Hi Harrison. Thanks! And folks--please go to this link and read H's essay--it's great.
1. Wow, you write fast! Loved the flash essay. And, I love Banksy too--saw an exhibit of his work in SF a couple years ago.
2. Sarah Moss will love that you gave a shout to and linked her essay so others can read. Nice way to boost another writer--we'll be talking abut literary citizenship in lesson 8. This is a great example, thanks.
3. Kudos to your mom to take you on that 370 mile train trip.
Hi Harrison. I don't see Sarah on Substack--but if you find her, let me know. She's English, I believe, and an academic. She's been faculty at the University of Glasgow and may still be there. But I don't have an email address or personal website for her.
Apr 1Liked by Andrea A. Firth, Benjamin Davis, Kailey Brennan DelloRusso
Wonderful idea this! Love your examples too. The Sarah Moss one inspired my own 3-paragraph essay about what happened when me and my mum tried sneaking into a Banksy show: https://www.thenewworkday.com/p/dismaland
Harrison, I love the way this essay wrongfooted me in the same way Banksy wrongfooted all of you--did not see the end coming at all. Also, your mom sounds like a winner.
Apr 1Liked by Andrea A. Firth, Benjamin Davis, Kailey Brennan DelloRusso
Swerve is an entrancing piece of writing, almost hypnotic, largely because of her repeated apologies. It’s amazing Miller pulls that off while also using such concrete details and harsh words from the “You” she’s writing to. (By the way, I assume the You is a man, although I don't think she says.) And the ending expands the beginning: she’s sorry (now she’s apologizing to herself) that she didn’t get out of the relationship sooner. I also had a darker thought, connecting “not getting out of the way” to that ominous wood thumping earlier. It’s not a stretch to think that verbal abuse could turn physical, although she doesn’t spell that out.
Hi Lorri. These are all great observations. Yes the repetition is hypnotic. It's compounding. Repetition, as craft, can be used in many ways. And you'll note that the second paragraph is a single sentence--the apologies layered on and on. I call this a freight train sentence. And yes the switch in perspective with who she is apologizing to at the close--another great observation you make! And what more could have happened here? Miller draws the reader into the story with what she doesn't say :-) Thanks for sharing. Good insights for us all.
Apr 1Liked by Andrea A. Firth, Benjamin Davis, Kailey Brennan DelloRusso
One thing I noticed about the three essays: every one of them included a line or two that stopped me cold.
1. The Sloth: "That sloth is as slow as grief." It captured exactly how I've experienced grief, and in 7 words it tied the entire essay together. Wow.
2. Swerve: the "fix"/"you hadn't fixed"/"break"/"brake light" business you already mentioned. I almost missed this whole bit the first time round.
2. Generation Gap: that last phrase--"my son, who was only that month taller than me"--is incredible, because she sure as hell is not (or not just) talking about height. The line that really got me, though, is in the first paragraph: "I’d been dubious about his company at first." The antecedent to "his" isn't immediately clear--the 12-year-old son or the husband--but I wonder if that's intentional: Sarah Moss wanted us to convey that both were true in one tiny sentence. I don't know, am I over the top here?
If the rest of your assigned essays are this good, Andrea, holy cow, this is going to be fun.
1. Yes the sloth is a metaphor. And the sentence you point to is stellar. This is what good personal essay does--it connects the personal experience to the universal (grief). Yes her grief feels like your grief. The essay's aboutness connects.
2.Yes, yes yes!!!
3. I agree the placement of the last metaphorical phrase is great craft. I hadn't thought about "his" in the fourth sentence as having a double meaning, husband and son. But no you are not over the top. Again good essay draws the reader into the story--and especially at this flash length, there is more room for the reader to step in and wonder or conclude about what isn't said due to the spareness of word count. We all read and interpret it our own way.
The best part for me in developing a course is choosing the readings. More fun to come.
- 'Swerve': I feel there is a change of how the author sees herself from one paragraph to another. In the first one she sounds scared and making herself little and in the second she seems more aware of the relationship and her place in it. It reflects the evolution the relationship had.
- 'Generation gap': I love how the author describes what Shakespeare was doing in particular for her son - giving him words and images that weren't available any other way for him and his gender.
- 'The Sloth': I love how the author introduces hard facts that make the narration round. I think you need a special agility for doing so.
I have a traumatic memory that I would love to connect to a bigger discussion about trauma and complex family relationships, but I'm unsure how to do so without sounding too victimising or triggering.
And lastly, here is the memory exercise I did about something that happened with my little sister when we were very little and I feel exemplifies our relationship:
Surely, we were bored. My mother was getting her grown-up nails manicured while my sister's and my own were too small to be cut and filed by a professional. Perhaps, at some point, the chair and all the hairdresser tools seemed like an invitation. Maybe I knew how to manipulate them because my memory tells me that I managed to put the black apron on my little sister. In the haze of my memory, I recall sharp silver scissors cutting golden strands of hair that shimmered against the apron.
