Writing Your Resilience: Building Resilience, Embracing Trauma and Healing Through Writing

Encore Episode: Crafting the Personal Essay and Resilient Editing Tips with Andrea Firth

• Lisa Cooper Ellison

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Join me and Andrea Firth for this encore episode of the writing your resilience podcast where we explore what personal essays are, how writers can uncover their essay’s aboutness, and how to develop resilient editing practices. As an added bonus, learn the inside scoop on how to get published on the Brevity Blog. 



Episode Highlights

  • 4:00 The Difference Between Memoir and Personal Essay
  • 7:00 Exploring the Inciting Incident for Your Essays
  • 14:00 Common Struggles Essayists Have: Aboutness
  • 21:00 The Power of the Braided Essay
  • 25:00 Resilient Editing and Workshopping
  • 34:00 Submitting to the Brevity Blog


Resources Mentioned During This Episode: 


Andrea’s Bio: Andrea A. Firth is a writer, editor and educator living in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is an Editor at Brevity Blog and cofounder of Diablo Writers’ Workshop where she teaches creative writing and provides developmental editing. Andrea has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Saint Mary’s College of California. She was a finalist for The Missouri Review's 2021 Perkoff Prize in nonfiction, and her work has appeared in Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, Allium, The Coachella Review among others. Learn more about her and read her recent work at www.andreaafirth.com.


Connect with Andrea: 

Website: https://www.andreaafirth.com/

Substack: Everything Essay! with Andrea Firth

Instagram: @andreaafwriter

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andrea.firth.58

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreafirth/

Sign up for Revise Your Memoir series: https://bit.ly/4ooLTDi

Connect with your host, Lisa:
Get Your Free Copy of Ditch Your Inner Critic: https://lisacooperellison.com/subscribe/
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Transcript for Writing Your Resilience Podcast Episode 103

Encore Episode: Crafting the Personal Essay and Resilient Editing Tips with Andrea Firth

Lisa [2:01]

Well, hello, Andrea. Welcome to the Writing Your Resilience podcast. I am so happy to have you on.

Andrea [3:00]

Yeah, thank you very much. I’m happy to be here too.

Lisa [3:15]

So, you are a person who wears many hats. You work for Diablo Writers, you’re an editor for the Brevity Blog, you do all these things. What would you like us to know about you, including about you as an essayist?

Andrea [3:45]

Well, so first and foremost, I’m a writer, and mostly an essayist, but I worked as a journalist for several years. So, I still like to do interviews and write research and reported articles. Seven years ago, I co-founded Diablo Writers Workshop, which has been a big part of what I do. It’s a space for adult writers to work on creative writing. I teach classes there. I do developmental editing, and support what’s really become a vibrant writing community. We have other events; we host a weekly co-writing that’s free, and I host a monthly session, which is also free, where we work on submitting our writing to literary journals. Then I’m an editor for the blog, which I just love. I spend a fair amount of time on that volunteer gig.

Lisa [4:46]

First, I bow to you for all the hard work you put into the volunteer work. That is always a lot, and it is such great service to our community, as you know. I also want to say, I know people who participate in Diablo Writers’ and they’re always telling me how great it is. So, you have so many things that you do well, and so many gifts that you’re offering to the writing community that people should be checking out. In case you’re wondering how you could check these out, those of you who are listening, all of that will be in the show notes. But I want to talk about essays for a second, because you see yourself primarily as an essayist I was reading some of your beautiful essays in Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, the most recent one being about secret words. What I love about your work is that it’s so nuanced. You take a simple thing—like a dad giving you a secret word, or in another essay that I read, it’s about a broken window—and you take us through all these layers of what this can be. You always end on this, like slightly unresolved note. You never do this thing, which no essayist should really do, which is something to the effect of “dear reader, here is the lesson I’d like you to learn.” You have this beautiful way of pulling back and making us have a question, which I love. What would you like to say about essays and how they’re doing work that is different from say memoir?

