How to Write an Essay in Six Steps
Lesson 6 of 8: Finding Your Essay’s Heartbeat
If you’re new here, The Forever Workshop is an experiment in affordable education for writers. For $10 per month, you’ll receive a variety of month-long workshops by experienced instructors.
This month’s workshop, Finding Your Essay’s Heartbeat, is from Andrea A. Firth! Sign up for just $10/m to receive this week's and next week’s lessons, plus full access to our catalog of workshops. You can find the introduction post here if you’re new to this course. Happy writing!
Writers, today we write!
I’m going to walk you through a six-step prompt, and by the end you will have a draft of a personal essay well underway. I recommend that you set aside an hour to complete the prompt. Find a writing space and time without distractions. Use a pen and paper or a computer, that’s up to you. Use your phone or other device as a timer and allocate ten minutes for each step. You may find some steps go faster or slower, or you may not fully complete a step in ten minutes. That’s ok—adjust the timing per step as needed, but a total of sixty minutes is plenty of writing time for one sitting without a break.
I’ve adapted this six-step prompt from a prompt taught by the awesome essayist Marion Winik. Read the steps one at a time—don’t read ahead. Set your timer for ten minutes and write.
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