Then came the scolding, because a crime had been committed against my sister's bangs, which now appeared misshapen, in a diagonal line where there had once been a perfect straight one. And there were tears, lots of tears, but not from my sister, but from me because of the scolding. Perhaps I hadn’t expected any scolding but the beginning of a hairdressing career. In the eye of my mind, I see the sweet, round, and freckled face of my little sister—an image I've stolen from so many pictures—coming towards me. Her tiny hand grabs mine, and she says something along the lines of: 'Don’t worry, Ale. I like it. And hair grows back.'
"Swerve" You are spot on with your observations. One of the key elements of persona essay is that the narrator has a recognition or realization, they often change, there may be a transformation. That's what essaying should do :-)
"Generation Gap" Yes! plus one kind of art informing another art, love that too.
"The Sloth" I also love the incorporation of research into essay. And I agree, one of the challenges is to do it seamlessly without changing the tone or falling out of voice.
Great observations of craft--thanks for sharing.
Re the traumatic memory and connecting with larger associated themes. Start small and focused. Write the traumatic personal experience first, you may want to break it down into sections. Take your time. Take breaks. Then add you interiority--how you felt with each step of this traumatic memory, then and now. Again, you want to take off yourself during this process, take time, breaks, and get support if needed. Once you've tackled that part of the writing, then move on to think through how it connects to your own wider world and the wide world. This may require reading, reflection.
And thanks for sharing your memory exercise! "Her grown-up nails" and "a crime had been committed against my sister's bangs"--both phrases stand out for me, made me smile. Great the way you insert humor, your observations of you as a child. The humor provides a nice balance and brings perspective to the tension in the scene--the narrator's tears and misunderstanding. Yes--the brief scene provides a nice characterization for your relationship. -A
Shannon--sounds like a perfect set up for an essay. An ER visit--the tension is built in and it's a discreet moment in time. Plus you are visiting, another layer of tension. Plus your family and fear, more tension. Important themes that reach wide. Great! Thanks for sharing.
Hi Shannon. SO much great craft at work in this piece. Kudos to you for getting it completed and posted, well done. Told primarily in scene--and digs into what's difficult, uncomfortable, and scary. The craft: the use of rhetorical questions, great showing; the sensory details (so many) here's one: sneaker squeaking as you leave the ER (there's a metaphor there too); the scratching of M-O-T-H-E-R, again shows so much. And how you say "what's left unsaid" and then the narrator narrates that, nice layering, kind of meta too. Thx for sharing. If you want to shoot me an email (andrea@andreaafirth.com) I'll share some other editorial thoughts. Best, A
Apr 1Liked by Andrea A. Firth, Benjamin Davis, Kailey Brennan DelloRusso
I have a question adjacent to perhapsing. I'm working on a piece and considering giving two versions of one of the many events I write about. So I remember what happened but would prefer to keep one detail vague. It's only partly for self-protection (I'm not afraid, I just don't want to piss someone off). It's also because it comes toward the end and I think it helps expand the reader's idea of just who the "devil" in the title (The Devil Next Door) is; i.e., maybe we're all bad neighbors sometimes. Even me! Although he started it, haha. Anyway, I'm realizing this is a hard question to answer out of context, but is this just completely a bad idea given that it's CNF?
Hi Lorri. Your essay has drawn me right in--and what a great theme--how we behave as neighbors. A little hard to address this specifically without reading the essay but a couple thoughts. Giving the reader two versions is an interesting idea and good craft and can add a lot to an essay. Could be a v. good idea--comes down to execution. You want to use perhaps, maybe, or in some way let the reader know that this is true to extent that you can make it. And if you give the reader two versions--you don't always have to choose a "right one" for them. Sometimes you can leave it for the reader to decide.
Here's an example from one of my essays. And I guess without a full read and context it might be difficult--but let's give it a go. For background, I go to a reading to hear a writer talk about her mother-daughter memoir, her aged mother has moved to live near the writer. At that time. my aged mother had moved across the country to live near me. Here's a paragraph from the essay--where I "perhaps": "Mother-daughter relationships are both wonderful and messy, and memoirs by nature are one-sided tales. Plus, truth and memory are tricky. Maybe I want to be the writer on that stage having a conversation about my mother-daughter story, being funny and unabashedly truthful. Maybe I want to write the best seller that uncovers the intricacies of our relationship, explains my mother, and reveals our story. Maybe I want the mother-daughter fairy tale with a happy ending. But I’m not that writer. And we don’t live a fairy tale."
So I do tell the reader, that I'm "dreaming" but I didn't necessarily have to--Maybe I did want all of those things to be true on some level. How you handle it depends on what your essay throughline is among other factors. You don't want to lie--but you can perhaps.