Andrea [6:00]

Great question. And thank you for the kind words about my work. And yes, you don’t want an ending of an essay to wrap it up in a bow with the moral of the story. I think the difference between memoir and personal essay comes down to topic in a way. Both genres or subgenres of creative nonfiction explore our lived experience. Personal essays are a very flexible and creative form that aims to find meaning in what we encounter and allows us to contemplate in the every day. I’m going to paraphrase Phillip Lopate, a leader in the field of essays early on. He says, “it’s the essay’s taste for littleness, the small and humble things in life, which is the essay strong suit.” So, an essay can take on any topic, anything like a moth, just to give a nod to Virginia Woolf, and turn that into a meditational adventure. I once wrote an essay about my kids’ pet hermit crabs. But ultimately, it was about much more than that. So, whereas memoir will cover a period in a writer’s life, essay can be a momentary slice of life. Essays always experimented with form and structure, which is one of the things I love about it. The other thing is, one of the requirements for an essay to work is that the writer, by the end, has a recognition or a realization. Sometimes it’s an epiphany and a big thing. But often, it’s much more subtle than that. But it can be significant. So, I think that might be what you were pointing to that in the closing of the essay, me as the writer, narrator, I’ve learned something about myself in the wider world. But it’s not necessarily like hugely life changing. It’s about how all these little events layered upon each other accumulate, too. So hopefully that answers the question.

Lisa [8:00]

I think that’s a great answer. So, some things that I hear you saying about memoir, is it’s often like, let me take you through this big thing that has happened to me in my life, and I’m going to take you along this adventure, and you can interpret the word adventure in any way you like. But the essay is about taking the small moment, blowing it up, in a sense, so we can look at it from multiple angles and figure out the personal epiphany, like, what is it that I’ve learned about my life? It’s not necessarily earth shattering, though, sometimes it is. But most of the time, it’s not. A James Baldwin quote, I use a lot around essay versus like versus plays and fiction, though I also talk about this in terms of memoir is that when you are writing fiction, or plays or memoir, you’re trying to show something. But when it comes to essay, there is an argument involved. You’re trying to convince somebody of something. So, you’re thinking about what idea I’m exploring? What is the argument that I am taking someone through, even though it may not look like an argument when you’re reading it, especially in personal essay? What do you think about that?

Andrea [9:00]

An argument and/or, the writer, the narrator is trying to answer a question. Yeah, I look at essay and the aboutness. What it’s about, there are two layers to it. There’s what it’s about on the surface, pet hermit crabs my kids have, but then as you continue to write, and you start to identify themes in the essay and what’s bubbling up, like in that essay, it ended up being a braided essay and a story about the kids and their hermit crabs and then a neighbor that I had who was a recluse and it really became about the meaning of home and hermit crabs, and how they trade their shells. That became a metaphor and a touchstone as I was trying to explore what this neighbor meant to me and what his secluded life meant.

And it gave me a vehicle, a place to explore that. I think just like when you start a novel or a memoir, and you don’t really know how it’s going to end, very often with essay, I think writers, we don’t know what we’re writing about when we start. You have to write through it to get to that place where the aboutness on the surface and what’s bubbling up meets, because that’s the heart of the essay.

Lisa [10:28]

Okay, so I have not yet read this essay, but I want to know, and I want everyone else to be able to, so please be sure to send me this by email so that I can add it to the show notes, because it sounds like a fascinating essay. So, as you thought about this situation, you realized there was a deeper layer about your relationship with this neighbor. As you’re thinking back on that writing process—and know that I have no idea is a fine answer to any question—what do you think the inciting incident was? What was it that caused you to write this?

Andrea [11:02]

So, it’s going to sound a little strange, but we were in Florida where they have hermit crab races. We ended up flying back to Chicago, myself, two kids, my husband with two brand-new hermit crab pets. My kids were maybe four or five. One hermit crab had a red mark on it. One had a blue mark on it, so each child knew which hermit crab was theirs. I’m having coffee one morning, and blue hermit crab attacks red hermit crab and pulls the hermit crab body out of the shell. Then it takes over the shell.

Lisa [11:41]

Oh, my goodness.

