What thoughts or practices can we share with each other about the writing process, writing opportunities, or writing resources?

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Jennifer Graf Groneberg

Here are some random thoughts about writing personal essays:

Read lots of personal essays.

Think about an experience or cluster of experiences that have been very powerful for you.

Do lots of freewriting where you dump your descriptions of those experiences, plus your thoughts and feelings about them, onto paper (or keyboard, as the case may be).

Ask yourself, "what did this mean for me?" This is the hardest part--finding a central idea to build your essay around. I don't usually know what I'm trying to say until I've written several drafts of an essay.

After the first stage of freewriting, think about your audience--who do you want to write for? This will influence what you say and how you say it. Select the parts of your freewriting that best communicate your meaning, keeping your audience in mind.

Look for ways to structure these pieces. You can place them chronologically, or start in the middle and later flashback to the beginning, or even start at the end and flashback to the rest of the story. You could try structures such as a letter or a journal entry. Don't be afraid to experiment.

Once you have your rough ideas placed in a rough structure, start refining. Think of your story as a journey you're taking your reader on--lead them through step by step. Start with something engaging--a bit of dialogue, an image, a statement/question. You want to hook readers into taking this journey with you. Smooth out and polish the freewritten paragraphs, adding and deleting text as necessary. Add transitions that link your paragraphs, as needed. End with something memorable--again, an image or a statement or even a few lines of dialogue.

Almost every early draft of an essay can be improved by cutting the beginning and the ending paragraphs. We tend to take too long "warming up" and "cooling off". Jump right in, then jump right out.

Include real-life scenes in your essay. Don't just tell us what happened to you--show us. Use lots of descriptive language--colors, sounds, smells, facial expressions and posture, scenery, objects in the room, etc etc. Consider including dialogue. Draw your reader into the moment with you.

In sum: Think of your essay as an apple tree. It needs a trunk (a main idea). It needs branches (parts of the external story that illustrate your idea)--each should link back to the trunk. It needs leaves (your inner experience--how you felt during these parts of the story). And it needs fruit (descriptive details and imagery).

A tree gets bushy as it grows, then it is pruned into a pleasing shape. Likewise, you have to do a lot of writing to figure out what you're trying to say, then cut out what doesn't need to be there. You might save only a sentence or two out of a whole paragraph. You might trash entire paragraphs. That's okay! It's all part of the process.

Once you've made your essay the best you can make it, get a friend to help you revise it. Revision is essential! I self-revise a half-dozen times before people read my stuff, and then I revise some more

Yes, it's painful, but it's worth it. It's incredible to finish an essay and realize you've effectively communicated a part of yourself.

Okay, that's enough rambling for now!

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Kathryn Lynard Soper

mother of Thomas (DS) 10/2005
Sam - 2003
Matt - 2001
Christine - 1999
Andrew - 1997
Ben - 1994
Elizabeth - 1993

Excellent points, Kathy, all of them!

And I would add that in one of my writing classes, a prof. talked about the meaning of the word "essay," and how it comes from the French, and means roughly, "to walk around." The prof. explained that often, a good essay takes a figurative walk around an idea, or a particular action, and by taking that walk, we come to see it from all sides.

I might not be explaining this very well but I always liked the idea of it...that writing was going to take you somewhere, to a place of clarity and understanding (and should take the reader there too!)

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Jennifer Graf Groneberg