Eye to I: Writing the Personal Essay
By Chip Scanlan, The Poynter Institute

National Writer's Workshop
St.Petersburg, FL 33701
April 23, 1995

Journalists fear the "I" word, maybe even more than a libel suit.
Writing about yourself is often difficult for reporters and editors whose
work lives focus on others. But writing about yourself, honestly,
even painfully, will make you a better reporter and editor: more empathetic,
more skilled, better able to spot the universal truth in the individual story.
Personal writing also generates enormous reader response.
(And who knows, you might even be able to make some money!)

I. Finding Your Subject - How do I decide what to write about?

Writers in search of a subject might ask themselves these questions
suggested by Boston Globe columnist and writing coach Don Murray:

• What are you thinking about when you're not thinking?
  
• What makes you mad?
  
• What makes you happy?
  
• What past events were turning points in your life that you'd like to understand?
  
• What do you know you should write about but have been afraid to?

• Why I don't watch sports - "Stupor Bowl" -
  The Boston Globe Magazine
  
• How my wife and I ask the parents of our daughters new friends
  if they have guns in their home -
  "It's 10 p.m. Do You Know Where Your Guns Are?" -
  The Christian Science Monitor
  
• My struggle to control my temper with my children - "Love and Anger" -
  Newsday, The Boston Globe Magazine, Detroit Free Press

"You can't write a personal column without going to some very deep place
inside yourself, even if it's only for four hours. It's almost like psychotherapy,
except you're doing it on your own. You have to pull something out of yourself
and give away some important part of yourself...It's a gift you have to give to the reader,
even if it's the most light-hearted piece in the world."

• Write every day.
  Writing is a process of discovery. You will discover what you want to say
  and how to say it in just one way: by writing. "You don't know the story
  until you've written it," Murray says.
  
• Begin, as Cynthia Gorney described the beginnings of her powerful pieces
  for The Washington Post with babble. Surprise yourself, as she does,
  by discovering the story you want to write halfway down the page.
  
• Lower your standards.
  Ignore the voice that says "This stinks" - The first step to producing copy
  on deadline in time for revision that storytelling demands.
  The first draft contains the promise of the final one.

• Rewrite.
  "You write to discover what you want to say," Murray says.
  
• "You rewrite to discover what you have said and then rewrite
  to make it clear to other people."
  The first lead of the "Stupor Bowl" became my ending.
  
• Submit
  
• Don't give up

"The personal essay requires blood on the page,
whether it has death in it or not." Lary Bloom,
founder and editor of Northeast, the magazine
of The Hartford Courant.