Andrea 11:43

This is the world of hermit crabs. It’s a dog-eat-dog world. But there’s always competition for shells. We had put other empty shells in the cage, but whatever. So then, when my children came home from school, I had the task of trying to explain to two three- or four-year-olds, whose hermit crab was still around. It was quite a funny conversation because they knew blue and red. They had named them and it kind of went on for a while. So, I started with this kind of silly little story about hermit crabs and kind of what happens in nature. Then, as I kind of dug into that and thought through that a little bit more, it became about someone coming in and taking someone else’s home—the recluse’s home. We lived in quite a nice neighborhood. He hadn’t done anything to his house in decades. It was an eyesore. People used to put notes on his door like, hey, I could give you a good offer to buy your house. I was quite protective of him because I’d gotten friendly with him over the years. So, all those things started to collide. So, the inciting incident was a hermit crab incident. Then it just seemed, as I wrote into it, I think what the writer needs to do in an essay is start to consider how it connects with the wider world.

Lisa [13:07]

I love that. So all of that happened when your kids were small. How much time passed between that incident and you deciding to write about it?

Andrea [13:18]

Time did pass because I wrote that essay when I was in grad school. I went off to grad school when my kids graduated from high school. So, a good 10-12 years. But, you know, we have these stories from our pasts that percolate inside of us. I think that at that point, we had moved away and left old John, which is how we refer to my neighbor. I think he had passed away. I think that triggered the whole thing—me thinking about John again, and the hermit crabs, and then it all came together.

Lisa [14:03]

What I’m hearing is that when we’re thinking about essay, sometimes we feel

this desire to talk about what’s happening right now—especially if you’re trying to publish, say, for a larger venue or you want to make something timely. But looking at the past can be a helpful way to think about this work, because you have that distance. You recently had a quote on your Instagram of this beautiful poem by Natalie Diaz, that you said created this prompt for your class around writing about the wound. I think there’s a way that we can write about the wound, and an experience may not necessarily have a wound, but there’s a charge there, right? There’s something that we’re still trying to explore, and that can be a great way to do it.

Andrea [15:00]

Often with teaching, I derive prompts from what I read. So, I’ll read about something, you know, a published essay, a poem, and then share that. Then, whatever the core of that poem—for example, write about a wound. Or it could be something more basic, like write about a department store, because the story was about a department store. I just used that prompt the other day. We did it as an icebreaker. I said, tell me about some sort of shopping experience from when you were young. Then I said the prompt was to write about something from your childhood that’s disappearing, because department stores are disappearing. So, you could write specifically about your department store experience, or something else that’s disappearing. I think prompts can really motivate us to pull from our past and bring it forward.

Lisa [15:30]

Yeah, I love that. And I think that’s a nice frame for what prompts can do, because sometimes people feel like prompts are useless—like oh no, you’re getting me to talk about this random thing. People either love prompts, or they hate prompts. But this is a gorgeous way that you can take a prompt and make it relevant. Speaking of prompts and students you teach—we’re talking today about resilient editing. I think the only way we can get to the resilient part is by talking about some of the problems that people sometimes have. I also work as an editor. I also teach, and so I’m well versed in the kinds of issues my students face. What common struggles do you see with your writers that you work with?

Andrea [16:30]

I primarily teach creative nonfiction, essay, and memoir. I think what students struggle with is a lot of what we just talked about, is aboutness. It’s that movement from this happened to me and I want to tell you about it. For example, I just went to see the eclipse and I want to tell people about that experience. A lot of people went to see the eclipse. So, it’s taking that next step and moving from what it’s about on the surface, and then how does that connect to the wider world? And how do the themes, like you have to start digging deeper, and then start looking for meaning and connection? So even small, humble things like pet hermit crabs can go deeper into an exploration of what is home. But I think what that requires of writers is time. They need to sit with it more and look through different lenses to find those connections. Another thing I find common with writers, when I edit, even when I’m working with friends and peers, is clarity. Writers get ahead of what they put on the page, and they can lose or confused the reader. It happens a lot in early drafts. The solution to that is to step away, to give it some time, and to read it aloud. Then those missing bits and unclear sections become more apparent. You can get that identified to you with someone else reading it in a workshop or with an editor. But I think there’s a lot that we can do for ourselves in revision. I see it on the blog. A submission comes in, and there’s a lot of potential, but there are unclear sections. People get excited and they want to get it in. And it’s an early draft.

