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In the previous post , noted essay expert Sheila Bender introduced the concept of essay writing as an adventure of personal discovery. In this second of three parts, she continues with two more freewrite prompts. A Second Freewrite After writing from where you are, imagine yourself inside a place you can’t really write from, the pantry in your kitchen, a drawer, or perhaps a window box: If I were sitting in the window box under the leaves of the trailing geraniums, I would look down at the impossible height and draw in my legs under my chin.  Would I feel cramped under scalloped leaves, next to the segmented stems?  Would a pink petal form a little rug at my feet or blanket my knees?  Nothing could protect me from the onrush of the watering hose, the torrents, the floods.  Would I sink into the spongy earth to arise like a swamp monster or get washed overboard to a new destiny, landing perhaps upon the heavenly bamboo or the thorny bougainvillea? A Third Freewrite Now open s...

Today’s post is the first of a three-part series by noted author Sheila Bender. Sheila has become one of the leading national experts on writing personal essays. Her book, Writing and Publishing Personal Essays , is in its second edition. With her books, her online classes, coaching, and myriad of other services, she has helped thousands benefit from the humble art of personal essay. Although it might not be obvious, those of us who write personal essays can benefit greatly from not knowing what we have to write about.  That is surprising to people who think of the essay as researched knowledge with a professorial, didactic tone.  But to write an essay is really to “assay” or test out a hypothesis about something.  If writers walk around with a head full of ideas and think they have to commit to writing them, they miss the hypothesis part of the process, the part about finding something of interest to test.  In other words, the essay is an exploration, not an initial knowing.  Beca...

Basically, story and essay are labels defining two ends of a spectrum of focus ranging from thinking to acting. Both are components of Story, an umbrella category that essentially comprises the operating system of the human brain. We use Story to make sense of life and the world we live in. Story explains how things fit together. It explains what happened and helps us predict what might happen next. It defines our place in the cosmic order. Story provides identity on all levels from “child of …” to “best friends forever” to “writer” to “This Is MY Country …” As common usage has evolved over the last few decades, the term essay, specifically personal essay, has come to refer to relatively short compositions expressing the writer’s beliefs, values, and opinions about events, experiences and meaningful topics. Writing an essay is generally an adventure in self-understanding, as these beliefs and opinions may change as they are clearly articulated and organized on the page. Story, sp...

I’ve been known to scoff at new devices. Before I plugged in an Epson ProWriter in 1982, I made no secret of my disdain for ugly, “unreadable” 9-pin computer printer output. You can guess how fast I changed my tune after I plugged in that ProWriter. I had the same impression of eReaders. My brother-in-law was hooked on his Sony reader when we visited them in 2008. “I can’t imagine I’d like that as well as a paper book. Nothing can replace paper,” I countered. Last fall, after receiving an iPad as a gift, I immediately installed eBook readers to preview the eBooks I planned to write. Besides the built-in iBook reader, I loaded Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Stanza, Bluefire and Overdrive. It was clear that eBooks are the wave of the future, but I still had no intention of abandoning paper for my own reading. To get the hang of it, I loaded a dozen free eBooks, though I was slow to begin reading. Then I took the iPad on a cruise and I was hooked. Although the iPad is a bit heavy, it’s no heav...

“Oh dear, that must have been so painful!” murmured Laura (not her real name) after I finished reading a story to our writing group. Her tone oozed compassion, and I saw a couple of eyebrows raise quizzically as others turned to look at her. I appreciated her response, though feeling it was off target. “Actually, it wasn’t,” I demurred,“at least not on a conscious level.” That experience brought home a crucial fact we must keep in mind as we write. We can spend years honing our Truth and writing our stories with finesse worthy of a Pulitzer, but we can’t control readers’ perceptions. Readers hear their own story in ours. This is not news. Mayhem at Camp RYLA , an essay I wrote years ago, is based on first-hand experience with differences in the way individuals witnessed a shared experience. I wrote that essay years ago, and since then I’ve learned that neuroscientists have not only confirmed the validity of my observations, they have explained them. We compare new input to ex...