Thank you, Andrea! That's a great example. Here's my attempt from my piece (I'm still working on it): "If my life were a movie, I’d want a messier, less ethereal turning point. I’d want a scene, say, where the protagonist doesn’t go home to her own house but instead follows Sara into hers and spills her guts—about the innuendo, the reaching under the table, the escalating phone calls. A scene that employs just enough silence to imply that the other things that might happen already had.
But what kind of neighbor would do that?"
Of course that's just one version, but it probably gives enough of a taste. I was basically living in "fear" that Sara was going to sell her house to this handsy jerk who lived in a rental next door that he had to move from.
Thanks, John. I mostly write super short things these days, but this one is a longer one I started way back and I want to see it through. I'm keeping it light and fun-poking (a lot at myself), but humor is hard to get right!
Sherri--thx for sharing this. I just got an email from Hattie Fletcher, editor of Short Reads, and she said they've seen an uptick in subscribers recently which she attributes to this class--and she says Thx for reading!
Apr 2Liked by Andrea A. Firth, Kailey Brennan DelloRusso
Hi, I got this email this morning about WOD101 and I have been pleasantly surprised. I don't remember when I signed up, but thank God I did!
I enjoyed all three essays! I'm a poet and I want to write more essays. I was ruminating on the Sloth essay from Jill Christman and the craft question. This essay uses extended metaphor which poets use, but in a way where the timing was different. In most poems I hear or read there's this somewhat anxious back and forth in the poem where the speaker seems to constantly remind us/readers of the extended metaphor with every other line becoming a reminder, which feels sorta obnoxious, but with this piece the pacing felt different and that back and forth reminder seemed to dissolve in the essay as a whole. It was seamless.
I'm wondering about more craft conversations with short essays. Does understanding craft here ( in the essay) work best in discussing the essay - as we are doing? Are there any books that can develop this more like there is for craft and poetry?
I really appreciated the naming that happens for the opening of each essay i.e. the direct address or the sensorial opening. Are there any craft considerations that we should think about for the endings? I'm thinking about signing up for the full 8 lessons. Anyway, thank you for your work on this!
Claudia, I highly recommend becoming a paid subscriber if you can. I stumbled on Write or Die 101 right as it was starting in February and Benjamin's course on submitting kind of blew my mind. The level of detail and thought and engagement that is going on with the teachers here is really amazing. Courtney did a March workshop on starting and growing a newsletter that was also really good. (Full disclosure: I wasn't really engaged with that one because the idea of my own newsletter makes me anxious! But I know that can be a great way to grow your readership.) Anyway, I'm pretty sure if you're a paid subscriber you get access to the info in those previous workshops also. And the fact that there's a new class every month with a new instructor is super fun!
Hi Claudia. I'm glad you found you way to 101 too and glad that you enjoyed the essays and the craft at work. Yes, there are books specific to the craft of writing essay. I review resources like this in Lesson 8 (Craft books by Dinty W. Moore and the folks at Hippocampus are two good examples.) Also in Lesson 8 I talk about Brevity Blog, which is an ongoing conversation in essay form about the craft of creative nonfiction, both essay and memoir--that's another good resource. But I am a believer in reading good essays as the way to learn to write essay. There are 14 more essays to read across the next seven lessons and each one teaches us about the form. And we talk about beginnings and endings in Lesson 4 on Week 2, which is free.
And one other thought on poets and the extended metaphor. You may be familiar with the poet Ross Gay's Book of Delights, a collection of lyrical micro-essays. He's a master of the metaphor. One of my favorite delights/essays from that book is "Tomato on Board." Gay (as you point out can happen) does continually circle back to the metaphor at work as he traverses an airport with his tomato seedling. In that essay, I think that repeating touchstone supports the metaphor's idea of what it takes to care for another more vulnerable---plus it's charming :-) Gay's entire collection is worth a read.
I'm kind of in love with the idea of perhapsing. I'm currently neck deep in old journals reading about a particular period in my life and looking for specifics that most likely are not there. It's amazing how much you can *not* say in a journal you write in every day. But perhapsing gives me a way to talk about things I know happened when I don't know the specifics anymore. I found each of the essays breathtaking in their brevity. Brevity is not something I do most of the time, and that has me thinking about the old songwriting/storytelling adage, "Show, don't tell." I have definite events I'd like to write about, but haven't made a table as you suggest. I fear I won't have the faintest clue what they're really about. Hence, when I saw the title of this course, I signed up so I can sharpen my writer reader instincts. I'm psyched to be here!
