Are you a personal essay writer, or an aspiring personal essay writer who is reluctant to write the truth about yourself because you fear others will judge you for your flaws?

This past May, I attended the Muse and Marketplace, an annual writing conference held by the Boston based writing center, Grubstreet. The details of many of the workshops are worthy of sharing with you, but, since I’m a personal essay writer and memoirist, one in particular resonated with me: “Writing a Risky Personal Essay.” A poet, journalist, critic, writing instructor, award winning memoirist, and more, Ethan Gilsdorf opened the session with this quote by  Cheryl Strayed: “When people are honest and vulnerable, we usually respond with our own honesty and our own vulnerability, and with kindness.”

How do you begin writing a risky personal essay? Gilsdorf advises to first explore a “burning question about your life,” something “messy,” human. Write a list of topics: a crisis, an unresolved conflict with family or yourself, questions from your past that have yet to be answered, a particular obsession of yours, or something considered taboo.

Don’t go searching for a topic. “Let the topic select you,” Gilsdorf encourages. I think of what Ann Hood said in a workshop I attended at Grub Street: “Write about what keeps you up at night.” Once the topic “finds you,” and you’re ready to wrestle with your past on the page, Gilsdorf reminds us to focus on the “building blocks” of a personal essay: employ scene, or dramatic moments, and reflection, where you step back and make sense of the events that have occurred. The essay should reveal how you, as a character, have changed. Who are you now versus then? How you have grown as a result of the conflict? To reveal character, include your quirks, and your voice. To better understand this ambiguous term, Gisldorf quotes Julie Wildhaber: “Voice is the personality of the story.” You want to create a distinct persona on the page, one the reader can trust. For instance, How you write about your experience growing up with a single mother will be very different than someone else’s experience. Voice is influenced by tone, or the attitude of the character. Are you angry, somber, anxious?

It’s worth noting that the essay doesn’t have to conclude with resolution, but it should end with what you have learned. Readers are not interested in reportage of events, or being left unsatisfied. It’s helpful to think of the essay as having two layers: the context, or plot – this happened then that happened – versus the deeper, emotional layer, the stuff we often find difficult to write about. Sue Silverman refers to theses layers as the “voice of innocence versus the voice of experience.” Vivian Gornick calls them “The “Situation and the Story.”

As a writing exercise, here’s what Gilsdorf suggested in the workshop: Choose a risky topic and go back to a key, dramatic moment in time. To recreate it on the page, employ dialogue, scene, and action. For me, it helps to use the five senses. Be careful of over-explaining. Doing so runs the risk of booting readers out of scene. Then write a section that reflects on that scene. Examine what happened, why it happened, what you now know about yourself that you didn’t know then. Explain how and why you’ve changed. Is there a question you are still unable to answer? Explain why.

When writing about an experience emotionally close to us, it’s difficult to see prose that smacks of self-indulgence. Gilsdorf cautions us to be aware of this pitfall. When revising the essay, examine places that sound over-sentimental.

To help you get a better sense of what the risky personal essay looks like, I encourage you to read Gilsdorf’s essay, “The Day My Mother Became a Stranger,” published this past May in Boston Magazine.

Here are some other resources Gilsdorf suggested:

The Source of All Things, a memoir by Tracey Ross

“All Aboard,” an essay by Dave Demerjian.

“Cubby, Skinny, Accepting,” and essay by Cole Kazdin

Good-luck with your risky essay!

If you had to write about your body, what would you say?

First, let me define body image: it’s how you think and feel about your body, it’s shape and size, how you see yourself in the mirror, how you feel in your body.

Writing about your own body might feel a lot like walking through town naked. But I’m not here to encourage you to strip on the page, though a certain amount of stripping is required in order for our readers to get to know us as real human beings. The more important question is, when writing about your own body, how do you avoid the pitfall of naval gazing? Through metaphor, imagery, the five senses. When writing the following piece, my aim was to do just that – become intimate with peaches – to smell, feel, taste, touch my way toward a more positive image of my body. I chose peaches because they are one of my favorite fruits, and it was a peach I last recall holding before an elderly driver ran into me at a farmers’ market several years ago. So I guess you could say I’m obsessed with peaches and what they, particularly the one I held at the market, mean to me: changes in the body,  acceptance, re-newal, survival. I wrote with those interpretations in mind when crafting the following narrative:

