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.