Lisa [18:29]

No, I love that. I want to echo what you’re saying about aboutness because I think

that is a struggle I also see. I recently interviewed Sue William Silverman, and we were talking about writing. One of the things she said was, “creative nonfiction is not the xeroxing of your life. You can’t just say this happened and that happened. You have to find out what it means.” I see writers struggle with this all the time. I think the more fraught the experience is, sometimes the bigger the challenges are in terms of figuring out what that aboutness is. That’s largely because it’s tangled up with all the feelings, right? In early drafts, you do have to Xerox your life on the page, but it takes a while to make meaning from your experience. Sometimes when you don’t have that sense of aboutness, I think that also muddies the clarity.

Andrea [19:22]

That’s one of the reasons I really love the essay form, because you don’t have to have to write about some tumultuous event. It really can be hermit crabs. I had written an essay, “Secret words.” That was a fun little game. My father made up a couple of secret words for me when I was five, but then that essay goes into some deeper, more difficult things in my childhood, but I didn’t start with them.

Lisa [20:00]

I love that idea of not starting necessarily with whatever the wound is. But maybe starting with something that makes you curious, and then if the wound is going to be connected, it will find a way in. Because I’ve talked about this with people before. This was something I learned in graduate school, back when I was getting a degree in learning and behavior disorders. I had this excellent developmental psychology professor. One of the things she said was that when the limbic system is overtaxed, learning cannot occur. Your limbic system is the part of your brain that handles fight or flight. If you are in a highly emotionally activated state, you actually can’t learn. So, finding things that are of a lower charge for yourself, that you can use to practice the craft of writing, is going to make you a better writer. That way, when you deal with these more challenging experiences, you have more skills to work with.

Andrea [21:00]

I think for me, because I started in journalism, I was writing about other people. At that distance, I could write about their problems, or, you know, what was going on. It also gave me distance because, you know, in literary journalism, people get into incorporating their own personal experience, but I did a lot of feature writing, but I wasn’t in the story. So that had been how I had learned. So, for me, I had the experience when I moved to creative nonfiction writing, and I went to grad school, of kind of opening up. I’ve always been described as someone who writes with restraint. I think there’s good and bad things to that. Because you really do, ultimately, want to get your story out on the page. I’ve had to work at that. I’m always impressed by the writers that really spill it out. But you do need to find a balance.

Lisa [21:46]

Yes, absolutely. And I’ve worked with many a journalist in recovery, as I call them. Sometimes, when it comes to creative nonfiction, because it is a common challenge if you have worked in journalism that you completely wall yourself off from the story, because that’s what was required for that genre. To then insert yourself into the story can feel taboo. Like you’re breaking some fundamental rule.

Andrea [22:10]

I like the braided form, because I can have a section that’s my story, and then the next section might be research, or I could tell my pet hermit crab story and that time with my kids, and then I can talk about John and how difficult that was, and what was going on culturally in the ‘90s, and all the money in the houses and real estate. Then I could go back to the story of my kids. So sometimes structure can help you with that, too.

Lisa [22:39]

Yeah, and I love what I hear. The braided narrative is a structure where you have two separate stories and you’re weaving them together. The way you weave them together creates the super story, like something else that you couldn’t say otherwise. But there’s a way that in the braiding you create relief, so you can have an emotional charge incident, and then move to something lighter, and then juxtapose those two kinds of writing.

Andrea [23:08]

Maybe we can throw this into the show notes for folks that are interested in braided essay. Lilly Dancyger did an essay for the Brevity Blog about writing a braided essay. One story is how a braided essay happens. The other story is about the eclipse, but it gets into some deeper, darker, personal things. That juxtaposition is so well done. And then on top of it, you leave knowing how to write a braided essay. It’s just brilliant.

