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How to Begin a Personal Essay
No one wrote more provocative first lines of poems than Emily Dickinson. Who could read an opening line such as I felt a Funeral, in my Brain or I heard a Fly buzz—when I died and not feel compelled to read on? When we write introductions for personal essays, our impulse may be to rely Read more
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This Is Only Partly True
Try this. Freewrite about a time when you faced a personal conflict. You might choose a time when you felt vulnerable or embarrassed, a time when you thought that you were treated unfairly, a time when you believed that you failed at something, or any other tension-filled time. Begin anywhere and write about the experience. Read more
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The Arrival (An Experiment in Writing about Family)
On the day Mother arrived, I went to the post office. Michigan was in the midst of its winter deep freeze, temperatures below zero day after day. Ice patched the roads. Until now, Mother had always refused to visit. Two years ago, I moved here to the outskirts of Ann Arbor. I came to pursue Read more
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Make Yourself a Metaphor
Metaphor is a mystery nestled somewhere near the heart of language. Why do we so often think this way, uniting unlike things with our words—the abstract with the concrete—and feeling satisfaction rather than dissonance as a result? Metaphor allows us to describe what would be otherwise indescribable—the minutiae of our emotions, the pinpricks of our Read more
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Lawrence Welk Is Dead: Confession of a Bad Daughter
My thanks to Texas A&M’s Front Porch Journal, where this essay was published. I have to break the news to my mother. She has been chatting her way through her usual Saturday evening phone conversation topics: her friend Shelby’s forty-five-year-old son who has lost his job and moved back home with his mother; the new Read more
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What If Your Mother Tells You Not To?
I first read Maxine Hong Kingston’s memoir The Woman Warrior when I was a graduate student. At that time, something important struck me about Kingston’s message. The first chapter opens with the words of the author’s mother: “You must not tell anyone what I am about to tell you.” Immediately following these words, Kingston reveals Read more
Do you write about yourself and your experiences? Do you write about traumatic events in your life? Or, do you struggle to find time and motivation to write?
If so, this blog is for you.
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