Sonya Lea's Blog - Posts Tagged "health"
Roxane Gay Selects This Essay for The Butter!
One morning on Facebook, my friend Laurie Wagner of Wild Writing posted an illuminating string of Twitter remarks by Roxane Gay. These were about what makes a good essay.
Since I was teaching at Seattle's Hugo House, I made them into writing prompts, and my class and I worked each of those questions for the purposes of revising our essays.
The next day, reading back through my journal, I realized that my own essay might be improved. Following Gay's guidelines, I connected the personal story to the universal. In this case, how being vulnerable in the public realm might help others. The essay was submitted, and within a week or so, was picked up by Gay at The Butter.
You can read the piece here: http://the-toast.net/2015/04/14/the-g...
Reading the comments at the site has been eye-opening, and a wonderful way to get to know other communities, people who have experienced ambiguous loss in their lives. You write alone in a room, and then you get a chance to be with others, often silently holding their questions. It's precious, all of this holding of each other we get to do through language.
Since I was teaching at Seattle's Hugo House, I made them into writing prompts, and my class and I worked each of those questions for the purposes of revising our essays.
The next day, reading back through my journal, I realized that my own essay might be improved. Following Gay's guidelines, I connected the personal story to the universal. In this case, how being vulnerable in the public realm might help others. The essay was submitted, and within a week or so, was picked up by Gay at The Butter.
You can read the piece here: http://the-toast.net/2015/04/14/the-g...
Reading the comments at the site has been eye-opening, and a wonderful way to get to know other communities, people who have experienced ambiguous loss in their lives. You write alone in a room, and then you get a chance to be with others, often silently holding their questions. It's precious, all of this holding of each other we get to do through language.
