Tapping Memory and Generating Ideas for Personal Essays

Lesson 1 of 8: Finding Your Essay's Heartbeat

This is Part 1 of Andrea A. Firth’s Personal Essay Masterclass

Today, in Lesson 1, we’re going to look at how to generate ideas for your personal essays and tap into your memory. We’ll use three short essays by Brenda Miller, Sarah Moss and Jill Christman as examples to guide us. The essays are linked here, and you can read them now or as you move through the lesson.

1. “Swerve” By Brenda Miller

2. “Generation Gap” by Sarah Moss

3. “The Sloth” by Jill Christman

About the Readings…to be a good writer, you need to be a good reader. You need to read widely with specific attention to the genre(s) you write. The best way to learn what makes a personal essay good is to read good personal essays. I sourced all of the essays we will read in the course from two outlets: Short Reads and Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction. Both literary magazines publish short (to keep the class load manageable), high-quality personal essays online and for free. Short Reads delivers an essay to your inbox every Wednesday. Brevity publishes three issues a year with 12 or more essays in each. I want to give you an easy and affordable way to continue reading essays after the course is over. 

The readings for each lesson will be attached at the top as shown here. The essays will demonstrate the writing craft topic we’ll cover, and they are all great reads! So, if you haven’t already—you will fall in love with the form.

I promised that this would be a personal essay love fest, so let’s go.