Back when I was a dancer, the part I liked the least was learning new choreography. Of course, learning anything new always comes with some level of discomfort, but I think it’s telling that I always wished I could just skip it. (Obviously—and to my dismay—that’s not possible. Because I can’t dance a routine if I don’t learn it.)
I think about the specific things that bothered me about the process: having to deal with my slow pick-up (this is the rate at which a dancer can memorize a new choreography), moving in uncertain, imprecise ways, being unfamiliar with the musicality—and seeing all of this in the mirror.
Zooming out, this attitude makes so much sense to me now. I’ve lived most of my life glorifying speed, systems, optimization—things that make me feel that I can surely navigate a situation. I just always loved being an efficient person. Cracking how to get from point A to point B. Economizing. Minimizing the possibility of doing something again and again or starting from scratch.
And I always thought I could rely on the value of efficiency.
Then, I got into writing.
From what I’ve learned so far as a writer, there are generally two approaches to writing. The first route, as succinctly put by author Amy Shearn, is where you “outline it, know what you’re going to say, [then] get there efficiently.” This is how I started writing. I would dump the key points of the piece on the page, then proceed to obsess over how to make them flow. Once I could see how it would all come together, all I had to do was write it out.
And doesn’t it make sense to assume that this is the way to write? I mean, it’s a grade school English lesson: Define your thesis statement! And common sense would ask: How can you write if you don’t know what you want to say?
Oh, but apparently, it is possible. This is the second route. And it is where you write about a thing and then find out your point.
From my humble writing experience, let me flesh it out a bit: It usually starts with a strange compulsion to write about a thing. It could be a thing you haven’t been able to get off your mind. Or an experience that ineffably affected you. Whatever it is, you know there’s something more there—you just can’t quite put your finger on it. Yet.
So one overcast Saturday morning, you sit in a nice, quiet cafe, order an oat milk latte, then open your laptop. You start by writing the story of that thing as honestly as you can. Maybe you think you kinda know what this thing means to you. But as you turn over that thing in your mind, as you make your emotions about that thing digitally tangible and real and hence subject to scrutiny, then you start to consider the thing from different angles. Then, suddenly, another thing from some seemingly disparate part of your life comes to mind. Then you make the connection. And at some point, amidst all the circling and connecting and inner catastrophizing, by the grace of some higher power, what you really want to say comes to you.
This mystical route is how you go about crafting a personal essay.
And it is a maddeningly inefficient route.
Now here’s the real nitty-gritty of it: As always, you begin with a shitty first draft. A shitty first draft that feels all the more shitty because you don't know what it’s really about. Hours pass where you’re mulling over and working out a paragraph, only to have it slashed off by the next draft. Half—if you’re lucky!—of your first draft doesn’t make it in the final piece. You write thousands of words and still do not get there—wherever “there” is. Or you write thousands of words and, lying awake at night, realize there’s no other way but raze it to the ground and rebuild it.
Are you writing this personal essay right? No.
Are you doing it wrong? No.
Because there is no one way to write a personal essay.
There are no steps to this thing. This isn’t choreography. It’s freestyle.
You’re just winging it—all the way through.
You are figuring out a puzzle that you must not only put together but also be tasked to create the puzzle pieces themselves. It can be painfully slow. Sometimes you have nothing to hold on to besides that inkling of a speck of a semblance of an idea of what you want to say, or the tiny but stern voice in your head insisting that you must—and you will—see this thing through.
And even when you do have a sense of where you’re going, as writer Harris Sockel advised, “You don’t want to be so attached to the plan that you can’t respond to what you’re discovering or what you’re intuition is telling you.” See, you’re not writing to share some knowledge. “You’re writing toward the knowledge.”
You are writing without a point—to find your point.
Needless to say, a personal essay is a dread-inducing thing to write through. But the more I do it, the more I understand that every word scrapped, every darling killed, every draft overhauled wasn’t an inefficiency. It was a necessity. The more I appreciate how it makes me question our mechanical desire for shortcuts. To try to skip to the polished, Grammarly-guarded finish line is to sell your story, your truth, and yourself short.
Writing personal essays is teaching me to accommodate chaos. The one on the page and the one in my head.
I’m learning to (literally) face and sit with the uncertainty inherent to the blank page.
I realize now that there is a fine line between the obsession with figuring something out and the obsession with having figured things out. The latter thrives on efficiency; the earlier nourishes depth and discovery.
Writing a personal essay is an exercise of faith. Meandering, digressing, feeling lost—its most essential features. It requires the bold refusal of efficiency—of known ways and known endpoints, of roadmaps and templates—so you can come into something with true curiosity and humanity. And frustrating as this process may be, I’ve grown to love it because of what it proves: that the most meaningful and worthwhile experiences can’t be breezed through, skipped to, methodically handled, or neatly defined.
And as I finish every piece, the same sentiment rings true: they are the most gratifying, most heart-expanding thing to write.
Sorry for the late newsletter. Life has been a lot, plus I knew this piece wasn’t ready yet yesterday.
Have a great week ahead!