Hi Phyllis. Psyched to have you here! You can use the table and leave the themes/aboutness column blank to start. Write what happened (the showing) first and see where it takes you. Do some perhapsing along the way. Then look it over to see if a theme emerges--or something gets clearer now, as you look back. Do you come to understand something now that you didn't know then. As I've mentioned we're going to walk thru a 6-part prompt in Lesson #6 and get all the parts of a new essay on the page. Plus how great that you have old journals that stack up to your neck! What a great resource. And, you might note what you find left out of those journal stories and make a list. Ask yourself why is that I didn't write down x or y or z. That could be revealing to your story. A thought. Onward. -A
Probably my best personal essay is the one I wrote called The Perfect Princess. It was written shortly after my mom's death last year and basically deals with the fallout of her death. She and I never really had a good relationship, she mentally and emotionally abused me for YEARS and now at the ripe age of 57 I am free of her.
I wrote because it was festering in my mind and I knew I had to 'let it go'. So I typed it out. It felt great to get it out of my head/mind, but it will never see the light of day.
Hi Kim. Very sorry to hear of the long years of abuse. Sounds like it was a hard essay to write, and I'm glad it feels freeing to get it out and on the page. What you do with your essay is always your choice. Often writing is what's most important; sharing and with whom--your choice. In Lesson 8, we will talk about writing about others. When writers are seeking to publish, sometimes it's easier to wait until a family member has passed, but there's often still other family with opinions around to be dealt with. We each have to determine our own boundaries and what we are willing to possibly compromise relationship wise if we pursue publication. However, you might be surprised by how friends, family or others respond more positively than expected if you share work in advance--but it comes with risk. This is an important topic to consider with personal essay and memoir. Thanks for sharing!
Hi, Andrea and all. I am late to this first lesson, but really enjoyed it once I made time for it. Thank you, Andrea! It was good to slow down to pay attention to what I saw in the three essays, all amazing. One of my writing goals is to write a very short but powerful piece like these. These are my very rough notes:
Generation Gap
Introduces "conflict" early with the fact that she was dubious about taking him, if he would like it and if she would have to leave if he didn't. It perks up a reader's ears.
She steps outside herself to describe her son in the second paragraph, showing great attention to him and giving us details that paint a picture of him in the theater.
The dialogue is first rate and stands out more for being brief and at the end.
The eight words at the end are a showpiece of restraint that reveals worlds.
Swerve
Introduces what it's about immediately: I'm sorry. And the repetition is well used and not overdone. She also sets up the situation with a pound of marijuana and faulty brake light so I am caught up in her story immediately.
Dialogue is brilliant
Good use of sensory writing Thunk thunk...his dark face, then face so twisted, dark of night, brake light blinking
Keeps the first paragraph focused on now and then brilliantly throws us into a future the same in the last half of the last paragraph so that we see her life, not just this one bad moment.
The Sloth
The conclusion--this similarity between the sloth and her grief was a wow so that the what's it about clicks into place for the reader like a lamp switching on.
She takes her time describing the sloth and uses precise words so we can see him. She knows the tree he is in.
Has used facts beyond the experience--blood temperature.
And she too knows how to draw the reader in immediately...the nothingness of temperature, using only 10 words to inform us of a shattering event. Then the whomp of disembodiment and how she feels it.
Hi Sherri. You're not late :-) That's the beauty of this Substack model--you get to it when it works best for you. Thanks for sharing your many keen observations about the writing and craft.
For Generation Gap, I like your phrasing "how she steps outside of herself" which mirrors Moss' words "watching though his eyes." And yes the spare, selective dialogue does great work here. We'll cover dialogue in Lesson #3. As you point out, you want dialogue to have purpose, e.g. to move the narrative or provide characterization.
For Swerve--yes such a great point, how Miller handles time. We don't know how long the relationship lasted, months, years, longer? But she traverse that timeframe deftly in 2 paragraphs.
And The Sloth--again you observe how the writer handles time. How she slows the narrative down as we watch this sloth, "Still reaching. And then still reaching."
Thanks Tara and welcome to Finding Your Essay's Heartbeat! Lesson #2 on scene in structure is up too and you will receive Lesson #3 on point of view and dialogue in your inbox on Monday. More fun readings to come.
Hi Harrison. Thanks! And folks--please go to this link and read H's essay--it's great.
1. Wow, you write fast! Loved the flash essay. And, I love Banksy too--saw an exhibit of his work in SF a couple years ago.
2. Sarah Moss will love that you gave a shout to and linked her essay so others can read. Nice way to boost another writer--we'll be talking abut literary citizenship in lesson 8. This is a great example, thanks.
3. Kudos to your mom to take you on that 370 mile train trip.
TY--Andrea
Thank you Andrea, literary citizenship is a beautiful shiny dime phrase—I love it!
PS Is Sarah on Substack? Is she contactable?
Hi Harrison. I don't see Sarah on Substack--but if you find her, let me know. She's English, I believe, and an academic. She's been faculty at the University of Glasgow and may still be there. But I don't have an email address or personal website for her.
