The Brevity Blog
Beyond Rejection Coping Strategies
Minim Opus: Baby Shoes and Learning from Rejections
Wish List Essays: A Brevity Blog Round Up
More than Personal Experience: Every Writer Needs Inputs
Nobody Warned Me About the Good Parts of Publishing a Memoir
How to Let the Funny In
I’m Ready for My Close-Up: Using the metaphor of cinema to focus our writing lenses
Mentor Texts: What Writers Read When They Write
But What Do They Want?!? Write Publishable Essays by Analyzing Published Essays
Looking for a Writing Partner? You May Already Have One
A Conversation Between Immigrant Writers on Shame, Fear, and Responsibility
Yes, Writing Is for the “Faint of Heart”
The Letter H and a List—How I Connected the Stories in My Memoir
How a Birthday Book Barn-Raising Helped Me Finish My Memoir
The Rebound: What a Week in Maine Taught Me About Writing in Company
The Non-Rules for Writing When You Live with a Chronic Illness
Dinty W. Moore Steps Down as Editor for Brevity Magazine
What We Don’t Talk About: Essential Tips for Writing Dialogue
That Bluebird on Your Shoulder: Why Writing Prompts Are So Darn Powerful
Obstacle, Desire, Destination: Create Drama from Your Fragments with Spiral Structure
Whose Story Is it Anyway?
I’ll Be Writing More in a Week or Two: A Query Letter Gone Wrong
Letter to Our Community: Brevity Blog Turns 20
Writing as Advocacy: Mustering the Courage to be Bold, Brave, and Direct
How to Not Write
Too Young to Write a Memoir?
Two Mirrors Reflecting: Writing Memoir in Prose and Poetry
Close, but No Acceptance (Or, What is the Universe Trying to Teach Me Right Now?)
Choose or Be Chosen: Are Writing Retreats Businesses or Charities?
The Whale in Your Draft: What Ahab from Moby-Dick can teach writers about their obsessions.
We Shall Know Them By Their Words: Writing Characters through Dialogue
Stopping for the Unfinished
My Faith in Lit Mags—Restored
Writing Amidst “All This”: Making Mental Space
Who Am I, You Ask?
Doing the Heavy Lifting: Writing Between Repetitions
So You Got Scooped: The Advantages of Being a Book Twin
Record First, Write Later
Something Besides the Parts: On the Alchemy of Collections
You Belong Here
How to Hook Your Memoir Audience: Make Them Feel It!
Jacket Copy First: How 150 Words Saved Me (and My Book Proposal)
Send Us Your Personal Essays!
Keep Your Darlings
The Articles We Carry: How Writing in a Second Language Shapes Thought on the Page
The Writer-Reader Relationship: A Brevity Blog Round Up
Unreachable: How Learning Beach Volleyball Helped My Writing Practice
Showing in the Silences: Saying More By Writing Less
Finding the Right Book—The Prison Literature Project
Brevity 82: Vivid, Innovative, and Brief
Inner Life: Investing Readers in Your Character
Travel Writing—The Observer’s Journey
Earthworms and Rock Pools: Deepening Your Memoir Through Re-turning and Diffraction
Writing through ADHD: A Playful Prescription for the Perplexed Procrastinator
Have You Considered Volunteering in a Prison?
That’s Another Book: Deciding Which Essays Belong
How to Write Like Harriet the Spy
Writing (and Publishing) the Omnivorous Essay
Brevity 81: “White Female, Brown Male, Black Vehicle” and Two Meanings in a Moment
An End to the Squabbling: Letter to My Memoir
Journey to Publication : A Visual Essay
Got Questions About Publishing? Ask a Pelican
One Difficult Choice, One Honest Essay, Five Publications, and Thirty Years
Writing in the 21st Century: How to Defeat the Ghost in the Machine
After the Send
Essay as Activism: Bearing Witness Through Craft
Unearthing the Deeper Story: How Revision Can Become Re-Envisioning
How to Start Your Memoir: Prologue, Introduction or Chapter One?