Lisa [23:42]

 I will add that to the show notes, and shout out to Lilly Dancyger, because she is a fantastic writer and essayist. So, I’m so glad that you brought that up. It’s also so timely since we’re recording this the week after the eclipse. We were both in the path of totality down in Texas.

Andrea [24:00]

Yeah, really great experience. I would say once in a lifetime, but since the cloud cover came in just after totality, and neither of us were able to see the moon retreat out the other side, I may have to chase that again. Even if I have to wait until—what is it, 2044—the next time it crosses the US, because it’s going to cross right over San Francisco where I live.

Lisa [24:22]

Very cool. Well, I may be there with you.

Andrea [24:26]

Well, I’ll be a little old dear by then. I’ll be 82, but hopefully, I’ll still be kicking.

Lisa [24:31]

I’m sure you will be because you’re a swimmer. You do all that swimming, and you are very physically fit. I’m also thinking of going to another eclipse because we had some cloud cover. I feel like I was cheating because I had a perfect view of totality in 2017. I saw all of it for the whole time. My goal with this one was to see a longer one. Like I wanted more, and of course, I got a shorter one, which is the irony of chasing celestial events and weather. But I think there’s a story in there for both of us. Also, that makes me think about structure and early essays, and how as coaches, or editors, we can support resilient editing. Also, how can writers tap into that resilience as they’re working on their own work? Because, just as you said, there is so much that the writer can do themselves. But before we get into that conversation on resilient editing, I have a question for you. How many drafts, on average, do you think an essay that you’re writing goes through?

Andrea [25:49]

Well, I’m a big reviser. I think essays, especially the ones that I’m submitting into literary magazines, it’s not uncommon for an essay to take me takes a year. I don’t want to scare people, but 30 or 40 drafts.

Lisa [26:06]

That is a great answer. It aligns with what some other people have said. I tell people this all the time, you know, depending on what I’m doing, it can be a minimum of 10 drafts, but often 20 or 30, drafts is common. I think it’s really important for new writers to hear more established writers share this, because for some people it can be really scary—like, oh my gosh, you mean, I have to write this again and again????—but it also normalizes that process, and it can make you feel a little better about the fact that, yeah, you’re not going to get it right on the first draft, or the first few drafts because you’re not supposed to.

Andrea [26:46]

Toward the end, those revisions can be minor changes, where you’re really refining and looking at every word. But I think quite easily up to 10 to really get the bones of it down. There’s going to be a time when a metaphor, if it’s there, that it’s in place, the structure is defined, the beginning and the middle of the end are complete.

Lisa [27:12]

I don’t know about you, but when I start most essays, I don’t know the aboutness. I struggle as much as anyone else with the aboutness. I have this essay I’m working on right now. I was going for a walk this morning and thinking about its aboutness. What is the aboutness? I’ve been working on it for about a year, and it’s close. I think I’m almost there. But I just keep having to meditate on it.

Andrea [27:36]

Sometimes it will happen in my sleep. Sometimes I get up and write it down. Not always. But hopefully, it comes back to me in the morning, or on walks, or in the pool. Over the course of several months, I’ll be like, oh. One of the things that I do when I’m editing, or if I’m in a workshop, is we’ll start with the question, what is this about? And then what else is it about? We keep going deeper, often because we as the writer might not know. That kind of feedback can be quite useful. Like I don’t tell people, this is what you you’re intending to write about. Rather, it’s this is my read. This is what I’m taking away. And sometimes the writer on the other side is like, oh, I didn’t even know I was writing about that. It can be really enlightening. So, sharing your work can help you with that.

Lisa [28:29]

Absolutely. I’m going to share a tip that I heard from someone else. I cannot remember who I heard this from, but someone was saying that if you write a question on a piece of paper and put it under your pillow before you go to sleep, this can be a way to get your question answered by morning. So, if you don’t know the aboutness of your essay, write a question about it, stick it underneath your pillow, or do what Andrea has said, which is get feedback from other people. Because I agree, there are so many things that we’re blind to when we are working on our own writing.

