I’m grieving the loss of dictionaries, thick, massive volumes that I used to get lost in. I would open a page and find hundreds of words, all of them demanding my attention, each a miniature world to explore. But now I’ve become a victim of on-line lexicons because they are handier than putting aside my laptop computer and marching into the other room to unload the Oxford from a bookshelf where it resides. (more…)
Foghorns blast through the 7 AM San Francisco overcast. The only woman in the place, I saunter into the longshoreman’s union hall, trying to appear as if I did this every day. A few cigarette-scarred wooden tables offer a place for the men to gather and talk while waiting to be called to work. Billowing clouds of cigarette smoke hang ominously over everyone. 
Like detectives, writers need to be constantly observant, picking up clues from what people are wearing, how they gesture, the words they speak, the way they interact with others. They study people’s facial expressions and what they might suggest about the person, storing away the data in their memory banks. Or they’ll take notes in a writer’s journal that they’ll refer to later. 
Memoir writing blurs the line between truth and imagination in this revealing conversation with Lily Iona MacKenzie. We explore how creative writing techniques shape both fiction narrative and personal stories, as Lily explains her unique approach: “you lie in service of the truth.”
Yesterday, I had to kill time (terrible metaphor) while waiting to hear a friend of mine do a reading of his newly published memoir at a Corte Madera bookstore. So I hung out at Marin County’s Corte Madera Library. 
For years I felt guilty about breaking the heirloom toys my stepfather’s mother had preserved, relics of another era. I can still remember the excitement of lifting each object out of the boxes where they had been stored and bringing them to life again: tiny china dishes with hand-painted flowers; a miniature stagecoach carrying riders and pulled by horses; dolls with porcelain faces and hands, features frozen in smiles, dressed in stylish Victorian gowns; a doll house with elegant furniture and a family. 
Editing writing requires tremendous restraint. I was reminded of this recently when a poem I had submitted to an anthology was accepted providing I approved of the editor’s changes. I’m open to thoughtful revision suggestions—a text can always be improved—but I assume the recommendations will be just that, insightful observations that cause me to re-think my work. In that light, I can re-enter a poem or story and see if any of the ideas resonate enough for me to make changes. Yet since I’m the poem’s creator, I expect to revise it myself and have the last word on its content. 
I’ve been thinking about how loosely we use abstract words like love, happiness, and truth as if they had concrete, observable meaning. I tend to revolt from using love to close my email or other exchanges unless I really feel love for the person I’m corresponding with. It bothers me when people sign their correspondence “love” without considering whether or not the emotion really applies to the recipient. Maybe you feel loving towards someone on most days, but not every day. Isn’t it deceitful to say “love” if you aren’t feeling it at the moment? Wouldn’t such a response seem confusing? It leads the reader to believe that the writer actually has such strong feelings, that somehow we’re part of the writer’s inner circle. Often that isn’t true. 
Being a first-rate writer requires the same kind of training that an architect receives. A typical program includes courses in architectural history and theory, building design, construction methods, professional practice, math, physical sciences, and liberal arts. Writers may not need to study math or the physical sciences, but they do need to give themselves the best liberal arts education they can find, both formal and informal. And like architects, in order to be successful in their field, writers need not only vision and a rich imagination but also a strong foundation. 
Thank you, Zackary Vernon, for taking the time to share your professional writing journey with me and my readers. 
Being part of an on-line writing group for several years has provided many benefits. But with the positives come a few negatives.
Until recently, if I had wanted a restful getaway, I would not have chosen San Francisco or any big city. Getting away meant heading out of town, usually for a coastal inn. I wanted the leisurely pace and ocean views of Mendocino, Pacific Grove, Carmel, or Big Sur. 
Onyx wind chimes shaped like birds hang outside my bedroom. Each time a breeze stirs them, their music reminds me of the first trip I took to Mexico. While there, I was hoping to discover a part of the country that photographs can’t capture—the spirit of the place. Lawrence Durrell claims that landscape communicates this aspect. He says, “All landscapes ask the same question in the same whisper, ‘I am watching you—are you watching yourself in me’?” 
I recently reread Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady and have mixed feelings about the era and the characters. It’s difficult to read about Victorian morés from a 21st Century perspective. Not only do I need lenses that will give me a bi-cultural perspective, but I also feel squashed between a culture clash. Not long after I finished with Portrait, I read a review of A. M. Homes’ book May We Be Forgiven in The New York Review of Books. One of her main characters says, 
I’m remembering a fascinating article I read in the New York Review of Books some time ago about Joseph Cornell. In many ways, he feels like my spiritual father. I love his quirkiness, his living on the periphery, his unique vision. Reading about him makes me want to go out and haunt junk shops for interesting memorabilia to make things with, to start a collection that I can draw from. I had an image of turning an old radio into a kind of Cornell box. Guest Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop reveals the pitfalls of Hybrid Publishing
September 29, 2025
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Jane Friedman, a publishing industry expert upon whom I rely for trustworthy information recently updated her very helpful guide to hybrid publishing. For anyone considering this publishing route, be sure to read this guide carefully as she outlines many of the warning signs when you consider signing with a hybrid publisher. I also recommend this list from ALLI, which analyzes the companies and individuals eager to help writers in all sorts of ways from editing to publishing to publicizing. This article in Publishers Weekly details the more successful hybrid publishers and their payment models. And finally, I always encourage writers to sign up for the regular emails from Authors Publish. Here is an article on what the author, Emily Harstone, calls the three kinds of publishing. To be clear, she does not distinguish between vanity and hybrid publishing.But as a fiction writer, I always believe that “the devil is in the details” and so let me tell you the story of one writer’s experience with a hybrid publisher.
