“Arrange whatever pieces come your way.” ― Virginia Woolf
Welcome to the fifth and final day of Essay Camp!
My dear campers, thank you for joining me this week for another session of Essay Camp. As we gather to write once more, I hope that those of you who chose to participate were able to get something out of the experience. Even if all you did was dip a toe into Lake Essay and then run back to your cabin to watch Netflix, you still showed up.
If you attended camp this session, I hope you managed to write this week. If you did the writing assignments, you might have anywhere from 100 to 5,000 new words or more, which you can work from and play around with. If you worked in Rebel Mode, I hope you managed to make some progress with your project or gained a clearer idea of what you want to do with it.
If you did the reading assignments, I hope you found at least one essay that inspired you, made you think, or gave you permission to try something new in your own writing. If you read something not on any of the reading lists, generously supplemented this session by essays editor Katy Kelleher, and found it inspiring, please feel free to share it in the comments below, with a link if possible!
But camp isn’t over yet. If you’re planning to write today, go ahead and do that now before continuing. You know what to do. The rest can wait.
Finished? Great. Let’s continue.
Now that we’ve reached the end of this Essay Camp, the time has finally come to read over what you’ve written and see what your nets have pulled up from the deep.
After you complete your writing assignment for today, take some time over the next few days to read back over your drafts. Ask yourself: what do I find here? How do I feel about it? Do any parts of this feel like a beginning, a middle, or an end? Are there the makings here of a vignette, a braided essay, a narrative essay, or an invitation to dive further into an outside topic? Read some more of the suggested essays, find new essays on your own, and think about whether any of these forms jump out at you as ones you’d like to emulate.
No decision need be permanent, and trial and error is encouraged. As Virginia Woolf said, “arrange what pieces come your way.” You can begin to experiment, revise, and rearrange accordingly once you’re ready.
Ultimately, the best way to get good at writing essays is to learn to recognize how an essay feels when you’re writing one. The more you do it, the more you will find yourself circling in on an ending without even meaning to. It’s a muscle memory, a kind of sixth sense. You need to feel the shape of it in your mind. That’s really the best way to write one; to practice reading and writing essays so much that you find it coming together on its own. When it’s not native to you like this, formed as part of your creative reflexes through experience as a writer and reader, it will always be difficult.
Be sure, when reading back over your own work, to do so with as little judgement as possible. Try to take a bird’s eye view, as though someone other than you had written them, and ask yourself:
What have I chosen to write about?
Is what I’ve written personal, general/topical, or both?
How many different topics or stories are represented here, and what are they?
How, if at all, are any of these threads connected to one another?
Do I notice any common images or themes that emerge or recur?
Is there something here I’m drawn to write more about?
Do any lines, passages, descriptions, or turns of phrase that I have written appeal to me or “feel true?”
Feel free to jot down these observations as notes if you find it helpful.
Like poems, essays have their own logic. We do not have to have it all figured out before we put pen to paper, or lay our fingers on the keyboard. As Joan Didion said: “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” James Baldwin worked in much the same way.
Do not be afraid to write without first understanding why. Things like understanding, themes, and conscious intent can all come later. In the beginning, it’s best not to worry too much about crafting sentences, although of course that matters, but rather to simply employ oneself as a stenographer to our own memories, ideas, and thoughts. You have to harvest the vegetables before you can make the soup.
A freewriting exercise like the five things prompt is not supposed to feel like throwing pots on a ceramicist’s wheel—expert and graceful, with a finished and useful thing resulting at the end. At this stage, it’s more like digging up the clay. You’re mining the necessary minerals. Later is when you can make or refine the raw material. You must dry it, grind it, make a slurry, pour it through a screen, let it stand, knead it, etc. Then you can try to make your pot on the wheel. Then, and only then, will you find out how good your clay is.
But what if I don’t like anything that I’ve written? What if I can’t make an essay out of it?
If your clay turns out to be poor, if it doesn’t hold together, or is insubstantial, and you can’t make anything with it, don’t worry. Definitely do not panic. It just means that you need to work on your clay production, spend some more time digging it up, or find a better spot to dig in. This means nurturing your creative self in whatever way you can. Read more. Give yourself more time away from the noise of the world, or dive more deeply into the topics that interest you. Keep writing, even if you think it’s not good enough yet.
