Crafting the Personal Essay
I believe an essay is the most flexible written medium, and it calls for a fusion of genres: the soul of a memoirist, the pen of a poet, and the rigor of an academic. By learning to shape a thesis, your essays will become more than gripping stories with beautiful sentences, they will help you and your reader make sense of the world.
Michael Dean • THESIS
An essay lets the soul of a memoirist, the rigor of a scholar, and the pen of a poet all co-exist on the same page. Out of all the mediums, it's most able to fuse the best parts of every other genre. It's literature's sponge, the frontier of the written word. https://t.co/Olikaqb5pV
Writing can excavate the heart, lay it bare. Even if its only reader is the person who wrote it in the first place, it can promote understanding, not only of others but of our deepest selves.
Anna Quindlen • Write for Your Life
Text allows for the ultimate kind of selectivity: your constraint is not the sounds and sights of your actual life, but the depth of your imagination. When you share about your life over personal essays, you can hide your facial expressions and body language, your tone of voice. You can project decisiveness, self-assurance, and whatever else you wo... See more