Wonderful idea this! Love your examples too. The Sarah Moss one inspired my own 3-paragraph essay about what happened when me and my mum tried sneaking into a Banksy show: https://www.thenewworkday.com/p/dismaland
Harrison, I love the way this essay wrongfooted me in the same way Banksy wrongfooted all of you--did not see the end coming at all. Also, your mom sounds like a winner.
Thanks so much John, appreciate your kind words
Awesome essay!
Thank you Tara :)
Swerve is an entrancing piece of writing, almost hypnotic, largely because of her repeated apologies. It’s amazing Miller pulls that off while also using such concrete details and harsh words from the “You” she’s writing to. (By the way, I assume the You is a man, although I don't think she says.) And the ending expands the beginning: she’s sorry (now she’s apologizing to herself) that she didn’t get out of the relationship sooner. I also had a darker thought, connecting “not getting out of the way” to that ominous wood thumping earlier. It’s not a stretch to think that verbal abuse could turn physical, although she doesn’t spell that out.
Hi Lorri. These are all great observations. Yes the repetition is hypnotic. It's compounding. Repetition, as craft, can be used in many ways. And you'll note that the second paragraph is a single sentence--the apologies layered on and on. I call this a freight train sentence. And yes the switch in perspective with who she is apologizing to at the close--another great observation you make! And what more could have happened here? Miller draws the reader into the story with what she doesn't say :-) Thanks for sharing. Good insights for us all.
One thing I noticed about the three essays: every one of them included a line or two that stopped me cold.
1. The Sloth: "That sloth is as slow as grief." It captured exactly how I've experienced grief, and in 7 words it tied the entire essay together. Wow.
2. Swerve: the "fix"/"you hadn't fixed"/"break"/"brake light" business you already mentioned. I almost missed this whole bit the first time round.
2. Generation Gap: that last phrase--"my son, who was only that month taller than me"--is incredible, because she sure as hell is not (or not just) talking about height. The line that really got me, though, is in the first paragraph: "I’d been dubious about his company at first." The antecedent to "his" isn't immediately clear--the 12-year-old son or the husband--but I wonder if that's intentional: Sarah Moss wanted us to convey that both were true in one tiny sentence. I don't know, am I over the top here?
If the rest of your assigned essays are this good, Andrea, holy cow, this is going to be fun.
John-thanks for sharing these great insights.
1. Yes the sloth is a metaphor. And the sentence you point to is stellar. This is what good personal essay does--it connects the personal experience to the universal (grief). Yes her grief feels like your grief. The essay's aboutness connects.
2.Yes, yes yes!!!
3. I agree the placement of the last metaphorical phrase is great craft. I hadn't thought about "his" in the fourth sentence as having a double meaning, husband and son. But no you are not over the top. Again good essay draws the reader into the story--and especially at this flash length, there is more room for the reader to step in and wonder or conclude about what isn't said due to the spareness of word count. We all read and interpret it our own way.
The best part for me in developing a course is choosing the readings. More fun to come.
I meant to write "take care of your self during the process" Sorry for the typo.
¡Hello everybody! Here are my thoughts:
- 'Swerve': I feel there is a change of how the author sees herself from one paragraph to another. In the first one she sounds scared and making herself little and in the second she seems more aware of the relationship and her place in it. It reflects the evolution the relationship had.
- 'Generation gap': I love how the author describes what Shakespeare was doing in particular for her son - giving him words and images that weren't available any other way for him and his gender.
- 'The Sloth': I love how the author introduces hard facts that make the narration round. I think you need a special agility for doing so.
I have a traumatic memory that I would love to connect to a bigger discussion about trauma and complex family relationships, but I'm unsure how to do so without sounding too victimising or triggering.
And lastly, here is the memory exercise I did about something that happened with my little sister when we were very little and I feel exemplifies our relationship:
Surely, we were bored. My mother was getting her grown-up nails manicured while my sister's and my own were too small to be cut and filed by a professional. Perhaps, at some point, the chair and all the hairdresser tools seemed like an invitation. Maybe I knew how to manipulate them because my memory tells me that I managed to put the black apron on my little sister. In the haze of my memory, I recall sharp silver scissors cutting golden strands of hair that shimmered against the apron.
Then came the scolding, because a crime had been committed against my sister's bangs, which now appeared misshapen, in a diagonal line where there had once been a perfect straight one. And there were tears, lots of tears, but not from my sister, but from me because of the scolding. Perhaps I hadn’t expected any scolding but the beginning of a hairdressing career. In the eye of my mind, I see the sweet, round, and freckled face of my little sister—an image I've stolen from so many pictures—coming towards me. Her tiny hand grabs mine, and she says something along the lines of: 'Don’t worry, Ale. I like it. And hair grows back.'
Sorry for the very long post! Have a great day.
