I just completed teaching an online course for Story Circle Network entitled, “Writing the Personal Essay.” The course was five weeks long and each week the students were assigned reading material on a different type of essay, then required to write that type of essay by the end of the week. Just so that we all didn’t move into writing/reading overload, I limited the word count on the essays to 1200 words maximum. (This is also a common word count limitation for submissions.) We used Dinty W. Moore’s book, Crafting The Personal Essay: A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Non-Fiction, and over five weeks, my students wrote a personal narrative essay, a nature or travel essay, a spiritual/contemplative essay, a humor essay, and a memoir essay. Wow, was I pleased with the results of this class. I felt as if my students were really stretching and growing in their writing skills, and since I never ask my students to write anything I’m not willing to write myself, I felt challenged, too.
I would highly recommend Dinty’s book. It’s readable, offers lots of solid advice and provides a large number of thought-provoking writing prompts. He also supplies excerpts of essays from well-known authors, which help to illustrate the differences between the various types of essays. In addition, Dinty provides examples of his own work to demonstrate the how-to’s.
Essay writing is slightly trickier than one might imagine since you are covering a particular topic while keeping the “I” in the writing. It’s not just coverage of an issue, thought, word, piece of art, spiritual truth, or favorite trip, but rather it is YOUR experience while you’re writing about a unique aspect/angle of that topic.
So, if you’re inclined to write an essay or two, Dinty’s book is a helpful guide. If you get the essay written and need some advice on editing, contact me in the Comments section. I’m happy to help. My rates are based on standard editing fees. It’ll be fun, I promise.