Story Street Writers
Michele Alouf is a founding member of Story Street Writers and holds an ALM in Creative Writing and Literature from Harvard. When she’s not working on her first novel, What Lies in Orange Skies, she can be found in her kitchen trying to cook, read, and balance in tree pose without getting burned. Her work is published in New World Writing Quarterly, Vestal Review, Gulf Stream Magazine, Bridge Eight, Drunk Monkeys, and other publications. Michele previously owned a yoga business and wrote for a local magazine. She has two grown children and lives in Richmond, Virginia with her husband, John, and her mini Goldendoodle, Coco "Mo."
by Michele Alouf
Some of my writing friends and I have formed a weekly “therapy” group where we discuss our accomplishments (or lack thereof) during the previous week, craft strategies, creative struggles, and goals for the week ahead. A recurring theme is productivity—how we get stuck, deal with distractions, keep motivated, stay organized, and find ways to write forward.…
In July, my fellow Story Street Writer, Margaret Speck Ogawa, wrote the article, “Get Inspired and Find Your People: Attend a Writers Conference.” After reading about her enriching experiences at events across the country, I decided to try a conference but stay in my hometown of Richmond, Virginia.…
When my husband was in his final semester of graduate school, his roommate, Steve, was unsuccessfully searching for a job. At a time when rejections were more formal and arrived on embossed letterhead, Steve decided to decorate his apartment with a collage of dismissals, near misses, and best wishes.…
Coco Chanel famously said, “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off.” Meant to curtail over-accessorizing, her fashion advice, a mantra for simplicity and elegance, can, in many ways, be applied to writing. From the sentence level to complete manuscripts, writers are encouraged to strive for concision—replacing a dull string of words with one perfect pearl or an awkward stitching between paragraphs with a seamless transition.…
When I was a child, seesaws were fun until they weren’t. When I could find balance and unity with a trustworthy friend on the opposite side, there was harmony, levity, and joy. When I exerted effort, I pushed off into the sky.…
When my son, Nick, was in high school, his English teacher asked the class to write a brief essay about their summer vacations. Reading aloud, one of Nick’s friends ended his paper with, “I had a lot of fun.” His teacher asked the student if he could think of a better word or phrase to express “a lot.”…
Recently, my father, reading a piece of my short fiction, questioned my proclivity for unresolved, unsettling, and often sad endings. He requested that I tie things up with a nice bow and let someone in my next story live happily ever after.…
“Fairytales can come true,” Frank Sinatra croons, then promises, “it can happen to you,” but does it? An author sets up a table piled with copies of her latest novel and assembles rows of chairs for the scads of people surely lining up outside the bookstore to hear her read and get her well-practiced “scrawl” on crisp title pages.…
Hanging out on “Story Street,” my writing compadres and I were bemoaning writer’s block and how to dodge, nudge, or obliterate it. For me, short of divine intervention, the only cure is going for a long drive and listening to music.…
More than a few years ago, when mobile technology didn’t interfere with healthy posture and relationships, my mom regularly took me shopping on Saturday afternoons. Most of the time, we weren’t in dire need of anything in particular (except reliable air conditioning—it was Florida—and Chick-fil-A sandwiches), but we’d wander around the mall people watching, gagging from one-too-many perfume testers, and trying mystery meat samples at a weird German deli next to the Gap.…