters as characters.

Later in revision:

How would it feel to read this as one of the people in the story? (revision question, starting to prepare for publication)

Only after you’ve written the story to your satisfaction, gotten it to a point where it feels true and conveys what you want it to convey, is it time to start thinking about how it might be received by the people you’ve written about.

For me, this is a revision step all its own: a full read through of the manuscript where I finally acknowledge to myself that some or all of the people I’ve written about will eventually read what I’ve written. And after blocking it out of my mind during the whole writing process up until this point, I let myself consider how it might come across to them.

During the read-through itself, I generally just mark every line or passage or section that I want to take a closer look at—basically every spot where I describe another person, or their actions, or our relationship. Then I go back through and make decisions about what I might want to omit or soften out of consideration for their feelings.

Importantly, by this point in the process, I’m generally pretty confident that I’ve done my due diligence to write a fair and true story, so I’m not as timid as I might have been if I’d done this step earlier in the process. But still, sometimes a description is harsher than it needs to be, or sometimes in the interest of making a character feel well-rounded I’ve included details about their life or experience that aren’t really mine to share.

This is the stage at which I make decisions about what’s really necessary to the story, and what I’d feel ok with letting go for the sake of people’s feelings and my ongoing relationships with them

Before publication:

Should I share what I’ve written with anyone represented in my story before it’s published, while there’s still time to make changes? (publishing question)

This is a question that comes up all the time—whether or not, and when, to share drafts with people in your life. When, I think, is the easier question to answer: Only when it’s close to final, polished and revised, so you’re sharing the most complete and considered version.

But that only applies if you’ve decided to share a draft at all. That has less of a clear answer, and really depends on each individual relationship.

Personally, I tend to err on the side of sharing drafts with more people than not. If people are going to read the work eventually, I’d rather deal with their potential reactions early, rather than letting them be another thing to worry about in the already anxiety-laden publication process. And, I’ve learned, making small changes is often a small price to pay to maintain a relationship.

I also learned from publishing my first book, Negative Space, that you can never predict what details will upset someone, and that often they’ll be small things that wouldn’t be that big of a deal to change. Of all the fraught and difficult things I wrote in that book about my mother, her relationship with my father and their shared heroin addiction, and my complicated relationship with her, the detail she brought up that had particularly upset her was that I described my loft bed in the studio apartment we shared when I was a teenager as being “above the kitchen.” It was next to the kitchen, she insisted; I made it sound worse than it was. When I looked down from that loft bed, I looked down into the kitchen, yes, but I also had a desk and clothing rack in the space directly under it. From my perspective, either above or next to would suffice. It would not have been a big deal for me to make that change, but it would have made a big difference to her.

But I didn’t share a draft of the book with my mother before it was published, so by the time she read it and objected to that word choice, it was too late.

I carried that experience with me into the publication process for my second book, First Love, sharing drafts with just about everyone I wrote about—including an ex-friend I hadn’t spoken to in years.

Just because I shared drafts with everyone, doesn’t mean that everyone’s opinion got equal weight. An important thing to remember is that sharing a draft doesn’t mean you have to change everything someone wants you to. At this stage, you have to balance your relationship with the person against the story you want to tell. For some friends, I would have cut entire essays if they asked me to, because no essay was more important than those relationships. (They didn’t ask me to cut any full essays, but a few did ask for very small changes, on the level of “above” vs. “next to” that I was more than happy to make.) For others, I was sharing the drafts more to get their reactions out of the way before publication. In those cases, there were some changes I declined to make.

But the choices about which changes to make and which to decline were so, so much easier to make at this stage—once the book was written and revised and I’d wrestled with my own craft and ethical concerns first, without anyone looking over my shoulder. Once they were separated into a stage of the publishing process, rather than something I let get in my way while I was writing, or god forbid, stop me from writing in the first place

More memoir & non-fiction resources:

For more on this topic, and to come up with your own ethical rubric and publication plan, join Lilly Dancyger on April 18 for a virtual session, Telling Shared Stories: Writing About Real People in Memoir.

(P.S. Forever Workshop readers get 15% off with discount code FOREVER)

And for more guidance on writing memoir and personal essays, explore these masterclass to help you generate ideas, find your voice, and craft honest, authentic creative non-fiction:

An 8-part comprehensive guide to writing a personal essay from start to finish, including lessons on structure, point-of-view, and revising your work.

A 4-part workshop on finding meaning in the ‘quiet’ moments of daily life — including how to write about difficult subjects with subtlety and nuance.

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