Writing the Essay

Every freshman at my college was required to take a class called “Writing the Essay.” This class was supposed to teach us how to write real essays, not the five-paragraph kind we learned in high school. Experiences with the class depended largely on the professor. Mine was an extremely stressed-out adjunct who was probably (hopefully?) a better writer than she was a teacher. When I remember her, she is bursting through the door in a flurry of papers, several minutes late, looking bewildered by us, her students. We watched a lot of movies, including the part from The Adventures of Baron Munchausen where Robin Williams plays the moon and also including the professor’s wedding video, which she narrated live, woven with the story of her recent divorce. I am normally pretty easy on teachers but I learned nothing in this class, a class which might have been useful. The experience did, however, make me aware of the plight of adjuncts, and I came to believe that if this woman weren’t running back and forth between NYC and Jersey trying to teach at four different schools, none of which offered her health insurance, her classes might have made more sense, or she at least might have spilled her coffee less often.

Instead, the class turned me off essay writing for nearly twenty years. It wasn’t conscious; only now can I locate that classroom as the place I said, “Not for me.” Essay writing, as it was presented to me then, was confusing, and the professor was unable to elaborate on her repeated note to me that the pieces I kept handing in were “not essays.”

This is all to say that the six-week essay class I just took with Chelsea Hodson was the opposite of whatever that was. Saturday was the last session, and I don’t think I can overstate how perfect this class was for me, at this moment.

The flow of the class took us from generating ideas for essays in the first session to choosing an idea, completing a first draft, and doing a revision by the last session. Chelsea used the phrase “permission-giving” about the types of texts that open your mind to what’s possible, and her whole class was that for me. Her approach to the things we think we “have to” or “should” do in writing seems to be — what if you didn’t? The structure of the six weeks was helpful for me, as it practically took us through the steps of writing an essay, while the philosophy behind all of Chelsea’s guidance was incredibly freeing.

Over the course of the six weeks, I wrote and revised one 4,000-word essay. It started with the prompt, “What’s something you could never write about?” and here I am, thinking about who might like to publish it.

This week in writing

I spent last week finishing up my essay and thinking about my final edits of Leave. I *think* I know the direction I want to go with the first chapter, so now I just need to make the changes. And then we go into layout! More soon.

This week in reading

Still listening to All Fours on audio. Still wow. This book just goes there. It is truly wild.

I also bought some new books while in the Catskills this weekend, because I love to support my all-time favorite bookstore, One Grand. Speaking of the Catskills, I leave you with this.