My writing students complained the other day about certain canned responses to their disappointments: Well-meaning folks assured them, "Everything that happens to you is for a reason!" I asked them to raise hands if they agreed or not with this statement. 75% said they disagreed. I'm their writing teacher, and find cliches born of other people's discomfort with our discomfort hard to stomach too. But I suggested a revision: what if you said to them (and yourself), "Everything that happens to you...is for art?" A common problem: Where can I say how I really feel? At a seder this weekend, an older female guest in a glow-worm white jacket confided in me, "We're about to lose our family home. My husband got forced out of his work two years ago. I'm so sad--'" she lowered her voice, "but no one really wants to hear about it." I am always interested in what's really going on for people, and as a result, even strangers often open up for me. I felt for her, what felt like losing her roots. And she was right: it was hard to elicit the empathy she really needed. Much worse things were happening to people everywhere...but so what? This was her grief. She should be able to find an ear for it. My philosophy: Everything That Happens to You Has a Home in Your Art I couldn't tell her this, then, nor did I know if she ever wrote, but we could say: Every single thing that happens to you has a home in your art. That annoying comment your teacher made about your test. That t-shirt you won at the fair. The way your mom looks at you when you get home late. The family home you lost. The cough that wouldn't go away. The school you didn't get into. The kid you hope to have. It doesn't matter what it is: art can handle it. Art will hold it. Art gives you a place to hold it and understand it. In my intro to personal essay class, "Word UP," I ask my students to call out, "Thank you, Life, for giving me my material!" It's goofy but accurate and it never hurts to be Continue Reading …
Prompts
Math and Talking About Feelings
Math and I are old Frenemies. We whisper about each other behind each other's backs-- word problems indeed. In this area, it's hard to talk about my feelings-- where they came from, how gendered they might be. Maybe you can relate, or maybe you can't; maybe numbers make you feel confident, like whatever is quantifiable is also manageable. Maybe you love equations more than, say, a great burrito. For a moment, I'm looking at the other side of the story. I mostly avoid math, though I do run a business (hi!). In that business, I help students write personal essays that must meet unforgiving word or character count limits. So the math I use most on a daily basis is addition (do these words surpass limit?) and subtraction (what can we take out to be under the word count limit?). With these numbers in mind, I pull the gem sentences and phrases from the slush sentences. I'm comfortable with these constraints. I'd happily do that for you. Getting 2,071 words down to 650 doesn't scare me. Tax Day means Math Day Problems All my feelings about math resurface on Tax day, the math-iest day on the calendar. Tax day, thankfully, falls during Poetry Month. Now poetry I get. That's really moved society forward. You can sign up for poem-a-day here. Most, but not all, of my clients & students are too young to pay taxes as head of household, so they (you) are not exactly sharing my pain on tax day (yet). But no one is too young to understand what giant horse-crap taxes are. The less you have, the more you pay. I work with students from families across the economic spectrum. For complicated reasons, and due to unforgiving math, my own economic situation is sometimes perilous. It's good for empathy. If I possibly can, I offer sliding scale as an option for payment. I understand. But at least I wrote off all those books I bought. After Math Day comes Non-Violent Day So April 16th is a great day in the world of ordinal numbers because it means Continue Reading …
Free-writing for your best essay ideas
Free-writing toward the Light For years I have relied on free-writing exercises to show my students their own light. Free-writing opens the writer to all the buzzing life they carry inside themselves in the form of memories, wishes, dreams, regrets, insights-- and stories, stories, stories. And for your college essay, you need stories. I start all my Essay Intensive students on their college essay process with free-writing. When students respond to prompts without any self-censorship or self-criticism, in their flow, they can let their minds be as wild, creative, and deep as they naturally are (yay, sweet relief!)! And what they generate is often surprising and, ace of aces, not boring! Any writer is capable of pulling up material from the abyss of the self, and the resources there cannot be exhausted. You inner world is full of riches that you can use for practical ends and to meet your writing goals. Much better than bitcoin, whatever that really is. Here's a piece I recently wrote for TeenLife Mag that tells you exactly how you can use free-writing to rock your college essay-- or any meaningful introspective task. It solves any number of problems. Any of this sound like you?: "Are you stuck on your college essay draft? Or don’t even know where to start? Are you sure that you have nothing of interest to say? Bogged down by wordiness and obfuscations? Or are you trying to write too many essays at once? Free-writing has the cure for what ails you. Here’s why and how to do it, and some prompts to get you started." Read more. Want to share your free-writing with nosy people? Oh, good! Your kindergarten teacher probably said "sharing is caring." And while that rhyme has the gag factor, it's also true. At Essay Intensive, we care a lot about what you find when you look inside yourself unfiltered. We're also nosy in the way a writer is obligated to be, and have a good eye for sentences and ideas that could lead you somewhere profound. For fast feedback Continue Reading …