For now, whether you love aspects of what you’ve written or not, see if you can make a little pot or two with the material we’ve already dug up. Over the next few weeks, work to write or revise something essay-shaped from what you’ve already written. Give yourself an appropriate deadline. If the finished essay aims to be 2,000 words or shorter, see if you can finish it in the next two weeks. For longer pieces, give yourself an additional week for each 1,000 words.
Remembered that all essays, no matter their structure, must have three things: a beginning, a middle, and an end:
The beginning draws you in.
The middle holds your interest.
And the ending sees you out again with a sense of closure.
All essays, no matter their type, structure, narrative, or lack thereof, will always have these three things. If each does their job well, then details like topic, style, or formal label become relatively unimportant.
Without further ado, on this last day of Essay Camp, let’s get down to work.
“The habit of writing thus for my own eye only is good practice. It loosens the ligaments. Never mind the misses and the stumbles.” —Virginia Woolf
Writing Assignment, Day 5
Part 1
Please write a five things draft. If you have avoided writing one this week, maybe now is the time to give it a try? Please write all five things, even if you can only manage one word or short sentence each. When you’re done, read back over your drafts from today and the previous four days, and see if you like anything that you’ve written. Does any of it feel true? Is there anything that surprises you? Are there any topics that you’d like to choose for an essay? Is there an essay here already, or the seeds of one, or even just an idea? Pay attention to sentences or passages that might serve as a beginning, a middle, or an end. Does anything sound like an opening? A turning point? A kicker? How are different stories or topics that you wrote about connected?
Alternate Option 1: Freewriting
If you’re not working with the five things prompt, proceed to freewriting instead. Set a timer for whatever amount of time you have—ten minutes, thirty minutes, an hour—and write whatever comes. Try not to look back at what you’ve written. Keep moving forward, without worrying whether what you’ve written is good or not, until you’ve reached the end of your allotted time.
In case you need a prompt:
Describe what it was like as a kid when you stayed home sick from school.
Write about a time when someone stood you up.
Write about a time you broke the law. If you’ve never broken the law, write about a time when you felt tempted.
Write about the room you would need in order to fix everything that is wrong in your life, and what’s in it.
Write about a road not taken.
Write about a body of water.
Write about a time you built a fort.
Alternate Option 2: Rebel Mode
This is the last sprint of the week, so work on your own project as much as you can.
Reading Assignment, Day 5
Please read one of the essays listed below, or one you missed from a previous day.
“A Word for Autumn,” by A. A. Milne, 892 words, 4 minute read
“Living Like Weasels,” by Annie Dillard, 1,585 words, 6 minute read
“On Self-Respect,” by Joan Didion, 1,826 words, 7 minute read
“Uncanny the Singing that Comes from Certain Husks,” by Joy Williams, 2,251 words, 9 minute read
“Scent Makes a Place,” by Katy Kelleher, 2,700 words, 11 minute read
“Frog,” by Anne Fadiman, 6,019 words, 24 minutes
“When I Met the Pope,” by Patricia Lockwood, 6,604 words, 26 minute read
“Shipping Out,” by David Foster Wallace, about 20,000 words, 1 hour 20 minute read
Camp Check-Out
Thank you so much for joining me this week, and special thanks to Katy Kelleher for providing us with a rich new batch of essays to enjoy. Thank you for writing along, for creating community with and for each other, and for sharing your progress.
Keep showing up. Keep writing.
xo
S
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These Essay Camps have been remarkably useful for me. I didn’t do the exercises, I only read one of the recommended essays, and yet I wrote every day on an essay I’d been thinking about, but not getting to for months. How do you do that? Thank you, Summer.
Thank you Summer! I wrote all five days and also read at least one of the essays daily. I’ll read over my work in the coming days and continue to read the essays. I think I might also just continue to write from all the rich prompts you gave us for awhile. Like you, i’m finding after many years of journaling that I default to ruminating, which tends to keep me stuck in a negative thought cycle, so I think working with a topic or a prompt for awhile may be a better approach for me. Essays feel like a natural form for me and I want to continue this work. Thank you again!