Andrea [29:23]

Yeah, and ask for the feedback. Be specific with themes you’re seeing and where the deeper bonus like, have whoever you asked to read, answer your question specifically, because they could give you good feedback, but it could be going in different directions.

Lisa [29:23]

Yes, I think that’s important. You and I were talking about some of the languaging we use when it comes to editing other people’s work or working as a teacher. I use the word invitation, you have a different word, which I’ll allow you to share in a second. But the point is to keep it open-ended, and really reflect things back to the writer so that the writer can say yes or no, versus feeling like we have told them what’s right.

Andrea [30:00]

Well, you mentioned resilient editing, and I love that phrase and that concept. So, one of the things with feedback and editing that I think it’s important is to start with highlights of the piece. What’s lighting up on the page? Where is their writing craft at work? You always want to support ourselves and other writers from the start. So, in workshops, I usually have a writer read an excerpt of the piece that we’ve already read, so we can hear it in the writer’s voice, and so that they have ownership from the start. It’s just a nice way to on-ramp. The next thing we do, and I do it in an editorial letter through writing, but in workshop, we give a round of applause, because it’s hard to write. Taking that next step to then share your work can be a little bit scary. Then we move to highlights, and I really, I do this as an editor. But in workshop, I think it’s essential to be very specific, yes. Point to the passage on the page, say what the writing craft is, because that kind of feedback, that specific feedback about what’s working, lifts the  and that encourages them. That gives them confidence that shows that they’re competent, and it’s more valuable than saying, hey, I just love the whole thing. It really doesn’t help the writer move forward. Then, as far as invitations, the word I use after we’ve gone over highlights is opportunities. As a developmental editor, I’m more prescriptive—that’s my job. But like you, I always say I’m one reader. I’m offering these thoughts to you as opportunities. But it will be your choice to make because it’s your piece. You’re the writer. And again, I try and give the feedback within the framework of craft. So, you’re giving the writer a map. This line worked great. I’m just wondering if repetition would be an opportunity here, but not telling them how to do it and not write it but try and give them options.

Lisa [32:01]

 Absolutely. I think having some guideposts around what you can do, and how you can do it, is helpful. I love that you start with what’s going well, because writers can learn as much from what’s going well as they can from constructive feedback. A lot of writers say, oh, just tell me what’s wrong. Or sometimes they don’t want you to tell them what’s wrong. They want to know that it’s brilliant, which it’s never one or the other. But learning what you do well, so you can capitalize on it—that’s one of the things about that specificity. When you know, specifically, what went well, you can replicate it, which is more helpful than, oh, I love this. I think the same with the invitations. For me personally, I love it when I offer an invitation or a question or I say, here’s what I’m seeing, does this align with what you’re seeing? And they say to me, no, not that. But what you said made me think about this, and that’s what I’m trying to do. And I’m like, yes, push against the invitation!

Andrea [33:15]

One example is identifying in a piece when things started to heat up and happen when you moved in scene here. I wonder if there’s an opportunity to start the piece here. Start with the positive that the writer can accept and be happy about, like here the craft is working. So, then the suggested opportunity makes more sense.

Lisa [33:31]

Absolutely. I often ask people, especially if I’m doing a workshop, where does it come alive? Because that’s the place with a lot of energy and charge. It’s where we are invested. What a lot of new writers need to understand about writing, and I think more established writers get this, is that there’s a lot of throat-clearing we have to do. Often those first few pages, or first few paragraphs, are necessary for us to write, because they help us get to the point where things come alive, but then in the revision process, you can just lop it off.

Andrea [34:42]

What I always say about beginnings is just begin anywhere, because that’s the beauty of word processing. When I’m writing myself, I keep everything even as I start cutting things out. I just throw it at the bottom of the document. Then as I get through the draft, I can go back, and they might get moved back up. But I don’t lose anything. Cutting words and putting them in the trash is a hard thing to do, so I don’t do it.