I gently roll a peach between my palms, its downy coat tickling my fingers. I study the curves and arcs of its plump body. I’m searching for the perfect peach: golden hued with no deformities. But I notice that it has  a soft spot with a purplish bruise, and place it back in the display. I stand among the peaches for another fifteen minutes, picking up a scarred one, a wrinkled one, then another with a slit in its skin. These damaged peaches must taste like wood, I think. I choose one more, and bring it close to my nose. I inhale, smelling earth. I’m tempted to buy it, but notice a blemish at the base, and motion to place it back among the ones that are disfigured. I pause, and tell myself to give this peach a chance. Maybe it will taste better than it appears. I buy it, and as I walk away from the farm stand, sink my teeth into it, its blushed skin forgiving. Pulp bursts with warm juice. I stop, swallow. Summertime trickles down my throat. Sweet. Perfect. 

Do you have a body image narrative to share? If not, I hope this post inspires you to strip, just a little.

In her debut novel, Glassmusic, painterly prose brushes the page in sweeping greens and blues. Weaved throughout that lush 1920’s Norwegian landscape, is the heart of the narrative: A coming of age story in which young Ingrid struggles to come to terms with the sexual assault she witnessed against her sister, Kari.

Ingrid’s blind father, who relies on her to see for him, teachers her to play music on water-filled glasses. Those melodies, along with guiding her father, are what protect her from her secret and ground her through her tumultuous childhood. Her mother, who is jealous that her husband needs Ingrid more than her, looks away from her daughter in disappointment. And her sister, Kari, inflicts her with physical and emotional harm.

Ingrid seeks companionship, and quickly trusts Stefan, a Parisian boy visiting from France. It is this relationship, and their individual interpretations of faith and literature that spur Ingrid to become more aware of the world beyond her own microscopic one. Along with her newfound knowledge, she explores distant fjords, hills, and woods not only to escape the memory of her sister’s assault, but also to figure out who she is and who she wants to be. Is she a protector of secrets and lies or a teller of the truth? As she navigates her way toward awareness, slipping over rocky terrain along the way, she realizes that she needs her family, and that her family needs her. More so, as a reflective older child, she realizes she needs to tell the truth.

In Glassmusic, Snow creates palpable characters rich with universal emotions and conflict: anger, pity, empathy, loyalty, forgiveness, jealousy, and identity.

Ingrid’s father says, “Talking is like music, you must practice. (123).” Perhaps the same can be said for making sense of the unfathomable – it takes practice.

Rebecca Snow’s debut novel, Glassmusic, was released from Conundrum Press in November 2014. Her poetry has been published in Blue Moon, Pooled Ink, and was added to the Denver Poetry Map.  She won first place for narrative nonfiction in the 2007 Writers Studio Contest. Her piece was featured in Progenitor. Snow received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana and teaches English at the Community College of Aurora. Originally from Seattle, she lives in Denver, Colorado with her son and enjoys hiking the great Rocky Mountains.

 Photo by Marisa Ross.

I’m excited to introduce my first guest blogger and accomplished writer, Patrick Ross, of Committed: A Memoir of the Artists Road. Patrick and I are fellow alums of the Vermont College of Fine Arts, where I had the opportunity to read parts of his powerful account of his journey across the United States to engage with creative individuals. But the book is more than about traveling; it’s about identity, and his journey of self-discovery. Starting on page one, Patrick bravely shares his vulnerabilities and demons. In this post, Patrick takes an honest look at what it means to live the life of an artist.

“Here’s a tip for artists who are in it for a lifetime. When the tide is in, write. Wake up at two in the morning if you have to and write. But if the tide is out don’t sweat it. That’s when you get your busywork done.” – Flutist and songwriter Steve “Voice of Golden Eagle” Cox, quoted in Committed: A Memoir of the Artist’s Road (p. 124).

Am I an artist who is in it for a lifetime? I’d like to think so. That was a theme of my travel memoir Committed. While on a cross-country trip interviewing artists of every type who had embraced an art-committed life, I found myself inspired to live the same way. It led me to earn an MFA in Writing and to write Committed. But just how committed am I to that life nearly five years after those interviews?

I interviewed Steve “Voice of Golden Eagle Cox” in Memphis, Tennessee. I thought of him at times as I spent the latter half of 2014 writing nothing more creative than short blog posts. No personal essays. No follow-up books. Nothing.

