Putting It In Writing

Dear Application Essay for National Endowment of the Humanities Fellowship,

You are one tough egg to crack.

I've obsessed over you for four months now: our coffee dates, our dinner dates. You control my dreams.

Why are you so hard?

I mean, I've written tons of essays. Tons. And yet, I don't know what to do with you.

You've got some serious standards.

Can I meet your expectations?

Should I stop overthinking and just embrace you?

What do you want from me?

Lovingly,

Jennie

The Order of Things

When I read high schoolers' senior research papers and college entrance essays, I usually find the biggest hiccup in organization.

Voice is high (high schoolers have no problem telling all about themselves), but the paragraphs, though generally cohesive within themselves, are wonkily ordered, with evasive intros and double, if any, conclusions.

Somehow, after graduation, the organization issue seems to straighten itself out. And while I can't help wondering if sequencing is a product of human development, I have come up with some tricks:

Does the essay really start at the beginning? Or is intro more compelling one sentence, maybe one paragraph in?

A trick for this is to ask how the intro starts--with setting, scene, imagery, question, statement...

Do you already know the conclusion? Because this will lend itself to a strong, focused body.

Is there something in the middle, even in/toward the end, that could be moved way up?

Are transitional phrases used to show the reader You Are Here?

What kind(s) of conclusion(s) are used: summary/revisitation, projection, question, quote, imagery, call-to-action/examination?

And how about title--which must be written last: is it clever, reflective of content?

Hmmm... Lots to think about.

Coming soon: Content.

Critical Writing

My generous and talented writing partner, Anjie, made me borrow a nice thick textbook the other day. It's called The Fourth Genre, by Robert Root, Jr. and Michael Steinberg, and defines and presents creative nonfiction.

Because the book has a boring cover and 473 pages, it took me a while to crack it.

But when I did, I blew through almost the whole thing in one night.

This new market I've been trying out, adult memoir, is tricky; adult readers seem to demand better construction, unpredictable organization, deeper content.

"The Masked Marvel's Last Toe Hold," by Doctor Richard Selzer, is a stunning example of parallelism, of metaphor, of finding mature meaning from a childhood event. This essay reminds me of "The Wrestler," in which Mickey Rourke plays a veteran athlete who struggles with identity as he ages.

Then there's Pico Iyer's "Where Worlds Collide," an analysis of LAX.

Richard Rodriguez's "Late Victorians" is also about a place: San Francisco, where the social agenda is transformed, but where physicality stays the same.

If you don't have time to read these short short stories, here are the best tips I gleamed from reading the book.

1) Overall, it appears that pure essayists are a dying breed; most essayists now hail from other media (journalism, fiction).

2) Make a list of all the topics you'd never write about. Then write about one of those topics.

3) Time change can be accomplished through changes in landscape, biography, and commentary.

4) A memoir is a quilt of one's favorite memories. It is the writer's perspective on history, and when written, it changes the past and sets it in stone.

5) Writing critically communicates with the reader, challenges her to consider plural perspectives, while being courted.

5) "The true rewards [of writing] are internal--the satisfaction of asking your own questions and finding your own answers" (Root and Steinberg, 1985, p. 357).