Lisa [35:00]

It’s so important to keep that. I save every single draft. I have version one, version two version twenty, because I’ll find the thing happens to me. Something I had in drafts one through three, that didn’t work in an early draft, becomes important again and I needed to have it. I just didn’t know the work it needed to do. So, then I bring it back. Yeah.

Andrea [35:21]

Or for me, sometimes I find that it’s going to come out in a different essay. Those things go into the darling’s folder, and hopefully they have another life.

Lisa [35:35]

I love that you repurpose your darlings. That’s so important because that’s one of the things we really struggle with. I’ve worked so hard on this thing, and I don’t want to get rid of it because of the effort. But you have a place for the effort and a way for it to be resurrected. So, I want to shift gears to the Brevity Blog, because you also work as an editor for the Brevity Blog. What would you like us to know about Brevity Blog essays, which are very specific?

Andrea [36:08]

The number one thing to know about Brevity Blog is it’s a place to discuss issues related to creative nonfiction. That’s the specific focus. That said, topically, we cover a wide range. It could be craft, it could be the writing process, editing, publishing, book launch revision, writing life. So as long as it connects to creative nonfiction, many, many topics are likely a fit. We’re not a journal. But we’re not what the early days of a blog were. I think our blog guidelines do a pretty good job of explaining what we’re looking for. I’m just going to read a couple of sentences. We aim to publish not just blog posts, but essays with a beginning, a middle and an ending, with the arc and movement found in all good essays, which I’ve paraphrased, in which the writer comes to a recognition, a realization and sometimes an epiphany. We look for that throughline and a reader takeaway, that questions, teaches, inspires and/or entertains us, that makes us think, which you and I have just been talking about. So, the idea is that when someone reads the blog, say they read it in the morning, we publish every weekday, that they leave with something that’s going to add to their writing life that day. Yes, we’re all writers, we have different experiences, but they connect in myriad ways. So, they’ve got a takeaway that they can bring forward. That’s a big thing about the blog. I think the way to get familiar, just like any lit mag, is to read it. You can get it, it’s free, you can get it to your inbox each day, or you can go explore the archives. Then one of the things we have in the guidelines that I think is helpful, is we linked to an essay that we, the editors, published, I think, last summer. In that essay, we broke down the things that work in blog essays, and these are the things that don’t work. We have six or seven examples that we linked to that have a real variety of things that are working. We’re absolutely proud of every essay we publish. These are six examples. But I think that can be a helpful resource.

Lisa [38:22]

Yeah, I love how you said read the blog, so you can familiarize yourself with what they are publishing and what they’re looking for. Read what’s already been published, so that you’re not pitching something that has been recently talked about. I think that’s important. The great thing about the Brevity Blog is the word brevity, they are all short. What is the average word count?

Andrea [38: 46]

So, the sweet spot is 850 words, minimum of 500 words, and no more than 1000. But I would say most of the essays fall between 750 and 850 words. We’ll help the writer edit it to achieve that, as well. One other thing about the blog, and this is where we do differ from a journal, and we can’t do this all the time, because we’re all volunteers and we get a lot of submissions. But we will work with writers to get an essay ready for the blog. So, if the essay has potential, if it’s got a through-line, and there looks like there’s a takeaway, but there’s some clarity issues or things could get improved, I’ll go back and forth several times with the writer. I really encourage people to submit because we love to work with writers.

Lisa [39:37]

So here are some things I’m going to say on behalf of Andrea and all the rest of the editorial staff. When you hear maximum of 1000, I want you to think about that sweet spot. Try to get as close to 850 or below as you can, because I think sometimes readers think, oh well the upper end means I can submit something that’s 1000 words and then they’ll help me pare it back. Remember, these people are all volunteers. They do not necessarily have the time, even though Andrea just said we will work with writers, especially if there’s a lot of potential in the piece. So really think about that sweet spot because every journal has a sweet spot. The closer you can get to whatever that sweet spot is, the better your chances are. The other thing I will say is, I love how generous you are, Andrea, and that you are willing to work with writers, especially if there’s potential. But here’s what I want you all not to hear. I can send Andrea a hot mess of things that I think have a point and Andrea will help me find that point. You should make your work the best you can, know the aboutness, know the point. Take your work as far as possible. For you, it should feel complete. There might be some things that need to be edited or fixed. Andrea will find that. Andrea will help you shape it. But I know sometimes writers will hear things like this and they’ll think, oh, I can send early work. Those of you who are not watching this, Andrea just did a good head shake. Okay, so I’m going to let you say something about that, because I want them to hear exactly what you’re saying.