Don’t Hide Behind the Cake: Bake Your Memoir With Real Ingredients
The Heart Folds Early: A Memoir of Grief, Loss, Love—and Choice
To the Denver Men’s Book Club That Said They’d Absolutely, Positively, Not Ask Me for Money
The Outs and Ins of a Hermit Crab Essay: Finding Protection on the Page
Plenty of Time to Write, But No Book in Sight
Main Character Energy: How Desire Makes Memorable Memoir
A Tool of Nonfiction: Image and Specificity
Your Book Needs a Hook (Here’s Why)
Ride It Out: How Spin Makes Me a Better Writer
The Freedom to Adapt: Life, Memoir, Movie
From Panic to Poise: How I Become a Calmer, More Focused Writer
The Ghostwriter in the Tool Shed
From Zero to 100: How I Published 100 Pieces in Literary Magazines
Taking the “Me” Out of Book Promotion
The Egg I Brought Home from AWP: Finding Inspiration in the Unexpected
To the Angry Adult Children Whose Mothers Are Writing Memoir
How Much Meaning Do You Get from Your World?
In Search of Lost Memory: Revisiting the Past to Write Sensory Details
Preparing for the Fallout: Your Family Wants Privacy, But You Have a Story to Tell
The Essay is Fun, the Essay is Useful, and Essays Turn Into Wonderful Books
What Writers Owe the People Who Show Up For Them
Writing Toward a Larger Truth
How to Host Your Own Writing Event (and maybe even profit)
Am I Milquetoast? Or Maybe It’s OK to Not Have a Big Opinion
When, and How, to Change Names in Nonfiction
From Substack to Book: How I Got a Publishing Deal from My Newsletter
From Never to Yes: How and Why I Self-Published My Memoir
Memoirs RX: A Cure for the Ailing Writer
While the Memoir Waits: Collaborative Interviewing and Building Platform
Excavate, Scrape, and Shape: Using Discards to Improve Your Craft
Hustle and a Spreadsheet: A Debut Author’s Blueprint for a Book Launch
Creating the AWP Magic At Home
When a Poet Writes a Memoir Then a Novel and Returns to the Memoir
Fishing With Pelicans: Lessons in How to Hook a Publisher
I Like Shiny Writing: Moving Past Perfection
How A Mentor Kept My Book Alive
Brevity 81: On “I Only Know Jimmy Because” and What Happened Yesterday, and Why It Matters
A Letter to the Brevity Blog Community—Our Editors’ Wish List for 2026
Right Story, Wrong Time
The Trouble With Truth in Narrative Medicine
Writing for Comfort, Writing for Truth
Dive and Glide: The Pauses in My Publishing Journey
How Still Images Can Enhance Your Memoir
Editing an Anthology to Combat Isolation and Create Community
What We Owe the People We Write About
Closing My Eyes Made Me a Better Writer and Teacher
Weaving Imagination with Fact: Using Research as Metaphor in Creative Writing
Finding Beauty Amidst the Publication Chaos
When an Author Refuses to Tidy It All Up: A Close Reading of Hazlitt, Dillard, and Didion
Brevity 81: On “Between Us” and Change We Cannot Control
Writing in Collaboration: How Four Lives Became a Braided Memoir
Brevity 81: On “A Normal Couple” and Taking Up Space
The Power of Words (To Hurt): Restraint As a Form of Kindness
How Audience-Building Shapes Our Writing Craft
Brevity 81: On “The Old West End” and Transforming Formal Poems into Lyric Essays
The Literary List and the Art of Transcendence
Brevity 81: On “Somewhere on a city street” and Naming the Hurt
Capturing, Collecting, Collating, and Making Them Work: Prompts on How To Organize Your Free-Floating Ideas
Behind the Magic: Why Writing About Writing Works
Brevity 81: On “With the Braves On, My Father Washes Me” and Finding the Right Form
A New Issue of Brevity: Essays on Love, Loss, and the Sweet Sting of What Could Never Be
Writing Long: Unlocking Your Story with Deep Work
My Mother’s Red Pen and What I Did About It
More Than a Hook: How to Open with the Heart of Your Memoir
Two Rules for a Better Author Newsletter
The Year the Pause Became a River: On Writing Beyond the Memoir
Resolve to Publish a Book? Here’s How to Make That Resolution Come True
The Dammed River: On Writing and the Work of Bleeding
The Brevity Blog Needs All Hands on Deck
Found In Translation: Intimacy, Devotion and the Creature of Language
