The very nicest thing about being a writer is also the hardest to manage: the deluge of ideas and inspirations that comes along when I relax and pay attention to the world around me for a little bit

“I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed...” ~ Mary Oliver

"I read purely because I want to. It expands me and fuels my writing, but I don’t keep measures of how many words produced, how many minutes butt-in-chair. All that record-keeping feels like a fritter of time better spent writing." ~ Ellen Notbohm brevity.wordpress.com/2024/08/30/rea…

Hey Normals! We’re so eager to see your work, we’ve opened submissions early! Accepting submissions through Oct. 1st. bit.ly/3yZPZgQ #fiction #creativenonfiction #poetry #multimedia

Thrilled to once again open our submissions portal. Send us your freshest, most vivid, "not one word wasted" flash nonfiction. We love distinctive voice and carefully-crafted language. brevitymag.com

"Any prompt may trigger distressful or traumatic memories. If you go there, it may hurt. If you go there, it may help. It’s a coin toss, really. Consider this your warning." ~ Jennifer Leigh Selig brevity.wordpress.com/2024/09/02/pro…

“It was working men and women who made the 20th century the American century. It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today.” — Barack Obama

“The desire of monks and mystics is not unlike that of artists: to perceive the extraordinary within the ordinary by changing not the world but the eyes that look… To form the intention of new awareness is already to transform and be transformed.” ~ Jane Hirshfield

"Like Emeril’s sauce, my piece needed to start with the right mix of ingredients: frenzy, loss, humor, reflection, reckoning. Only then could I distill my story to its syrupy essence, each round of edits concentrating the flavor more." ~ Abby Alten Schwartz brevity.wordpress.com/2024/09/03/dis…

Send us something with heart. kenyonreview.org/submit/

If you're into forms of the essay: the paragraph or the one sentence or the triptych (one of the best I've read) or a mode like the 2nd person direct address—what an issue. Looking forward to Dinty W. Moore's Fall 2024 coming mid-September. brevitymag.com/category/curre…

Writing is pretty easy for me. After coke, wine, pistachios... gummy bears, hours of deep self-hatred on other people's author/faculty sites, tidying the house, reading much better writers, and overcoming desire to vomit and weep, the writing just flows! ~ Irina Dumitrescu

"Grief has its own timeline. And if we are called to write it... it’s important to know that the only path towards acceptance, of both kinds, is time." ~ Jenn Hall Hippocampus Magazine & Books brevity.wordpress.com/2024/09/04/our…

"I wrote slanted and blurry and freehand, words spilling into the margins of notebooks. I wrote godless prayers and useless eulogies, no funeral to be held as Covid raged." -Jenn Hall in "Rejections & Acceptance: On Taking Time to Write About Our Grief" brevity.wordpress.com/2024/09/04/our…

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. ~ Martha Graham

"One day you’re going to publish a book and it would be nice to tell people about it all at once, but what the heck do you do to get started? How do you grow your audience, whoever that’s supposed to be?" ~ Allison K Williams brevity.wordpress.com/2024/09/05/wri…

"Don’t overcome your fear of writing your truth in spite of potential fallout. Keep that fear, because you need it." ~ Sarah Einstein

“I didn’t need to travel far to discover my story—it was stored safely inside my body. I held the key to this vast, private, and exclusive archive—I just needed to open the door.” ~ Nina B Lichtenstein brevity.wordpress.com/2024/09/06/wri…

HAPPY #FlashFriday 📸 This week’s favorite piece is “Holy” written by lorijakiela and published in Dinty W. Moore. The storytelling of such a mundane task juxtaposed with such a complex problem makes for a compelling read this weekend! brevitymag.com/nonfiction/hol…

Submit your haiku for Tricycles' September's Haiku Challenge! Submit as many haiku as you wish including the words “(Autumn) Moon.” Your poems must be written in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, respectively, and should focus on a single moment happening now. Submit