For a time I had a built-in excuse: Committed was published in October, so there was promotion leading up to its release, then more after its release. When promoting yourself as a writer, who has time to actually write? That frenzy of interviews, guest blogs, readings and book-signings largely came to an end. But still I didn’t write. The tide still wasn’t in.

Steve’s wisdom on the tide of creativity struck me the day he shared it with me, and so it was one of the small morsels from hundreds of hours of interviews that made it into Committed. But at the time I also sensed a lack of drive in Steve. He kept saying he was “open to possibility,” to write more music, to return to the road, to be creative.

I certainly didn’t see myself as superior to him in that scene, as my internal monologue suggests: “I am open right now to possibility in the same way a defeated prey is open to a predator’s jaws. It is an openness grounded in passivity (p. 124).” But as I progressed on my road trip, and became more open to possibility myself, I then found myself driven to seize that possibility.

Near the end of that road trip I interviewed another songwriter, radio DJ Rochelle Smith. Sitting in her Boise, Idaho, studio, she told me it had been a while since she had done any solo performing. “I guess I’m looking for that next project. I’m not sure what is coming, but I feel something is (p. 218).” She had earlier told me that she agreed to the interview because she had asked the universe if she should, and it had said yes. In Committed, I connect her in my mind with my Memphis interview:

“She’s presumably asked the universe and is waiting for an answer. I think again of Steve Cox, the Voice of Golden Eagle. He said the universe had proclaimed to him that a wondrous new path would be coming soon, and that he’d be ready when it arrived. But what if you don’t have the patience to wait? What if you’ve cleared your way through the tumbleweeds, the dried hulks of your past, and are anxious to drive forward (p. 218)?”

As I read this passage now I feel guilty, that I’m somehow suggesting that Steve and Rochelle now longer had any wisdom to offer me, that I’m ready to move forward and leave them with their passivity.

One of the most difficult aspects of writing Committed was telling the story as true as I could, including revealing the impressions that were being formed in me as I met with these artists who were so generous with their time and their stories. One reviewer of Committed, not surprisingly a professional writer, picked up on this:

“I was also grateful for the absence of gloss that might infect other essays on art. The artists Ross interviews in their own homes and studios are presented without makeup, so to speak. I could smell the cat litter, the coffee brewing in the kitchen, and the musty wardrobes. I saw dust bunnies beneath the sofa and front steps in need of repair. And so when Patrick was swept up in a sweeter aura that some artists exuded, I understood that here was an artist making a special impression upon the author (Amazon.com review by novelist P.J. Reece of Committed: A Memoir of the Artist’s Road).”

I have continued to grow since that 2010 trip. What I know now is that I was in no position to judge these two musicians for any perceived passivity. I’d add that both Steve and Rochelle were artists that made a special impression on me; that’s why they receive a disproportionate amount of attention in the book as I attempted to share their “sweeter aura” with my readers.

So this winter has proven to be a dry one creatively. There has been no tide because the water has frozen over. At times I have longed for even the hint of possibility, the notion that perhaps the universe had something waiting for me. On far too many days the story of my art-committed life seemed written in the past tense.

You can’t force the tide to come in. But you can be ready for it when it arrives. And in the last three weeks or so, some cracks have formed in the ice. A bit of cold water has stealthily streamed onto shore. I’ve seized on those drops, writing a few pages of choppy, rough prose for my next book. I’m refusing to judge its quality right now, but instead just reveling in the fact that I am, apparently, still a creative writer living an art-committed life.

There is much defrosting still to do. This winter has been the most brutal for me emotionally in nearly a decade. But I understand that Steve “Voice of Golden Eagle” Cox was not just wise in understanding that creativity is a tide, but that we have to remain open to possibility. You can’t seize something that isn’t there, but you can be ready for it when it arrives.

Patrick Ross is a professional storyteller. He works by day as a speechwriter and communications advisor in the Obama Administration while finding time to teach creative writing online with The Loft Literary Center. The author of Committed: A Memoir of the Artist’s Road, he has an MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Learn more at http://www.patrick-ross.com.

I’m a prose writer, a memoirist, and essayist. I don’t pretend to be a poet, but I dabble in a bit of poetry here and there. I don’t adhere to meter, heptameter, hexameter, or iambic pentameter. I don’t write limericks, ballads, or sonnets. I write vers libre (free verse). I write to share the emotional truth.

Yellow – the most visible color.

Banana peels, tractors, raincoats, school buses, beach flags.