Hi Alejandra. Welcome!
"Swerve" You are spot on with your observations. One of the key elements of persona essay is that the narrator has a recognition or realization, they often change, there may be a transformation. That's what essaying should do :-)
"Generation Gap" Yes! plus one kind of art informing another art, love that too.
"The Sloth" I also love the incorporation of research into essay. And I agree, one of the challenges is to do it seamlessly without changing the tone or falling out of voice.
Great observations of craft--thanks for sharing.
Re the traumatic memory and connecting with larger associated themes. Start small and focused. Write the traumatic personal experience first, you may want to break it down into sections. Take your time. Take breaks. Then add you interiority--how you felt with each step of this traumatic memory, then and now. Again, you want to take off yourself during this process, take time, breaks, and get support if needed. Once you've tackled that part of the writing, then move on to think through how it connects to your own wider world and the wide world. This may require reading, reflection.
And thanks for sharing your memory exercise! "Her grown-up nails" and "a crime had been committed against my sister's bangs"--both phrases stand out for me, made me smile. Great the way you insert humor, your observations of you as a child. The humor provides a nice balance and brings perspective to the tension in the scene--the narrator's tears and misunderstanding. Yes--the brief scene provides a nice characterization for your relationship. -A
"Perhaps I hadn't expected any scolding but the beginning of a hairdressing career." =) This killed me in such a good way!
And "...an image I've stolen from so many pictures..." So Good!
Thank you for your words :)
THIS: 'Don’t worry, Ale. I like it. And hair grows back.'
What a gorgeous line (and piece). Brought me to tears.
Thank you so much! That's so sweet!
Your email is very timely as I actually had an experience I need to process via writing.
The Idea: taking my son to an ER in rural Kentucky as a visitor to the state and a lesbian, two-mom household.
Themes: fear, the power of patriarchy, empathy for all peoples who are marginalized
Shannon--sounds like a perfect set up for an essay. An ER visit--the tension is built in and it's a discreet moment in time. Plus you are visiting, another layer of tension. Plus your family and fear, more tension. Important themes that reach wide. Great! Thanks for sharing.
Here is the piece I authored and now posted! https://open.substack.com/pub/shannonmzimmerman/p/emergency?r=2d2d4o&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Hi Shannon. SO much great craft at work in this piece. Kudos to you for getting it completed and posted, well done. Told primarily in scene--and digs into what's difficult, uncomfortable, and scary. The craft: the use of rhetorical questions, great showing; the sensory details (so many) here's one: sneaker squeaking as you leave the ER (there's a metaphor there too); the scratching of M-O-T-H-E-R, again shows so much. And how you say "what's left unsaid" and then the narrator narrates that, nice layering, kind of meta too. Thx for sharing. If you want to shoot me an email (andrea@andreaafirth.com) I'll share some other editorial thoughts. Best, A
I have a question adjacent to perhapsing. I'm working on a piece and considering giving two versions of one of the many events I write about. So I remember what happened but would prefer to keep one detail vague. It's only partly for self-protection (I'm not afraid, I just don't want to piss someone off). It's also because it comes toward the end and I think it helps expand the reader's idea of just who the "devil" in the title (The Devil Next Door) is; i.e., maybe we're all bad neighbors sometimes. Even me! Although he started it, haha. Anyway, I'm realizing this is a hard question to answer out of context, but is this just completely a bad idea given that it's CNF?
Hi Lorri. Your essay has drawn me right in--and what a great theme--how we behave as neighbors. A little hard to address this specifically without reading the essay but a couple thoughts. Giving the reader two versions is an interesting idea and good craft and can add a lot to an essay. Could be a v. good idea--comes down to execution. You want to use perhaps, maybe, or in some way let the reader know that this is true to extent that you can make it. And if you give the reader two versions--you don't always have to choose a "right one" for them. Sometimes you can leave it for the reader to decide.
Here's an example from one of my essays. And I guess without a full read and context it might be difficult--but let's give it a go. For background, I go to a reading to hear a writer talk about her mother-daughter memoir, her aged mother has moved to live near the writer. At that time. my aged mother had moved across the country to live near me. Here's a paragraph from the essay--where I "perhaps": "Mother-daughter relationships are both wonderful and messy, and memoirs by nature are one-sided tales. Plus, truth and memory are tricky. Maybe I want to be the writer on that stage having a conversation about my mother-daughter story, being funny and unabashedly truthful. Maybe I want to write the best seller that uncovers the intricacies of our relationship, explains my mother, and reveals our story. Maybe I want the mother-daughter fairy tale with a happy ending. But I’m not that writer. And we don’t live a fairy tale."
So I do tell the reader, that I'm "dreaming" but I didn't necessarily have to--Maybe I did want all of those things to be true on some level. How you handle it depends on what your essay throughline is among other factors. You don't want to lie--but you can perhaps.
