“A word after a word after a word is power.” — Margaret Atwood
Welcome to the first day of a very special edition of Essay Camp.
Here we are once again at last. You made it. You’ve booked passage across imaginary oceans, weathered virtual long-haul flights, and driven through fictional nights to reach this place. Welcome. I’m so glad you could make it. It’s the first day of Essay Camp, and we’re going to do some writing.
Being a writer is hard—far harder than it has any business being.
Many people imagine what it might be like to create essays or novels, memoirs or biographies, but of course it’s much easier to fantasize than to actually do it. When it comes time to actually put words to page, many of us freeze—even those who have done it before; even the so-called seasoned professionals.
To start is often the hardest part of the process, and the biggest difference between those who write and those who don’t is simply that first decision: to begin.
The thing that stops most of us is fear. We’re afraid we will fail. We’re afraid we’ll look stupid, untalented, uncool, crazy, or boring. This week at the very least, I want to assure you not to worry about any of that. I want to give you permission to be as stupid, untalented, uncool, crazy, and boring as you need to be, in order to put one word down after another on the page.
Once again, we’re holding this session of Essay Camp during National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, but our goals is not based on word count. Since this is Essay Camp, we’re writing our way towards essays, or the essay process, even if no finished essays come about.
What is an essay?
An essay is famously defined as “an attempt.” That’s where the word comes from. It means to try—but try to do what? To remember. To explain. To think. To compare. To understand. An essay can be long or short, personal or impersonal, can express a truth or explain a stance, introduce an idea, or marry two seemingly unrelated ideas together. Essays can be quiet or loud, modest or grandiose. They can tell readers what to think, or leave them to puzzle it out on their own.
There’s sometimes an assumption that an essay must make an argument or tell a story, with a clear lesson attached, but many of the best essays do neither of those things.
To write an essay is to reach for something, not so much to explain as to explore.
You do not have to fully understand a story or a topic to write an essay about it. Not only can you write to find out what it is you think or feel about something, but doing so is highly encouraged. Many, many famous writers, from James Baldwin to Joan Didion, have said that they write in order find out what it is they think, feel, want to know, or don’t want to know.
Another important note: A lot of beginning writers have been given the impression that in order to write a powerful essay, they must get very personal, and dredge up the hardest, worst, or most interesting thing that has ever happened to them, and write about that. But that is not really true. You do not have to strip-mine your trauma for content. Whether you want to go there or not is entirely up to you. In the kingdom of essays, all subjects are equal, from the very big to the very, very small.
This week as you write, you are encouraged to tune out all external noise about right or wrong, good or bad, when it comes to your writing. Focus only on telling the truth. Your truth. No one ever has to see these drafts but you, so write in whatever way feels most true to you.
I’m going to use the same metaphor that I’ve used before: Our habits, our fears, our preconceived ideas of work, and art, and self, can sometimes feel like an itchy old coat that we wear, day in and day out. For the next five days, let’s create a kind of warm space where we can take that coat off. Forget the self. Shrug free of routine identity. Lose your voice and walk voiceless into the place inside of you where voice does not exist. There are words there. Grab them. Take them from where they lie gleaming in the dark and carry them out with you into the light again.
This session of Essay Camp will be different in that I, your gentle Camp Counselor, am still on sabbatical, and so this is something of a repeated course. But sometimes it can still be helpful to retrace our steps, to start again, to walk the same path and see what new things we notice in the places we have been before. At least I hope so.
Let’s begin.
“The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.” —Margaret Atwood
Writing Assignment, Day 1
Today you are going to write. All you have to do is get started. You don’t have to have any idea where you’re going with it yet, you just have to begin. I invite you to use a prompt that I myself like to use: the Five Things essay prompt. It’s easy, open-ended, and gives you the freedom to write about whatever topic feels most pressing. If you’re strapped for time or sapped of energy, try just writing down five sentences instead.
If you do choose to write only five sentences, try taking a breath and clearing your mind before each one. Then think of the truest sentence that drops into your mind in that silence and write it down. Don’t overthink it. First thought, best thought.