Backstory is Not Always Bad
There Is No Closure: Stop Organizing and Start Writing
Recording My Audiobook—Baby Steps and a Stretch
Are All Writers Masochists? No, But It Helps
The Year of the Writer
Writing the Rapids
Creative Chaos Theory: Your Essay Begins Here
Sentences on [The Essay]
Telling It Like It Was: Selecting the Right Facts for Nonfiction Narrative
An Open Letter to Your Family and Friends This Holiday Season
Monkey Business
The Distance Between Us—Bridging the Gaps Between Writers
The Gifts Writers Really Want
Digital Debris: Clearing the Clutter to Make Room for Real Writing
When a Book Blurb Gets Epsteined: a Marketing Burden We Didn’t See Coming
On Writing in Collaboration: The Art of the Duet
Our Lives Matched: How Finding Someone with a Similar Story Propelled a Writer to Publication
This Class May Not Be For You: Finding Your Writing Teacher Match
Stylin & Profilin On You
Rocket Your Reader: Powerful Memoir Openings Need This
Moving through Space, Moving into Memoir
Emergency Poems: Writers Offer Support Through A Reading for Sudan
Narrative Medicine: How I Wrote the Story I Couldn’t Remember
Second Draft: How Dramatic Structure Powers Revision
Essays in Belonging: Baby Owls, Bobtail Squid, and the Power of Asking 100 Questions
The Craft of Flash Nonfiction: A Brevity Blog Round Up
Chill Subs Community Favorites Best Lit Mag Awards: Celebrate your Faves including the Blog—Vote Now!
At Sea: Transform Your Writing and Your Process
Thanksgiving Gratitude, from Brevity and The Brevity Blog
A Few Kind Words
Duck, Duck, Essay: The Recipe for Writing
Seeing into the Life of Things: Memory as an Act of Imagination
Editorial Feedback for a Fee—Buyer Beware
Is an MFA Worth It for Aspiring Writers?
Climbing that Ladder Again: The Planner and The Pen
Last Call!—Join the Conversation with Our 2025 Editors’ Wish List
Goodbye, Earl: A Field Guide to Handling Internet Hate
Pay-to-Play: The Rise of the High-Ticket Writing Program
How Searching for Writing Topics Became a Search for Truth and Beauty
Body Doubling: How Writing with Others Saved My Sanity and My Manuscript
Why We Write: Money, Fame, or To Be Transported from Challenging Lives
Me Again: On Sticking with Memoir
Making the Case for Joy
Invited to a Book Club? Reviewers Ready to Boost Your Book? Have (A)I Got News For You
The Mottled Orange of an Autumn Pumpkin: A Brevity Blog Round Up on The Enduring Power of Detail
Unlocking Creativity: The Physics of Writing
What, Exactly, Are You Trying to Communicate?
Choosing the Right Developmental Editor for Your Writing: Dos, Don’ts and Duds
How to Date a Writer
Three Is the Magic Number
Learning About Neurodivergence Transformed My Writing Process
Motion Dazzle: A Memoir of Motherhood, Loss, and Skating on Thin Ice
How I Successfully Restored My Facebook Account (and learned I needed a new community)
The Art of Germination: Letting Your Creative Work Rest
Writing That Endures—It’s All in the Craft
Memoir in Poetry: Writing with T.S. Eliot During Uncertainty and Chaos
What Is Creative About Creative Nonfiction?
Conversion Block: When It’s OK to Quit Your Book
How to Embrace Stovetop ADHD in Our Writing Kitchens
My Life Is a Knot, I Can Love the Knot: Reflections on Narrative and Nonfiction
Art and Resistance and Parenting
Successfully Selling Memoir: It’s About the Reader
Tiny True Stories: How Micro Memoirs Make Us Better Writers
The Essay: Tradition & The Individual Talent
Nice Work. Please Finish: Using Storytelling to Define Your Digital Identity
The Pride, the Pain, the Love, and the Grit: On Writing and Gymnastics
Get Smart About Your Writing Education
A Writing Retreat with Inspiration, Hard Lessons, and Plenty of Cheese
Don’t Ask Readers to Cry for a Stranger (‘Cause They Won’t)
So, Publishing Your First Book Didn’t Change Your Life….
Reconstruction: Writing the Unknown As If It’s Real Makes Stronger Scenes
A Heroine’s Journey: When Your Story Doesn’t Fit the Standard Memoir Structure
A Place of Healing: Finding the Right Words In an Unright Moment
Writing from the Wound: Leaving Room for Raw Urgency