Hope that helps.
Thank you, Andrea! That's a great example. Here's my attempt from my piece (I'm still working on it): "If my life were a movie, I’d want a messier, less ethereal turning point. I’d want a scene, say, where the protagonist doesn’t go home to her own house but instead follows Sara into hers and spills her guts—about the innuendo, the reaching under the table, the escalating phone calls. A scene that employs just enough silence to imply that the other things that might happen already had.
But what kind of neighbor would do that?"
Of course that's just one version, but it probably gives enough of a taste. I was basically living in "fear" that Sara was going to sell her house to this handsy jerk who lived in a rental next door that he had to move from.
For what it's worth, Lorri, "the reaching under the table" sent a chill straight down my spine. If the rest of your essay is this good, wow.
Thanks, John. I mostly write super short things these days, but this one is a longer one I started way back and I want to see it through. I'm keeping it light and fun-poking (a lot at myself), but humor is hard to get right!
I'm definitely intrigued!
Good morning, everybody, Short Reads just posted a new essay modeled after Swerve. You can read it here: https://www.short-reads.org/note-to-old-irishtown-road/?ref=short-reads-newsletter
Sherri--thx for sharing this. I just got an email from Hattie Fletcher, editor of Short Reads, and she said they've seen an uptick in subscribers recently which she attributes to this class--and she says Thx for reading!
Thank you for this first class!
You are welcome. Thanks for joining us :-)
I just signed up and I'm thrilled by this first class. The readings and your teachings are terrific!
Thank you Tara!
Hi, I got this email this morning about WOD101 and I have been pleasantly surprised. I don't remember when I signed up, but thank God I did!
I enjoyed all three essays! I'm a poet and I want to write more essays. I was ruminating on the Sloth essay from Jill Christman and the craft question. This essay uses extended metaphor which poets use, but in a way where the timing was different. In most poems I hear or read there's this somewhat anxious back and forth in the poem where the speaker seems to constantly remind us/readers of the extended metaphor with every other line becoming a reminder, which feels sorta obnoxious, but with this piece the pacing felt different and that back and forth reminder seemed to dissolve in the essay as a whole. It was seamless.
I'm wondering about more craft conversations with short essays. Does understanding craft here ( in the essay) work best in discussing the essay - as we are doing? Are there any books that can develop this more like there is for craft and poetry?
I really appreciated the naming that happens for the opening of each essay i.e. the direct address or the sensorial opening. Are there any craft considerations that we should think about for the endings? I'm thinking about signing up for the full 8 lessons. Anyway, thank you for your work on this!
Claudia, I highly recommend becoming a paid subscriber if you can. I stumbled on Write or Die 101 right as it was starting in February and Benjamin's course on submitting kind of blew my mind. The level of detail and thought and engagement that is going on with the teachers here is really amazing. Courtney did a March workshop on starting and growing a newsletter that was also really good. (Full disclosure: I wasn't really engaged with that one because the idea of my own newsletter makes me anxious! But I know that can be a great way to grow your readership.) Anyway, I'm pretty sure if you're a paid subscriber you get access to the info in those previous workshops also. And the fact that there's a new class every month with a new instructor is super fun!
Hi Claudia. I'm glad you found you way to 101 too and glad that you enjoyed the essays and the craft at work. Yes, there are books specific to the craft of writing essay. I review resources like this in Lesson 8 (Craft books by Dinty W. Moore and the folks at Hippocampus are two good examples.) Also in Lesson 8 I talk about Brevity Blog, which is an ongoing conversation in essay form about the craft of creative nonfiction, both essay and memoir--that's another good resource. But I am a believer in reading good essays as the way to learn to write essay. There are 14 more essays to read across the next seven lessons and each one teaches us about the form. And we talk about beginnings and endings in Lesson 4 on Week 2, which is free.
And one other thought on poets and the extended metaphor. You may be familiar with the poet Ross Gay's Book of Delights, a collection of lyrical micro-essays. He's a master of the metaphor. One of my favorite delights/essays from that book is "Tomato on Board." Gay (as you point out can happen) does continually circle back to the metaphor at work as he traverses an airport with his tomato seedling. In that essay, I think that repeating touchstone supports the metaphor's idea of what it takes to care for another more vulnerable---plus it's charming :-) Gay's entire collection is worth a read.
Thanks agin for your comments!
Ah, yes, Ross Gay...I do love his meandering ways. Lol! Yes, I'm signing up:) So excited!
