Today I submitted my course description for a 2021 workshop on the personal essay. It may or may not happen, but, alas for you, Twitter, it got me thinking.
Full disclosure: I seem to come to genres when they have been pronounced dead. My first novel, which centered on a female PI, went out on submission in 1995 after I spent a year searching for an agent.
There were three offers and seven rejections. The winning offer was from @carrieeyre, my editor to this day. But I also want to give a shout out to @eamondolan, who wrote a rejection so lovely and kind and encouraging, I never forgot it.
For context, I could not tell you the names of the two editors who submitted actual offers.
Anyway, I learned that there were some advantages in tackling a "dead" genre.
Fast-forward to 2018. I have resolved to try writing personal essays. They have been proclaimed dead or, at least, kind of dubious, exercises in debasement forced on young women. Yet also a marketing tool for novelists.
Tipsy one evening, I DM @saribotton and ask if I can write an essay about being the world's oldest mom for the Longreads section she edits, Fine Lines. I am convinced it is unique, a story like no one else's.
The piece, published the week before Mother's Day 2019, proves to be surprisingly universal. Sari asks me for more pieces. longreads.com/2019/05/06/gam…
I write about my body. (The Whole 60). I write about being a shitty friend. My longtime editor asks if I want to publish a book of essays. I do.
"My Life as a Villainess" will be published next month. And, until about four hours ago, I honestly thought I would never write another personal essay. It's been such a strange time; I didn't think I had anything to say.
And then -- I started a new piece. I'm not sure I want to publish it. But I know now that when I start writing about something, it means, in fact, that I have resolved an issue that has been troubling me.
tl;dr: When someone tells you a form is dead, it's a good time to try it.