Andrea [41:33]

Yeah, I thank you for qualifying. Like we talked about before, this is where the writers struggle. I see it on the blog. If you submit an early draft, you’ll probably get a more standard response, because we only have the time to clean work up. You need a clear, just like with the guidelines I read, you need a clear takeaway. You need a through-line. That’s what we’re asking you for. So yeah, submit your best and read those six essays that they have linked to and continue to read, because, as you read additional essays that are published, an essay might inspire you to write something else. You might say, oh, my gosh, this makes me think about this other thing, and I’m pretty sure that will work. So that’s another great takeaway. And a really great example that I hope you’ll put into the show notes as well, is Lisa’s most recent publication. You’ve published on the blog, but your most recent essay about your experience at AWP, and it’s got a very catchy title. I encourage everyone to read that. It’s about the lived experience and a writer having a recognition, a realization, and epiphany that was well done.

Lisa [42:38]

Thank you, Andrea. I really appreciate that. I will link that so that people can read it. I really thought about what that takeaway was. It wasn’t just the experience. The situation at AWP was a launching point. I think that’s another way to think about essays. Sometimes that initial situation gets you thinking, oh, this is really juicy. This has energy. Sometimes that’s the launching point, not the destination. That was certainly the case for me.

Andrea [43:21]

One other note on the Brevity Blog is a lot of essays are craft oriented. Brevity, the magazine, is like our big sister. Brevity used to publish craft essays, not an academic craft essays, but like beautifully crafted craft essays by people like Beth Kephart. The craft essay part of Brevity has been folded into the blog for a couple of good reasons. It creates more opportunities for these craft essays to get published. So, writers can keep that in mind. You could be writing about personal experiences in our craft essays, often they do incorporate personal experiences. But if you have a teaching background, or you’ve done a close read on some other piece of writing, and you want to put together a craft essay, we now publish those on the blog as well. We kind of always have, but I’m just saying we’ve rolled over what was on Brevity into the blog.

Lisa [44:07]

So, if you’re a teacher, you should look for craft essays and see what has been explored. I think that post by Lilly Dancyger sounds like a great one. That’s kind of a hybrid. I mean, it’s got all the stuff in it. So that will be great for people to look at. Then there are tons of others on there. What are the best ways for people to connect with you and connect with Brevity if they want to make a submission?

Andrea [45:00]

In the show notes you’ll put the website for Brevity Blog. We don’t use Submittable. So, you just send your submission as an email attachment to brevityblogessays@gmail.com. That’ll be in the guidelines. For me, my byline includes my middle initial. So, I’m Andrea A. Firth. So, my website is andreaafirth.com. Feel free to email me at andreaafirth@gmail.com. So, Google Andrea A. Firth and you’ll find me.


Lisa [45:23]

You’ll also find her on Instagram and Facebook.

Andrea [45:27]

I’m on LinkedIn. I’m not on Twitter or X, sorry, and Diablo Writers Workshop. You can find more about me there.

Lisa [45:27]

Check that out because Diablo Writers has some really great newsletters. So even if you’re not in the area, because you are teaching in the Bay Area, I get the Diablo Writers newsletter, and you always have great resources. So, it’s something you can subscribe to, even if you’re not in the area, you will benefit from it. Well, thank you so much, Andrea, for being on the podcast today. It is so delightful to talk with you as always. I am so grateful for your time and as always, it’s been a pleasure.

Andrea [46:06]

Thank you for the invitation.

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Lisa Cooper Ellison

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