You’re sitting there, staring at a blinking cursor, wondering if anyone actually gives a damn about that time you got lost in a grocery store at age seven. Honestly? They probably don't. Not if you just tell the story. But if you use that moment to explore the crushing realization of human insignificance? Well, now you're practicing the art of the personal essay. It's a weird, vulnerable, and often frustrating medium that occupies the shaky ground between journalism and a private diary.
Writing one isn't about being "correct." It’s about being true. There is a massive difference between the two.
Most people think an essay is a linear path from Point A to Point B. It isn't. It’s a wander. The word itself comes from the French essayer, which literally means "to try" or "to attempt." When Michel de Montaigne started scribbling his thoughts in the 16th century, he wasn't trying to write a manifesto. He was just trying to figure out what he thought about friendship, cannibals, and his own kidney stones. He failed constantly. That’s the point.
What Most People Get Wrong About the Personal Essay
Stop trying to be likable. Seriously.
One of the biggest traps in the art of the personal essay is the "redemption arc." We’ve been conditioned by social media and TED Talks to believe that every story must end with a neat little bow of self-improvement. "I was sad, then I did yoga, and now I’m enlightened." That's not an essay; that's a LinkedIn post. Real essays are messy. They often end in the same place they started, just with a little more dust on the shoes.
Take Joan Didion. She didn't write to give you a roadmap; she wrote to find out what was happening in her own head. In her collection The White Album, she famously noted that we tell ourselves stories in order to live. But she also showed us how those stories often fail us. If you aren't willing to look like a bit of an idiot or a hypocrite on the page, you aren't writing a personal essay. You're writing PR for your ego.
Expert essayist Phillip Lopate, who basically curated the "bible" of the genre with The Art of the Personal Essay anthology, argues that the narrator must become a character. You aren't just the writer; you are the protagonist who happens to be a version of yourself. You have to be able to step back and look at your own flaws with the cold eye of a scientist dissecting a frog. It's uncomfortable. It should be.
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The Architecture of a Narrative Wander
How do you actually build this thing? You don't need a five-paragraph structure. Throw that out.
Instead, think about the "braid." This is a technique where you weave together two or three different strands of thought. Maybe one strand is a memory of your grandmother’s kitchen. Another is a weird fact you learned about the migratory patterns of eels. The third is your current anxiety about a job interview. On their own, these are just fragments. But when you layer them? Suddenly, the reader starts seeing connections you didn't even have to state explicitly.
- The Hook: Don't start at the beginning. Start at the moment of highest tension or the weirdest detail.
- The Turn: This is where the essay shifts from "this happened" to "this is what it means."
- The Digression: It’s okay to get distracted. Some of the best insights come from a side-quest into history or philosophy.
- The Resonance: Don't summarize. End on an image that lingers.
Short sentences work. They punch. They make the reader stop and breathe before you hit them with a long, flowing observation that spans half a page and details the exact shade of grey in a London sky during a mid-November drizzle.
Why Voice Beats Grammar Every Time
I’ve seen perfectly grammatical essays that were boring as hell. I’ve also seen essays with "incorrect" syntax that moved me to tears. In the art of the personal essay, your voice is your only currency. If you sound like a textbook, people will close the tab. If you sound like a person—someone who uses words like "kinda" or "basically" when appropriate—they'll stay.
Think about Zadie Smith’s essays. She moves from high-brow literary critique to talking about her own hair or her love for Joni Mitchell without missing a beat. It feels like a conversation. She isn't lecturing; she’s inviting you into her thought process.
The Ethics of Writing About Other People
Here’s the part no one likes to talk about: writing personal essays usually involves throwing someone else under the bus. Whether it's an ex-boyfriend, a difficult parent, or a boss, you are using your version of the truth to frame them.
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Anne Lamott famously said, "If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better." It’s a great quote, but it’s a bit simplistic. In reality, the most sophisticated personal essays acknowledge that the "villain" is also a human being with their own set of baggage.
If you make yourself the perfect hero and everyone else a one-dimensional jerk, the reader will stop trusting you. They know life isn't that simple. Nuance isn't just a moral choice; it's a stylistic one. It makes the writing better.
The Subtle Power of the Mundane
You don't need to have survived a plane crash to write a great essay. In fact, some of the most enduring works in this genre are about absolutely nothing.
E.B. White wrote "Once More to the Lake." It’s basically just a guy taking his son to a vacation spot he visited as a kid. That’s it. But through his observation of the dragonflies and the sound of the outboard motors, he taps into the terrifying realization of his own mortality. He sees himself in his son and his father in himself. The mundane becomes the cosmic.
If you can find the universal in the particular, you've won. If you talk about "grief" in general terms, it’s boring. If you talk about the specific way your late father used to fold his socks, the reader feels the grief without you ever having to name it.
Practical Steps for Mastering the Form
Don't just sit and wait for inspiration. It won't show up. You have to hunt it down with a notebook.
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First, start a "small stones" journal. This is a concept from writer Satya Robb. Every day, write down one tiny, specific thing you noticed. Not a feeling, just an observation. "The way the light hit the cracked linoleum at 4 PM." "The smell of rain on hot asphalt." These are the building blocks.
Second, read the masters but don't mimic them. Read Roxane Gay for her brutal honesty and cultural insight. Read David Sedaris for his ability to find the humor in the humiliating. Read James Baldwin for the way he connects the personal to the political with surgical precision.
Third, write your first draft for yourself. Write the things you're afraid to say. You can always edit the "dangerous" parts out later (though you probably shouldn't). The best essays usually come from the things we initially didn't want to admit.
Actionable Insights for Your Next Piece
- Identify your "Obsession": What is the one question you can't stop asking yourself? Start there.
- Kill the "So What?": Read your draft. If a paragraph doesn't answer the "so what?" factor—why this matters to someone who isn't you—cut it or fix it.
- Vary the Pace: If your sentences are all the same length, the reader's brain will turn off. Use a short sentence to break up a long thought. Like a drumbeat.
- Look for the Contradiction: Find a place where you felt two opposing things at once. That's where the "meat" of the essay lives.
- Fact-Check Your Feelings: Even in a personal essay, if you reference a historical event or a scientific fact, get it right. Trust is hard to build and easy to break.
The personal essay is an act of bravery. It’s a way of saying, "I was here, I felt this, and it might mean something." It’s not about being a "writer" in the formal sense; it's about being a witness to your own life.
To improve, take a piece you've already written and strip away every sentence that feels like you're trying to impress someone. Look at what's left. That raw, slightly embarrassing core is where your real essay begins. Focus on the sensory details—the smells, the textures, the specific sounds—rather than the abstract emotions. Instead of saying you were "anxious," describe the way your palms felt against the steering wheel. Let the reader feel the sweat. That is how you turn a private memory into a public work of art.