Highlighted words: scars, survivor’s guilt. Sticky notes on the refrigerator, on the bathroom mirror, scrawled with indelible ink: call psychologist, take antidepressant, Attend brain injury support group.

Flashing traffic lights: Slow Down. Double yellow lines: Do Not Pass. Diamond shaped signs: Road Closed Ahead. Rectangular signs: Highly Flammable. Children at Play. Watch for Bicyclists, Joggers – and pedestrians.

Caution tape – a reminder. Ten died. We survived the impact – of the speeding car. Sixty-three of us.

Yellow – the most visible color. In the dark. From a distance. Even from the corners of my eyes.

Be daring. Take a risk. Write a poem. And, please, share.

At this year’s Boston Book Festival, I plodded into a standing-room-only venue to attend the session, “Writer Idol.” I stuffed a page with the first two hundred fifty words of my memoir in progress into a box bulging with dozens of other submissions, then sat in an aisle seat, in case I decided the session was not for me after all. I stared ahead, waiting for three agents – Kimiko Nakamura, Sorche Fairbank, and Amaryah Orenstein – to enter the stage, where they would listen to two authors take turns reading anonymous submissions. I recalled the description of the event in the brochure: “This session is not for the thin-skinned.” I can handle this.

A few moments later, the agents settled in their seats, and the show began. One of the authors plucked a submission from the box, and started reading. The agents were still, concentrating with their eyes closed. The secret writer knew that an agent could react at any moment, bringing the reading to a halt. The reader finished almost the entire piece before Ms. Fairbank’s hand waved in the air, indicating where she would stop reading and reject the piece. Soon after, Ms. Kimiko raised her hand. Clichés, and too many words are “symptoms of the rest of the manuscript,” Ms. Fairbank explained. Ms. Kimiko agreed. Buried in the audience, the writer knew that if their full manuscript came across either one of the agent’s desks, there would be a good chance they would reject it. As I imagined how that writer felt, a warm current whirled in my chest.

The second submission was weighed down by “too much exposition,” and encumbered with “meaningless” words, Ms. Fairbank said. “I don’t know what’s happening,” Ms. Orenstein said about the third submission. The fourth one was also interrupted. “The scene seems like it’s about to drag on,” Ms. Fairbank commented. I scribbled notes, visualizing my piece. Do I use clichés? I don’t believe I use wasted words.

“The Peach,” a reader called out. I sat up straight, gripping my pen, readying myself for the critique of my piece:

I dig my nails into my thigh, scrape the center of the raw, six-inch scar that reminds me of a scythe. Despite my efforts to relieve the itch, it won’t let up. Then, like a crescent moon, the sliver emerges from my skin. A splinter?  No. A sliver of glass the size of a fingernail tip. I touch it, motion to flick it away as if it were a poisonous insect, but stop, and hold it under the lamp for a closer look. A dull yellow glimmers from its core. Its amorphous – ”

At the same time, all three agents hands shot up. I dropped my head into my notepad, heat gushing into my face. I had read the passage again and again, and “amorphous” seemed fitting. But now hearing it, it sounded as if I were trying too hard. So when Ms. Fairbank said my piece is “over-wrought with language,” I nodded. I nodded again when she questioned my use of “poisonous insect.” The other two agents agreed – too much focus on detail for the start of the manuscript. Ms. Fairbank suggested I have a “fresh pair of eyes” read it.

For the rest of the session, even though I burned with disappointment, I focused on the responses of the agents, telling myself that this was my chance to learn what they are looking for in a manuscript. I jotted notes: “Start off simple. Don’t dump information onto the page. Don’t create long sentences at the start of the book. Don’t use description for description’s sake, and watch out for piling descriptions on top of each other.”

The next day, after my husband read my piece out loud to me, I revised it:

I dig my nails into my thigh, scrape the center of the raw, moon shaped scar. The itch won’t let up. My nail catches on something hard and sharp. A splinter?  I tweeze it with my nails. I pull out a sliver of glass, the size of a fingernail tip. Where did the glass come from? The windshield of the Buick? Is that possible? Has it been inside me for two months?

Though I had left the session feeling as if I could use a transfusion of confidence, what if I had not attended, or not submitted my piece? I would not have benefited from the trio of raised hands?

This post was published in Brevity on October 30, 2014, at  http://brevity.wordpress.com/2014/10/30/writer-idol/

Photo: courtesy of http://www.bostonbookfest.org