I'm kind of in love with the idea of perhapsing. I'm currently neck deep in old journals reading about a particular period in my life and looking for specifics that most likely are not there. It's amazing how much you can *not* say in a journal you write in every day. But perhapsing gives me a way to talk about things I know happened when I don't know the specifics anymore. I found each of the essays breathtaking in their brevity. Brevity is not something I do most of the time, and that has me thinking about the old songwriting/storytelling adage, "Show, don't tell." I have definite events I'd like to write about, but haven't made a table as you suggest. I fear I won't have the faintest clue what they're really about. Hence, when I saw the title of this course, I signed up so I can sharpen my writer reader instincts. I'm psyched to be here!
Hi Phyllis. Psyched to have you here! You can use the table and leave the themes/aboutness column blank to start. Write what happened (the showing) first and see where it takes you. Do some perhapsing along the way. Then look it over to see if a theme emerges--or something gets clearer now, as you look back. Do you come to understand something now that you didn't know then. As I've mentioned we're going to walk thru a 6-part prompt in Lesson #6 and get all the parts of a new essay on the page. Plus how great that you have old journals that stack up to your neck! What a great resource. And, you might note what you find left out of those journal stories and make a list. Ask yourself why is that I didn't write down x or y or z. That could be revealing to your story. A thought. Onward. -A
Love that last suggestion! I've just had someone else (an astrologer) suggest the very same thing.
Wonderful examples and ways to use them in my writing practice. I like to consider how, "...the small can loom large." The telling detail.
Probably my best personal essay is the one I wrote called The Perfect Princess. It was written shortly after my mom's death last year and basically deals with the fallout of her death. She and I never really had a good relationship, she mentally and emotionally abused me for YEARS and now at the ripe age of 57 I am free of her.
I wrote because it was festering in my mind and I knew I had to 'let it go'. So I typed it out. It felt great to get it out of my head/mind, but it will never see the light of day.
Hi Kim. Very sorry to hear of the long years of abuse. Sounds like it was a hard essay to write, and I'm glad it feels freeing to get it out and on the page. What you do with your essay is always your choice. Often writing is what's most important; sharing and with whom--your choice. In Lesson 8, we will talk about writing about others. When writers are seeking to publish, sometimes it's easier to wait until a family member has passed, but there's often still other family with opinions around to be dealt with. We each have to determine our own boundaries and what we are willing to possibly compromise relationship wise if we pursue publication. However, you might be surprised by how friends, family or others respond more positively than expected if you share work in advance--but it comes with risk. This is an important topic to consider with personal essay and memoir. Thanks for sharing!
Hi, Andrea and all. I am late to this first lesson, but really enjoyed it once I made time for it. Thank you, Andrea! It was good to slow down to pay attention to what I saw in the three essays, all amazing. One of my writing goals is to write a very short but powerful piece like these. These are my very rough notes:
Generation Gap
Introduces "conflict" early with the fact that she was dubious about taking him, if he would like it and if she would have to leave if he didn't. It perks up a reader's ears.
She steps outside herself to describe her son in the second paragraph, showing great attention to him and giving us details that paint a picture of him in the theater.
The dialogue is first rate and stands out more for being brief and at the end.
The eight words at the end are a showpiece of restraint that reveals worlds.
Swerve
Introduces what it's about immediately: I'm sorry. And the repetition is well used and not overdone. She also sets up the situation with a pound of marijuana and faulty brake light so I am caught up in her story immediately.
Dialogue is brilliant
Good use of sensory writing Thunk thunk...his dark face, then face so twisted, dark of night, brake light blinking
Keeps the first paragraph focused on now and then brilliantly throws us into a future the same in the last half of the last paragraph so that we see her life, not just this one bad moment.
The Sloth
The conclusion--this similarity between the sloth and her grief was a wow so that the what's it about clicks into place for the reader like a lamp switching on.
She takes her time describing the sloth and uses precise words so we can see him. She knows the tree he is in.
Has used facts beyond the experience--blood temperature.
And she too knows how to draw the reader in immediately...the nothingness of temperature, using only 10 words to inform us of a shattering event. Then the whomp of disembodiment and how she feels it.
Hi Sherri. You're not late :-) That's the beauty of this Substack model--you get to it when it works best for you. Thanks for sharing your many keen observations about the writing and craft.
For Generation Gap, I like your phrasing "how she steps outside of herself" which mirrors Moss' words "watching though his eyes." And yes the spare, selective dialogue does great work here. We'll cover dialogue in Lesson #3. As you point out, you want dialogue to have purpose, e.g. to move the narrative or provide characterization.
For Swerve--yes such a great point, how Miller handles time. We don't know how long the relationship lasted, months, years, longer? But she traverse that timeframe deftly in 2 paragraphs.
And The Sloth--again you observe how the writer handles time. How she slows the narrative down as we watch this sloth, "Still reaching. And then still reaching."
Appreciate all of your insights. Thx!
Thanks Tara and welcome to Finding Your Essay's Heartbeat! Lesson #2 on scene in structure is up too and you will receive Lesson #3 on point of view and dialogue in your inbox on Monday. More fun readings to come.