Geoffrey Douglas is an accomplished journalist and memoirist. You can sign up for his Substack newsletter, 5000 Bylines Later here. He modestly describes himself as “author and journalist, with six books and 100 or so magazine pieces behind me–about politics, people, gambling, migrants, murder, a town on fire, etc.” The five books he wrote before his current novel Love in a Dark Place, were all traditionally published, well-reviewed and one was turned into a movie. This novel certainly deserves to be. Kirkus Reviews calls it “…a moving, unflinching novel about human depravity, and the way love can coexist in its menacing presence… emotionally hard-hitting, with impressive psychological depth.”
However, when Geoffrey tried to interest an agent in this novel based on his real-life experiences in Atlantic City during the 1980’s, the heyday of corruption and criminality, he couldn’t get anybody to sign him on. Those who did take a look at the manuscript were unnerved by a white male author “daring” (irony all mine) to include a prostitute and a black boxer as two of the main characters, both seen through the eyes of the protagonist. (I could go off on a tangent about the politically correct atmosphere in publishing these days when writers are pushed to stay within their very narrow lanes and only write what they know personally. What happened to imagination? But I digress.) With the big 5 (as the traditional publishing companies are known) only reading manuscripts from agented writers, the doors to publishing the old-fashioned way are slamming shut. This has pushed writers like Geoffrey to seek other ways to get his work out to a wider audience and there are a multitude of companies eager to help writers frustrated with the current system. Some of these are reputable, others not so much. (Once again see the ALLI guide above.)
So, when I asked Geoffrey about his experience with a hybrid publisher, he gave me this overall view of Greenleaf, the company he worked with.
For me, there were two sides to the coin. On the one hand, Greenleaf is a solid, very professional publisher. The editing, design and production of my book were all fabulous: professional, collaborative and endlessly helpful–more so than anything I ever experienced with the mainstream guys who published me before. And the final product is as fine as anything I could’ve hoped for.
The flip side: Although everyone I dealt with was very straightforward, and there was no dissembling as such, the system itself seems almost designed to obfuscate. The numbers you see on the front end are nothing like the final reality. You’re given a set of prices and a menu of options, most of which seem reasonable enough–but no mention is made initially of printing, warehouse storage, delivery to bookstores or a number of smaller services–so, probably like many other authors, I was blindsided by a lot of it. Some of their promotional options don’t seem worth the cost; and the print-run they recommended was far greater than what’s been sold so far or what I now anticipate. But because the number was more or less in line with my past experience with traditional publishers, and because it was their “professional recommendation,” I took the advice, and am now stuck with a monthly storage bill for more than 2,000 books—not to mention the original printing costs.
So my verdict is mixed. Great service, not so great communication. The system, as designed, is almost certain to include some pretty big potholes, even for the most cautious of us. It’s a textbook case of Buyer Beware. I didn’t beware nearly well enough, so that’s on me.
And here’s an assessment of Greenleaf by ALLI (Alliance of Independent Authors) which seems in line with Geoffrey’s experience.
High pressure sales and staggeringly high fees for add-on services tarnish an otherwise excellent service.
These days with the proliferation of pitfalls for writers and the come-ons from AI generated “publicists and editors” as I wrote about recently, it’s sadly become a game of “gotcha!”
I now feel compelled to add a note at the end of this post letting my readers know that this newsletter is and always will be “human authored.”
Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop (www.elizabethwinthropalsop.com) is the author of over 50 works of fiction for adults and children under the pen name Elizabeth Winthrop. These include the award-winning fantasy series, The Castle in the Attic and The Battle for the Castle as well as the short story, The Golden Darters, read on the nationwide radio program, Selected Shorts, and included in Best American Short Story anthology, and Island Justice and In My Mother’s House, two novels now available as eBooks. She is the daughter of the acclaimed journalist, Stewart Alsop. Daughter of Spies: Wartime Secrets, Family Lies, a family history about her parents’ love affair during World War II and their marriage lived in the spotlight of Washington during the 1950s was published by Regal House, October 25, 2022.
Follow her newsletters on Substack.
Since 2015, I’ve published four novels, one memoir, and two poetry collections. I tell you this, dear readers and writers, because for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been blasted by emails that are clearly AI generated. Individuals (or maybe robots) want to sell me their marketing services. Some offer access to major nationwide book clubs whose readers will gobble up my narratives. Others offer reviewers that will read and review my work in exchange for a “tip.” I’ve also had one who offered a complete marketing plan for generating more readers. 
Writing has become such a part of my day that if I don’t get to it, I’m constantly distracted, as if I have a lover I’m thinking about. It’s like a siren’s call, pulling me away. My husband notices it. He comments on me seeming drifty. He’s right. I’m not fully there. As happened tonight. 
I’m thinking today of timing—how important it is to success. Timing and perseverance: the two go together. I’m also noticing the seasonal aspect of creativity, how cyclic it is. That too is hard to grasp. I want it 
There were many standout messages in a webinar I attended this week by bestselling author Janet Fitch, hosted by Memoir Nation (