Poke at the Bugs

As I started reading through Phillip Lopate's introduction to his anthology The Art of the Personal Essay, I expected to find the usual pages I have to flip through to get to the good stuff. Instead, I found a great description of the personal essay. As you try to figure out whether your essay is on the right track, here are 7 questions - adapted from Mr. Lopate's introduction - you can ask yourself about your essay:

1. Is It Conversational? "The hallmark of the personal essay is its intimacy. The writer seems to be speaking directly into your ear, confiding everything from gossip to wisdom."
2. Is It Candid? "'We must remove the mask,' says Montaigne."
3. Is It Vulnerable? "Part of our trust in good personal essayists issues, paradoxically, from their exposure of their own betrayals, uncertainties, and self-mistrust."
4. Is It Self-Questioning? "Personal essayists are adept at interrogating their own ignorance. Just as often as they tell us what they know, they ask at the beginning of an exploration of a problem what it is that they don't know - and why."
5. Is It Provocative? ""It is often the case that personal essayists intentionally go against the grain of popular opinion. They raise the ante, as it were, making it more difficult for the reader to identify frictionlessly with the writer."
6. Is It Self-Contradictory?. "The novice essayist often errs by taking a strong moralistic stand and running it into the ground, with nowhere to go after two paragraphs. Here the personal essayist will open up a new flank, locating a tension between two valid, opposing goals, or a partial virtue in some apparent ill, or an ambivalence in his own belief system."
7. Is It Uncertain? "To essay is to attempt, to test, to make a run at something without knowing whether you are going to succeed." Also: "There is something heroic in the essayist's gesture of striking out toward the unknown, not only without a map but without certainty that there is anything worthy to be found."

Write to Discover

I write blog posts to chronicle my progress or, more frequently, lack thereof, in identifying the process that will take a student from "I don't know what to write" to "I just wrote my best essay." If you ask me, "What is that process?" I will tell you, "That's what I'm writing to figure out." I write to discover. You should do the same.

If you skim the questions above, you'll notice that they all hint at tentativeness. There is the sense of casting about for something. There is more doubt than certainty. There is something to be discovered.

Be a Spider

You just have to channel Whitman's poem A Noiseless Patient Spider. I tried to figure out how to sever a couple lines to illustrate the point, but I'm not that talented, and it's more fun to read all 10 lines anyway:

A noiseless patient spider, I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated, Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding, It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself, Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand, Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space, Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them, Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold, Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

That sums it up. Explore. Launch your filaments until you connect. Onward, my spiders!

Poke at the Bugs

Every young child knows the excitement of overturning a rock, especially a big one he has to tug at to move. What will we find underneath? You might see worms, sowbugs, earwigs, and all other sorts of scurrying or wriggling unpleasantness. Once I saw a millipede. When that rock is overturned, you can do one of two things. You can put the rock back and pretend nothing's there. Or you can find a stick and poke at the bugs.

If your goal is to write your best personal essay, then you have to accept that you don't know what your honesty will reveal. And you have to resolve that whatever it reveals, you will examine, even if you don't want to. You're going to reconcile the person you are with the person you want to be. That's the self-questioning that leads to a good essay. That's what it means to poke at the bugs.

Good luck writing!

Jon

Jon Perkins holds a B.A. in English from Stanford University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He helps students with their college, law school, and medical school applications.

I Sentence You to Triple Insight

This week, I went to the Peninsula Center Library and checked out Stanley Fish's book How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One. If I were really on top of things, I would have made the title a link so I could earn $.18 through Amazon's affiliate program if you clicked on it and bought it. But I don't need your $.18, and I don't know that I would recommend this book, anyway. It's a very nice book, just not for me.

Let me explain. When my sisters and I were younger and we had runny noses, my dad would dig through his pockets, remove a partially shredded tissue, and announce, "I have one slightly used Kleenex." You might be thinking the same thing we thought: "Gross." Still, we never refused the slightly used tissue.

In theory, there should be no such thing as a slightly used tissue. You should use a tissue once and throw it away. In practice, the slightly used tissue is a precious resource. Without it, you will notice other parents observing that your kid has a runny nose or that unwiped, unidentified food particles occupy the corner of his mouth. And then you will know. You will know that they are secretly wondering why your children look like street urchins from Les Miserables, and you will know that you are an inferior parent. You will know that you should have equipped yourself with a slightly used tissue.

