ENERGY & WRITING: Part One
All your burning questions about writing with energy, answered.
Welcome back to Keep Writing, where we’re so delighted to see you again. If you’re new here, warm welcomes to you: Pluck a loaf of soda bread from the towering stack on the table and tear into it as you wander through our archives.
In 2017, I interviewed The Best American Short Stories series editor Heidi Pitlor and asked what advice she had for writers. One of her answers has stuck with me ever since:
“Write with energy. I think energy is one of those things we don’t talk about enough, and it’s so important for the reader. You can feel a writer’s energy on the page.”
I agreed then. I agree now. And yet, eight years later, I still don’t think we talk about a writer’s energy enough. So this month, I’ve created a little list of FAQ to answer all your burning questions about how to write with energy.
What exactly do you mean by energy?
In my mind, we’re talking about two things: One is the energy a work has within it, humming beneath the sentences like a crackling undercurrent. The other is the energy a writer gives off for readers, be it positive or negative, excitable or soothing, nervous or confident. The two work in harmony to create an overall effect as we read.
Why is it so important?
Energy is infectious. It translates to the reader. It is the effect you will have on the reader, determining whether you thrill them or calm them or put them to sleep. These are the symptoms of reading a work; your energy is the cause.
How is energy different from pacing?
Pacing is how a writer moves through time in a given narrative; energy is how they move in a narrative, period.
Choosing to linger on one moment and fast-forward through another shapes a work’s pacing. You are controlling how fast or how slowly the story unfolds for the reader.
Now, while you can certainly have a fast-paced energy or a slower, calmer one, your energy doesn’t necessarily have to match your story’s pacing. You could write a frenetic piece that is just 11 paragraphs of you shopping for nondairy yogurt, for example, or a droning piece about an explosive seven-person gunfight.
How is a writer’s energy different from their voice?
Voice is how a story “sounds,” while energy is how a story “feels”—or, perhaps more accurately, how a storyteller makes us feel. The two are distinctly related in that they should feel unique to the writer and also in that they are endlessly subjective. A voice and energy that one reader finds captivating may be another reader’s nightmare. They are the things that make you you, and if they’re not everyone’s cup of tea, that’s OK. (It’s good, in fact—better to be 10 people’s absolute favorite thing in the world than 100 people’s fifth-choice ranking, you know?)
Will my writing energy match my IRL energy?
Just like with a writer’s voice, it’s likely that the two will share some similarities. But that’s not always the case: Someone may be terribly shy in real life and terrifically bold on the page. And it’s fitting to tailor an energy to the piece you’re trying to tell. If you’re trying to write an incendiary op-ed and your energy reads like a limp, sodden handshake, you’ll have a great difficulty starting a fire in your readers, for example.
How is energy created on the page?
Truthfully, it’s a great many things adding up to a cohesive whole: Syntax, sentence structuring, pacing, tone, voice, intent…
All of this sounds exhausting, as if the writer is a puppet master tugging on two dozen strings every time they write a sentence. The truth is much simpler, however: Your energy is informed by the choices you make, and the choices you make are informed by your innate energy.
To return to the op-ed example, if you are writing about something that makes you angry, you will naturally reach for words that are sharper, more pointed, more incendiary. You will quickly spell out the reasons you are enraged. You will not waste time on flowery exposition. You will not hem and haw. Your anger informs the choices you make, and those choices will translate for the reader.
When we revise, we should pay even more attention to the choices that invoke our energy. Is a certain word sharper than another? Can this sentence be tightened so our point is clearer? How can we harness the innate energy already within a piece and make it more efficient, clear, and infectious?
How can I learn more about the energy my work has?
Ah, it’s blissfully simple. Just ask anyone kind enough to read your work: What energy does this piece give off? Did it have any energy, period? How did this piece make you feel?
Listen intently and adjust accordingly. Just like voice, it may take some practice and honing to translate efficiently on the page, but your energy is something that’s uniquely, spectacularly yours. Treasure it accordingly.
We’re not finished with energy just yet, sports fans: Next month we’ll tackle how to find the energy to write in an exhausting world.
