Okay - no more cable news, no more three newspapers every morning, no more checking into Huffington Post, Google News et al. Back to work. And in this spirit I'm posting the first step from my article for the Writer Magazine.
Step One:
The milestones of your life can be subjects for personal essays – marriage, divorce, the death of a beloved pet, moving to a new town, having a baby, a child going off to college. Also smaller subjects, the trials and trivia of daily life – a messy desk, finding parking places, an attempt to keep up with e-mail. (The word essay comes from the French word essai, meaning “a trial or attempt”.)
Whoever you are and whatever the circumstances of your life, you have a wealth of material to draw on for your personal essay. Ask yourself what recent events or struggles, trivial or traumatic, have caused you to change in small ways or large. What has happened in your life to make you question old beliefs and habits? Or to suddenly appreciate and illuminate your beliefs?
I recently signed a contract to write an essay for an anthology and the subject was whether I had followed through on dreams I’d had as a kid, or did my life veer off into surprising new directions? Since I didn’t come up with this subject, I had no idea what I was going to write or how to write it. Finally I did what I always tell my students to do: I just got something down on paper. A memory of dancing in front of a Christmas tree, the summer I gave a play in my backyard. It was messy writing, flat and kind of dumb; I had no idea where it would lead. But I kept writing and gradually an essay began to take shape and what I was writing didn’t seem quite so dumb.
This is the first step: simply begin.
Great post. Do you have any advice for us on how to locate -- and pitch our essays to -- anthologies?
Posted by: Cindy La Ferle | November 13, 2008 at 05:01 AM
awesome advice and something I've been getting frequently: just begin. You never know where that essai will take you! Thanks!
Posted by: Kristi Tencarre | November 13, 2008 at 01:27 PM
This is off-topic, so please forgive me. Last night I finished reading Driving With Dead People. I enjoyed it so much I even read the acknowledgments, not wanting it to end. And on page 326 I read, "Barbara Abercrombie, friend, teacher, and grooviest of humans . . ."
Oh, how I envied (Envy is a sin I avoid!) Monica Holloway.
Before I've aged too much, I will save my ducats and take workshops with a handful of writers. Two of them are Barbara Abercrombie and Abigail Thomas.
See you in the future!
Posted by: Limner | November 13, 2008 at 01:54 PM
Cindi - Good question - but not sure how to answer it. Usually we hear of anthologies through writer friends asking for contributions - Next time I hear of something I'll post it.
Kristi - Thanks for the comment. Yeah, just begin is the best advice I have to give.
Limner - So glad to hear you loved Monica's wonderful book! And thanks so much for putting me in the rarified company of Abigail Thomas. I'm a great fan of hers. And hope to see you in the future.
Posted by: Barbara | November 13, 2008 at 08:26 PM