"Sing and do not stop. March and do not stop. Work and do not stop. Write your story across the sky and don't despair because despair is the most powerful weapon of the dominant." ~ Luis Alberto Urrea / @urrealism.bsky.social
Brevity / Dinty W. Moore
@dintywmoore.bsky.social
Editor of Brevity, a small magazine with big ambitions. Author of various books. Often can't decide if I am posting as myself or as the magazine.
“The breathing of the wise person comes from their heels, while most people breathe only from their throats.” ~ Zhuangzi
"Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little." ~ Tom Stoppard
"All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance." — Martin Luther King, Jr.
“I write so much because my cat sits on my lap. She purrs so I don’t want to get up. She’s so much more calming than my husband.” ~ @joycecaroloates.bsky.social
"Don't be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen." ~ George Saunders
Two days away: Why uncertainty is not just okay, but a secret power adding depth to your Memoir. With prompts and nudges. I'd love if you could join us on Friday. @crafttalks.bsky.social writingcraft.com/event/curios...
WEBINAR | Power Your Memoir with Mystery: How Curiosity Fuels Craft - Craft Talks
The fuel that runs the engine of all good writing is our uncertainty…and the true curiosity of the writer.
writingcraft.com
The Brevity Blog team, is pleased to be recognized once again, with thanks to @writersdigest.bsky.social
I’m still learning what it is about the past that I want to write. I don’t worry about it. It will emerge. It will insist on being told. ~ Frank McCourt
"Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup." ~ Wendell Berry
See how successful memoir writers handle the hard questions, the parts of the story that do not add up easily, the possibly unanswerable. With prompts and nudges :-) I would love for you to join me. writingcraft.com/event/curios...
WEBINAR | Power Your Memoir with Mystery: How Curiosity Fuels Craft - Craft Talks
The fuel that runs the engine of all good writing is our uncertainty…and the true curiosity of the writer.
writingcraft.com
"Change, when it comes, cracks everything open." ~ Dorothy Allison
"Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible." ~ Doris Lessing
"Fundamentally, all writing is about the same thing; it’s about dying, about the brief flicker of time we have here, and the frustration that it creates." ~ Mordecai Richler
Wondering what I will learn next, what my book might reveal to me about my own life and unanswered questions, is what pulls me again and again back to the table when the writing started to founder. brevity.wordpress.com/2026/08/26/c...
Curiosity Didn’t Kill the Cat
And It Is the Memoirist’s Best Friend By Dinty W. Moore The phrase about curiosity killing the cat goes back to Shakespeare, as do so many enduring phrases, but to be honest it rings false. I…
brevity.wordpress.com
“Find out who you are and do it on purpose.” ~ Dolly Parton
"I think that one’s art is a growth inside one. I do not think one can explain growth. It is silent and subtle. One does not keep digging up a plant to see how it grows." ~ Emily Carr
Memoir writers are usually encouraged to write emotion after we've processed it. But when is that? And doesn't writing sometimes get us through? @dianezinna.bsky.social @dintywmoore.bsky.social brevity.wordpress.com/2026/08/24/l... #writingcommunity #memoir #writinglife
A Doorway to Someplace Unexpected: Diane Zinna’s Letting Grief Speak
“Sometimes writing is how we survive an experience.” ~ Diane Zinna Version 1.0.0 To mark National Grief Awareness Month, Brevity Blog editor Dinty W. Moore interviews Diane Zinna on her…
brevity.wordpress.com
“Sometimes writing is how we survive an experience.” @dianezinna.bsky.social brevity.wordpress.com/2026/08/24/l...
A Doorway to Someplace Unexpected: Diane Zinna’s Letting Grief Speak
“Sometimes writing is how we survive an experience.” ~ Diane Zinna Version 1.0.0 To mark National Grief Awareness Month, Brevity Blog editor Dinty W. Moore interviews Diane Zinna on her…
brevity.wordpress.com
"I’d rather fail magnificently while trying than not even try at all. Every work of art, every fresh idea that nourishes the community is littered with what are called failures." —Joy Harjo
“I don't know what it's like inside you and you don't know what it's like inside me. A great book allows me to leap over that wall..." ~ David Foster Wallace
A Note to My Fellow Oldsters: As someone who has done standing yoga for about thirty years, off and on, I have assiduously avoided chair yoga, thinking it a rinky-dink haven for the stiff and lazy. Yesterday, I popped onto a chair for 45 minutes of yoga poses and learned a lesson...
“I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.” ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer
"Look at everything. Don’t close your eyes to the world around you. Look and become curious and interested in what there is to see." ~ John Cage
"Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breathe. ... Oh my God, it’s breathing, you realize. Maybe it’s even thinking. What in hell’s name do I do next?" ~ Stephen King / @stephenking.bsky.social
"The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize." ~ Robert Hughes
"Memoirs are history. They are ethnological evidence. They are us. And frankly, we matter. Each of us." ~ Cat Pleska
"Write, just write. Write what you remember, what's happening now, what you predict will happen. Write in any form: fiction, nonfiction, autofiction, poetry, drama, screenplay, memoir, journal, scraps and aphorisms. Publish or not. Somebody has to keep culture alive." ~ @janetburroway.bsky.social
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. —John Muir
"Another writer once asked me, 'Don’t you hate it when people tell you they got your book from the library instead of buying it?' I had to voice an emphatic NO. I’ve had a library card since I was eight." ~ Beth Ann Fennelly