Until then—
Keep writing,
Nicki
April 2025 Calls for Submissions
Spotlight: The Thalweg: “Southwestern Deserts” submissions
The Massachusetts Review: Submissions from incarcerated writers and their families
Half Mystic Journal: Submissions “evoking sorrowful love and ecstatic, amorous yearning”
Spotlight Pick
The Thalweg: “Southwestern Deserts” submissions
The Thalweg, a journal that seeks “printable ways you metabolize your experience within wild landscapes,” is looking for work on the deserts of the American Southwest. Prose, poems, and “your weirdest stuff” (maps, sheet music, high concept visual poems, etc.) are all welcome. $5 submission fee, but it can be waived by emailing the journal. Payment is $100.
Deadline: April 16
Libre: Submissions on mental health in cinema
Libre, “a Southern literature and arts magazine bent on brain pain & reexamining what it means to scavenge for agency in liminal states of illness,” is seeking submissions for its upcoming third issue, which will be centered around cinema. “Issue Three wants to criticize, deconstruct, pay homage to, and place film at the center of the conversation around mental health and media. You’re welcome to pull from character archetypes, but we want to see transformation bloom from the borrowed comparison. History, theory, and gossip are suitable when placed in the correct context. We crave the well-wrought, foot-noted critical essay if you have the time and resources. Odes are fine; rewrites are always a chancy business, but give it a try if you’re feeling up to dueling with the liminality of transposed scene and altered dialogue,” editors write. Send fiction or nonfiction under 1500 words or up to five poems. Payment: $30.
Deadline: April 1
The Massachusetts Review: Submissions from incarcerated writers and their families
“In this special issue, the Massachusetts Review intends to extend the definition of families and broaden the portrait of lives impacted by our justice system to include that most basic unit of our society, the family. We are interested in traditional families but also in alternative forms of caretaking, parenting, and kinship that have a long history in queer and/or BIPOC communities,” editors explain. Send no more than 7,000 words of prose or 6 poems. Submissions are accepted via email or standard mail. Payment is $300.
Deadline: April 4
Passager: Poetry from writers over 50
Passager’s annual poetry contest for writers over age 50 is in full swing. Submit up to 5 poems (40 lines max for each) for a chance to win $1,000 and publication in a future issue. Honorable mentions will also be published in the same issue. The reading fee is $20 and includes a 1-year subscription to Passager. Authors must be age 50 or older by September 1, 2025, in order to be eligible.
Deadline: April 15
Half Mystic Journal: Submissions “evoking sorrowful love and ecstatic, amorous yearning”
The theme for Half Mystic Journal’s Opus II, Issue II is “sevdah, a genre of Turkish and Bosnian folk music evoking sorrowful love and ecstatic, amorous yearning—from the Arabic sawda, meaning ‘black bile,’ or a melancholy state of longing.” The call for submissions is too fantastic to not include in full here: “For our twelfth issue, we’re looking for violin solos, velvet on bare skin, half lights, broken odes, empty airport terminals, redamancy, zinnias at the edge of wilting, damask curtains, clipped swans’ wings, inosculation, heroic crowns, the memory of a late-night lake with a long-gone lover, when the sky and water turned the same colour and met at the edge of the world. Desire is holy and heavy as the still before the train comes. Moor us in the unquenchable. We want a begging to believe in.” Send up to five pieces up to 3,000 words each. Poetry, prose, and hybrid work is all fair game.
Deadline: April 28
Harbor Review: “(Sub)liminal” poems
Harbor Review’s upcoming summer issue has a theme of “(Sub)liminal,” intending to “explore the hidden layers of thought and emotion that shape our perceptions and experiences.” Send one to three poems. Regular submissions are free, and expedited submissions (with a response time of 10 days) are $8; all fees are waived for BIPOC writers. Payment is $10 per published poem.
Deadline: April 30
Making Waves: Homer’s Oddities” submissions
“Odysseus’ journey took him to strange new places, encountering the bizarre and unusual, and that’s what we are looking for. Whether you draw inspiration from Homer’s epic poem or your own imagination, we want to see it,” Making Waves editors explain. The journal’s focus is on poetry, but short fiction and nonfiction will also be considered. $3 fee for online submissions only; mailed submissions are free.
Deadline: April 30
Thanks for this advice. It is timely since I am into my edit for my next novel. I can see how I need to put more energy into my words.