The Essay Question
De-schooling our essays + news of a US retreat!
Hello,
This week, my son wrote his first school essay. I must admit, I remember crossing that particular rubicon a little later, probably around the age of 14. Bert is very nearly 12, and 1,000 words on the causes and effects of the Black Death seemed almost impossible to him.
So we sat down and talked it through, paragraph by paragraph. I explained the point of writing an essay, and how to link the paragraphs together so that it all made sense. I tried to elucidate the construction of introductions and conclusions, and how to make them useful. It was partly the teacher in me flexing her seized muscles, but the creative writer was talking too. And she wanted to show him exactly what a good essay can do.
I write essays, by choice, most weeks. I never thought I’d come to say this, but they feel pleasurable to me, no longer an exercise in tedious formality. Instead, they are a little like an instrument I know how to play. I can feel my way into them, hear their cadences and internal harmonics. When they go well - which isn’t always the case - they have the texture of music.
I knew that Bert was far from this point. There were moments when I got frustrated as his attention meandered anywhere in the room except his essay. You have to actually try, I told him. You have to make an attempt. That is, after all, what an essay is: an attempt. You offer an understanding of the topic at hand. Maybe you fail, maybe you shed some light. But the point is to give it a go.
I mainly felt sorry for him, though. I recognised the groan and the slump against the desk, head in hands, trying to soothe the aching sensation of prising thoughts from your brain. I do that a lot, too. Any new piece of writing - particularly one that hasn’t arrived in a rosy haze of inspiration - is almost physically painful to get started. Tackling an empty page can feel a lot like trying to crack open a box made of concrete. For a long while, my blows just glance off it, and even when I begin to get a purchase, it’s messy.
Watching Bert took me back to the time when I really learned to churn out essays. It was my first year at university, and I’d spent the first two terms wavering over whether I wanted to be there at all, keeping only a feeble grasp on the workload. It wasn’t all my fault. I hadn’t been assigned a tutor to set me work, and I was baffled by the process of acquiring one. Either way, I’d fallen horribly behind, and by the time I realised that I actually wanted to pass the first year, the workload seemed insurmountable. By drawing up the most terrifying chart of my life, I realised that I would need to research and write two and a half essays, each of them 4,000 words, every week for twelve weeks. There was only one way to do that. I put my head down and let it take over my entire life.
Was this essay treadmill a good training ground for being a writer? Yes and no. It taught me that, when push comes to shove, I can absorb large amounts of information very quickly and grind out a quantity of words discussing it. But what terrible words they will be: formulaic, workmanlike, devoid of thought. There was quantity in these essays, but no connection to the material, no delight in the detail or passion in the argument. They made me want to write something else entirely, something that spoke of my lived experience among those big ideas, something profoundly subjective. Looking back, that was what they gave to me: a yearning to do something else with the essay-shaped form.
Eventually, Bert got down to work by ignoring all my artful advice and remembering what a classmate had told him earlier that week: Just hyper-focus and get some words down; no music, no phone. Just writing. I thought I’d told him that already, but he needed to hear it from someone else, someone who didn’t try to argue that essay-writing could be a joyful process if you let it. Maybe that understanding will take a while. But there was a moment, right towards the end, when he looked briefly enlightened.
‘I get it!’ he said.
‘What do you get?’
‘You just have to keep reading stuff, and writing it down.’
I think he’s onto something.
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Five tips for de-schooling your essays:
Delay your introduction
You still need to lay out your terms in a creative essay, but that can wait. Begin, instead, by dropping us straight into the issue at hand. Take us to the place you’re describing, show us your reaction to a key event, or draw us in with a real-life example. Teachers have to read your essay from beginning to end; voluntary readers need to be captured.
Have fun with definitions
Did you start every essay with the phrase: ‘The dictionary definition of x is…’ and then quote directly from the OED? Well, I did, I watched many of my own students do the same, and I still often see it now in online essays. I get why definitions are important - you need to make sure that your readers understand the concepts you’re using - but please close your dictionaries. Defining your terms is a chance for play. Quote the work of other writers and argue with them, or come up with your own explanation of what this means in your specific context. Make this part shine more than anything else. It’s your chance to cast a new light on old ideas.
Find props
Producing material with no props is just incredibly hard. I always try to make essay writing easier on myself by giving myself some easy material to describe. That means reading a book that I can then outline; visiting a place and sharing my experience there; talking to a person and quoting them; watching a movie… you get the picture. You don’t have to discuss pure ideas. Use props instead to show what you mean.
Choose your structure
Your essay, your rules. You don’t have to structure your essays in the same way you did at college - but deciding on a structure does help. You might want to use section breaks to alternate between different parts of the story, for example, or write the whole thing in juxtaposed paragraphs, like Maggie Nelson in Bluets. You might want to start each paragraph with a variation on the same line, or offer a sequence of seemingly unrelated vignettes that are only pulled together at the end by an astonishing callback (I’m looking at you, Hannah Gadsby). Creative constraints can be truly liberating. Impose them on yourself.
Don’t conclude too neatly
The good news is, you no longer have to summarise your findings. The bad news is, there’s no clear ending to most creative essays. Instead, you learn to feel it, rhythmically. I often find that I write to what I think is the end, and then delete the last two sentences in my next draft. It’s good to leave things a little open to make space for the reader to insert their own realisations.
Yesterday, I asked my subscribers to share their favourite essays - here’s the post. It’s an almost irresistible reading list!
A Utah Retreat!
I’m excited to tell you that I’ll be running a weekend retreat in Utah from Saturday 26th to Monday 28th October this year, in collaboration with Elisabeth Lilja of Salt City Therapy. Full details are coming next week, but if that sounds like it might be for you, sign up here to get details and a booking link as soon as they’re released. Places will be very limited, so please get in early to avoid disappointment.
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Take care,
Katherine
Coming up at The Clearing for paid subscribers
Events for paid subscribers
Our next Book Club guest is Samantha Irby, talking about her book of essays Quietly Hostile. Join us live - and put questions to Sam - on Wednesday 22nd May at 6pm UK/1pm ET/10am PT.
Elissa Altman and I will be hosting our next Creative Questions session on Tuesday 4th June at 6pm UK/1pm ET/10am PT.
Our next Retreat is taking place in June. As you may already know, I also run a Retreat Tier for people who’d like to take part in four online retreats per year. These three-hour sessions are slow, calm, nourishing moments for us to gather together, shut out the world, and rest. I provide some gentle reflective exercises, but the deepest value lies in the discussion that comes up as we meander our way through the session. It’s all about being in community for a while, and I really look forward to them.
If you’d like to join us, you’ll need to upgrade to the Retreat Tier. The date is:
Saturday 15th June, 4pm - 7pm UK / 11am - 2pm ET / 8am - 11am PT
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Thank you, Katherine, and also Bert’s classmate, for your combined wisdom and encouragement.
If Bert’s classmate can please also advise on how to overcome my demand avoidant nature when I really want to write and my brain anxiously avoids it, I’d be eternally grateful! 😃
This is timely and inspiring advice. Thank you!