Practical Tips > Theory

Theory is great, but practical solutions are better. This blog is all about practical tips for writing the essay. Stanley Fish's book, to me, is more about a theoretical approach, though in fairness, he does give some practical writing exercises, but they made me yawn. No matter. I am at the slightly used tissue phase of life. No time for theory now.

3 Ideas for Sentence Variety

I'm going to share three insights about the sentence that I took away from my initially close reading but by page 40 a quick skim because it was midnight and I was tired. File this under how to achieve sentence variety, a concept which, until just this week, meant to me including a mix of short sentences, long sentences, sentences with commas, and sentences with no commas. I'm very sophisticated, you see.

Insight #1: Sentence = doer + doing + done to

Writing is not alchemy. Each sentence has these three parts. When you write, you're just stringing together doer + doing + done, over and over.

Insight #2: Some Sentences Compare

Imagine you are writing a sentence about two things, A and B. You might say A causes B, A precedes B, or A is more important than B. If you do say any of these things, you are comparing A and B and making a judgment about which one is greater.

Insight #3: Some Sentences Juxtapose

Now imagine writing another sentence about those same two things, A and B. You might say A exists and B exists. If you say this, you are not comparing A and B. Rather, you are juxtaposing them, as if creating a collage.

Wait, You Promised This Would Be Practical!

Yes. Here's why I find these 3 insights practical. They take some of the mystery out of writing so you can get on with it. A sentence is doer + doing + done to. A sentence might compare. A sentence might juxtapose. You can use this knowledge to better scheme how you will direct your reader.

Good luck writing!

Jon

Jon Perkins holds a B.A. in English from Stanford University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He helps students with their college, law school, and medical school applications.

Is Your Essay in the "Meh" Pile?

You Are Here: Meh

Meh. A verbal shrug of the shoulders. Also, my reaction to most essays: "It's OK, I guess." But it's not OK. You can do better.

Reading a "meh" essay is like drinking room temperature coffee. I like hot coffee, and I love iced coffee, but I endure room temperature coffee. Hypothetically. Because in real life, I would either put that coffee in the microwave ("nuke it," in the diction of my father), or I would find some ice cubes.

Beyond Meh

You don't want a "meh" essay. You want to leave your reader feeling something. Actually, the graphic at the bottom of every Buzzfeed article captures that idea quite nicely:

Reactions

From now on, you should imagine that whoever reads your essay gets to click one of these buttons. Hopefully not "EW" or "TRASHY" or "WTF." But 4 of these are worth striving for:

Anyway, as you think about your topics, remember these tips to avoid the "meh" pile.

Good luck writing!

Jon

Jon Perkins holds a B.A. in English from Stanford University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He helps students with their college, law school, and medical school applications.

Your Essay Smells

If Your Essay Doesn't Smell, It Should

I'll admit - it's hard enough to write about images. Closing your eyes, thinking back to the moment, and then writing down what you saw isn't something you're used to doing.

Then why bother with smells? Smells might actually be easier to include than images. Scientists say that we can smell 10 different odors:

1. Fragrant
2. Woody
3. Fruity
4. Chemical
5. Minty
6. Sweeeeet
7. Popcorn
8. Lemon
9. Pungent
10. Decayed

So what? Seems to me that one easy way to make your essay more aromatic is to include one of these ten smells. As you consider the moments you're writing about, try to find the scent. Scent of an essay. A simple trick - but something most students will overlook.

Side note: Consider odor vs. scent vs. aroma vs. smell - word choice matters.

Good luck writing!

Jon

Jon Perkins holds a B.A. in English from Stanford University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He helps students with their college, law school, and medical school applications.

3 Storytelling Tips from Ricky Gervais

3 Quick Application Essay Tips

1. "Write about what you know."
2. "Trying to make the ordinary extraordinary is so much better than starting with the extraordinary..."
3. "It's your job to make an audience as excited and fascinated about a subject as you are."

Good luck writing!

Jon

Jon Perkins holds a B.A. in English from Stanford University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He helps students with their college, law school, and medical school applications.