Essay 1:  Personal Essay

“The best essay topics are an itch you need to scratch”

--Bruce Ballenger

This essay requires that you explore something in which you consider yourself an authority (though that doesn’t necessarily mean something you’re perfect at, but it could also be something you know because of where/how you were raised, or something you are interested in enough that you are working to be an “expert” at it).  Remember, as Ballenger describes on p. 94 of The Curious Writer, “the subject of an essay is often commonplace,” so your topic doesn’t need to be something major or dramatic but something you can both describe and make meaning about.  (See all of his guidelines on p. 94, which will be discussed in class as you prepare your piece.) 

In your essay, then, you’ll focus on a narrow slice of your personal experience (think small:  it’s hard to cover a span of years in five pages) and then share the significance of the experience.  Your evidence will come from your experience and making that evidence compelling and interesting to readers. (Examples:  writing about your continuing expertise at cooking and the familial/cultural influences that shaped that expertise, such as gender, a heritage that values cooking, etc., or writing about the place where you come from and how it shapes who you are, etc.)  Remember that the authority in autobiographical writing comes from the care with which you select your material and the richness of the details you choose to present.  The more specific you are, the more your piece becomes universal, as paradoxical as that may seem.  Feel free to try an unexpected or humorous topic.  Think about your in-class writings, Elbow pages, common readings writing, or your writing history as possible starting points.  We’ll read samples of essays together, too. As a writer, then, you have two objectives: 1) to enable readers to enter your experience, to feel what you felt and 2) to convince readers that your experience is strong evidence of the point you wish to make about what you’re an authority on.

Some words of caution:  This is not the kind of writing assignment that can be dashed off in one sitting.  In some ways it’s the most difficult assignment of the semester because it’s seemingly easy:  write about yourself.  It requires that you start with a question or issue you want to explore (or allow a small question to lead to bigger questions), that you come up with a lot of material to work with, and then choose carefully the material you want to present to readers. You must also consider how to incorporate both narrative and reflection. It may take several drafts and a lot of feedback from readers to help you discover and narrow the point you want to make. You may also find that after you begin writing, the point you want to make changes. Rather than how you may have written previous essays where you decide your main point and then find ways to show it, you’ll be inquiring and figuring out what your point is as you draft the piece:  you’ll start from something that you find interesting and move toward your main idea, not the other way around.

Final draft 5-7 pages, typed.

• Brainstorming

• Invention

• Metaphor

• Habitable story

• Structure

• Scene and sequel

• Multi-level meaning

• Reflection

• Format
  
• Peer Workshop