Enough

An importance aspect to a personal essay is honesty. To demonstrate this principle I selected this essay, http://www.identitytheory.com/nonfiction/frykholm_enough.php.

In this essay, Amy Johnson describes one of her days in a soup kitchen. In the end, she gets to the root of a question that is in herself. What is enough? Instead of trying to hide behind anything else that is happening during this experience, she gets down to the root of what is bothering her.

Personal essays are often about some conflict in the author's life. Sometimes even the author doesn't know about what that conflict is until they start writing. E.M. Forester said, "How do I know what I think until I see what I say." Maybe we have to write about something before we can really make any kind of sense about what has happened to us.

All too often writers become afraid of what they're discovering, so they hide behind their words. Sometimes they are not ready to write about an experience, so they will panic half way and not get to any answers. So the key is being honest with ourselves in writing and not writing about something until we are ready.

The Ladder of Abstraction

"The Fourth State of Matter" by Jo Ann Beard is the next specimen that I have chosen.

This essays tells of Beard's experience during the murder of her friends and colleagues at the University of Iowa. Though this is a longer essay, the writing keeps the reader engaged the whole time. Beard does by using her ability to move up and down the abstraction ladder.

What is the abstraction ladder? Imagine a ladder of your choice. Located at the top most rung of that ladder are words like love, success, irritation, and friendship. But what do any of these words really mean?

Start climbing all the way down that ladder until you get down to the bottom, and you find thing like friendship -- when my roommate zips up my zipper because I can't reach or irritation -- hairspray plastered to the vanity counter with hair stuck in it from when my roommate did her hair. Using these words, you have moved from telling your audience you were irritated to showing your audience your moment of irritation.

This essay is a perfect example of using the abstraction ladder to Beard's benefit. She uses words like "satisfying" which is high on the abstraction ladder, but then she goes on to describe an example of satisfaction. She captivates her audience with this strategy making her essay a good read.

When Dolls Talk

"At the same time, however, I feel a tinge of sadness; it was the best I could do with Belinda . . . I didn’t really know Belinda, her joys; her pains. And I doubt she knew me."

For my next essay to be examined, I searched the internet. This was the gem of an essay that I found, http://www.identitytheory.com/nonfiction/perez_dollstalk.php. This essay by David Perez details an experience that that he had while playing dolls with his daughter.

Why do I like this essay so much? I like it because Perez chose a small moment from his life to write about. While the exact moment of Perez playing with his daughter is the main focus of the story, that moment is tied into a bigger truth in Perez's life. While the doll scene is well described and cute, later we find out that this was as far as Perez's role of a father went. Other than that moment, he wasn't much of a father to Belinda which is something that he now regrets.

This essay demonstrates the need of meaning in creative nonfiction. Writing about just any experience is great, but then your essay is just a good story. There needs to be a greater purpose in the writing, a theme.

Looking back at my first personal essay, I realize that my essay had no real purpose. I wrote about being afraid of the dark when I was young. I wrote it for entertainment, and my readers and I learned nothing about myself. "So what?" should have been a question I should have asked myself. Was the fear of the dark some manifestation of anxiety problems I have now or was it about the dependence I have on my mother?

I feel that the personal essay is about self discovery: uncovering truths about oneself. Perez did this. We learned of the insecurities he feels towards being a father. I also feel that anything worth writing a personal essay about has meaning. To end this post, I would say "Keep writing and discovering."

"Take this fish, and look at it."

"Learning to See" written by Samuel Scudder is the first essay I have decided to write a post on. Mr. Scudders essays documents an event in his student days at a collage with a Professor Agassiz. Professor Agassiz insists that before Scudder can get on to other school work, Scudder must study an old preserved fish and describe it. Scudder studies the fish for hours and then days before he is able to satisfy his professor.

The reason I chose this essay to be my first post is because I feel that it shows one of the biggest foundations for the writing of any essay not just creative non-fiction. Samuel Scudders experience with the old fish shows that writers must look at every aspect of their topic to become successful.

For research and analytical papers, this means understanding every aspect of the topic that is being discussed. Really look deep into the issue at hand. This means doing a lot the research. I know that sometimes research papers are painful and the typical student will spend the least amount of time as possible, but in order to be successful, a writer needs to take the time to see.

But what does this mean for creative non-fiction? Scudder learned to see ever detail of that fish that he was forced to look at. In a good creative non-fiction essay, the details need to be there in order that the audience will see what the writer sees. Also, the writer needs to look the event being written about from every angle. This allows the writer themselves to see the importance of their topic.

So, how do we do this? Well, we have to learn to see, just as Samuel Scudder, and while it may not involve looking at rotten fish for hours, we all need to find our own personal way to notice things around us. For some, that simply means just really being awake as we walk around. So the advice of the day, Remember to keep your eyes open.

Until next time.