Here’s how it works:
For the more traditional Five Things prompt, open up a blank document, turn to a new page in your notebook, or pull up your favorite writing app. Now write or type the number 1. Then write about whatever comes to mind. An image, an idea, a memory, something that you saw yesterday or remember from twenty years ago. It doesn’t matter, so long as what you write is true, or feels true. Write for as long as you want without going back to read any of it. You can write just a few words, or many pages. Length is not important. Do not retrace your steps to edit. It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be written.
Then without reading over what you’ve just written, move on to number 2. Start again. Your second “thing” can be related to the first thing, or be completely unrelated. It might be secretly related in ways you won’t quite realize yet. Again, you can let each “thing” or section be as long or as short as you need, from a single word to many pages. When you’re done, move on to number 3, and so on, until you have completed all five things.
Then you’re done. Put it away and don’t think about it. Do not read it yet.
I like this prompt because it can often push you to keep going just a little bit further, to push past the places where we might normally stop.
If you are choosing to use a pared down version of this prompt, write only five sentences or even just five single words instead. Try sticking with observations from the real world, without using metaphor. This is an assignment that the poet Marie Howe likes to give. Her example: “I saw a water glass on a brown tablecloth, and the light came through it in three places.” You may be surprised by what you can produce when these observations start to add up.
Alternate Option 1: Freewriting
If you’ve already tried the Five Things essay prompt and it didn’t work for you, or you would just prefer to do something else, you can go ahead and try some good old-fashioned freewriting instead.
Set a timer for whatever amount of time you have—ten minutes, thirty minutes, an hour—and write whatever comes. As with the Five Things prompt, try not to look back at what you’ve written as you’re writing. Keep moving forward, without worrying whether it’s good or not, until you’ve reached the end of your allotted time.
For those who would like a specific prompt, you can try out some of these:
Write about what the world smelled like the first time you fell in love.
Finish this sentence: ‘The last time I danced like that was when…”
Write about being given a favorite toy when you were a child.
Write about a November past.
Write about a time you did or did not see a live animal—at the zoo, in the wilderness, or on a boat.
Describe a supermarket you don’t shop at anymore.
Describe the hottest day you can remember, and what you did that day.
Describe the hairstyle worn by your best friend in high school.
Write about a time when you were happy.
Write about a time when you were cruel.
Write about the fact that you hate writing, have no talent, or cannot write.
Write about the most boring thing you can think of.
Write about oranges.
Write about keys and/or locks.
Alternate Option 2: Rebel Mode
If you’re here for the camaraderie of the write-along exercise and plan to write something other than essays, just go ahead and work on your project for as much time as you have.
Reading Assignment, Day 1
If you want to write essays, you should be in the habit of reading them. If you have time to both read and write over the next five days, please do both. If you don’t, please prioritize the writing, and you can catch up with the readings another time. NOTE: Because this is a repeated course (with revisions), I am giving reading assignments that you may have seen before. Feel free to seek out new essays, new memoirs, or any other piece of writing, including fiction, that grabs your interest and is not “the news.”
For Today
If possible, I would like you to read an essay. You can select one from a book you already own, buy or borrow a new book (e-books make this easy), find one you’ve been meaning to read in a literary magazine or newspaper online, or select one of several classic or well-known essays suggested below.
Here are some classics:
“The Death of the Moth,” by Virginia Woolf, 1,175 words, 4 minute read (PDF) (here’s an alternate online version)
“A Good Café on the Place St-Michel,” from A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway, 1,639 words, 6 minute read (link)
“Night Walks,” by Charles Dickens, 3,788 words, 14 minute read (PDF)
“Goodbye to All That,” by Joan Didion, about 4,000 words, 18 minute read (PDF)
“Equal in Paris,” by James Baldwin, 6,775 words, 33 minute read (PDF)
“Tiny Beautiful Things,” by Cheryl Strayed, 896 words, 4 minute read
“Me Talk Pretty One Day,” by David Sedaris, 1,847 words, 9 minute read (PDF)
Time To Write!
Without further ado, let’s get started. I wish that I was back to work and could present you all with fresh material and my full attention. In the meantime, I hope we can still build a little space together over the next five days, drawing inspiration from one another and from exercises past.
Happy writing!
xo
Summer
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