Caught Between Identities
Helping Teens Explore Identities Every week, I teach personal essay writing to middle schoolers at The TEAK Fellowship, and I think a lot about how identities are formed. This week, I wanted to find an essay by a trans author for them to read. This is an identity marker many students--and many adults--still feel confused about. Confusion is not unhealthy; ignorance is. One job of a writer, and a teacher, and maybe just a decent person, is to do the work to clear ignorance cobwebs from our eyes. It can be messy. We need to see them I spend a lot of time with teens, listening to them, thinking about them and what they need. Whenever possible, I laugh with them, allowing them to poke fun at adults, myself included, our hypocrisies and short-comings. There's lots of material there. I read great essays from them on the ways we've not stacked up, everything from leaving water running while we brush our teeth (though we ask them not to) to insulting their weight (when they weren't upset about it) to berating them for getting F's without asking about their days. Their criticism is for a purpose, not superfluous. They are in the process of deciding which adult identities are worth growing into. That said, I believe more than ever, our teens need to see their teachers (and, frankly, as many adults in their world as possible) stand up against erasure and misbegotten hatred of individuals and groups. Our teens need to know, if it was them at risk, that their identity, their selves, would be protected, too. Seen. Celebrated, especially. Art for all our identities That's what art, and in particular the art of the personal essay, is for (or one of the things, anyway). When we write, we look into identity closely, to understand how a person comes to be themselves, what has shaped them. To share that through style and craft. To open yourself up to others. To transmute pain. No matter who teens are in the process of becoming, each needs to know they belong--somewhere Continue Reading …
Understanding the Common App Essay Prompts 2018-2019
"I read the Common App Essay Prompts, what do I do now?!" If the suggestion, "Just write an essay you love!" is too vague for you, here's help breaking down the Common App Prompts 2018. Some people prefer to let the essay prompts be jumping off points. That's fine too. Trust your mind. But if you're looking for deeper breakdown of the Common App 2018-2019 prompts, this guidance is for you. It was published in TeenLife Mag back in July but...I was busy having a baby and didn't get to post it. Now that baby's been had! You'll find the advice is relevant and hopefully a nudge towards...just writing that essay you love. Excerpt on responding to the Common App Essay Prompts 2018-2019 "Here’s the deal: When it comes time to write your Common Application college personal essay, it’s not really about the prompt. It's what you do with it, and how deep you go. Each prompt is a doorway into a story you want to tell, something distinctive you want to share. You have to know a few things to pull this off: What the genre of personal essay requires of you generally (general purpose of the essay); what each Common Application prompt is asking for (decoding the question); what possible responses are available to you (your life experiences and what you’ve made of them). You’ll find tips on the first two here and our tips on the writing process. Then, you’ll have to go inward. We can’t tell you what you’ve lived, and if we could, we’d be depriving you of the real work." The full post can be read here, on TeenLife, where you'll find tons of other useful information. Need help with your Common App Essay? We have expert advice for you so when you're asked what you wrote about, you'll say, "Oh, I just wrote an essay I loved!" Contact us for details. Because details are where the good stuff is. Continue Reading …
Essay Intensive Is Having A Baby
The Facts, Baby! Essay Intensive will be Doing Maternity for much of the summer-- we 're having a(nother) baby! Sometimes we're metaphorical...but this is literal. We are literally having a baby, sometime around Independence Day (because we appreciate irony). What does the Baby have to do with me? What does this mean for you? It means that for July our response time may be slower. Or we may refer you out to our talented colleagues for urgent writing support needs. Please contact us to inquire if we have room to work with you. Thank you! Meanwhile, we cherish you. Have a beautiful summer, and go write like your life depends on it. We are grateful to have a life filled with children (3, 11, 13 and....newly made). They keep us creative and questioning. They remind us that the future is literally in their growing hands. It can be really hard to be a person, and so we try to raise our own just like we do our business-- with love, integrity, honesty and a good dose of humor. Now, who would we be if we didn't give you a writing prompt? Prompt Write everything you know about your birth story, and any questions you have. What blanks need to be filled in? Do you see threads connecting how you were born to the rest of your life, as it's unfolded? If tangents arise, follow them. Continue Reading …