How to Write About Difficult Things and When to Break the Rules
Lesson 3 of Quiet Writing: Crafting Stories from Everyday Moments with Andrea A. Firth
We’re over half of the way through. Hopefully you have one (or more) pieces of quiet writing taking shape. Thanks for your continued activity in the Comments.
So where do we start? The everyday moments that centered the readings last week were accepting a free cocktail, holding hands in a meteor shower, and showering with a spider. Everyday moments that expanded to have significant meaning. Cool.
But as I mentioned in Lesson 1, quiet writing can also be used to address heavy, difficult, even traumatic moments. In fact, it’s quite an effective approach.
In Lesson 3 we’re going to explore how quiet writing can be used to write about topics like death, loss, grief, pain, and ageing. We’re also going see that by sometimes “breaking the rules,” quiet writing can bring a new perspective to difficult topics that are often hard to write about. We’ll see how using objects, humor, and point of view can bring a quiet twist to tough times too.
Here are the readings for this week:
Legacy by Katy Rank Lev, Short Reads, 2/12/25
Ambrosia by HJ Shepard, Smokelong Quarterly, 6/17/24
Two on Two by Brian Doyle, Creative Nonfiction, Issue 09, The Universal Chord
