The Essayist's Real Challenge
In our support of the thinking, imagining, and writing of the college applicants we coach, we at Hillside are often demonstrating and proving how concern about what an essay is "about" must not precede close interest in and examination of the raw material — close looking at the specific details of experience. A fresher, truer "aboutness" or meaning almost invariably results from such patient recollection (indeed, re-collection) and consideration.
And so when To Write a Great Essay, Think and Care Deeply, from The Atlantic's By Heart series, came to our attention, we celebrated. In appreciation for the writing lessons he finds in J.R. Ackerly's My Dog Tulip, nonfiction writer Lucas Mann describes Ackerly "leaning closer, looking so carefully" and notes that "it’s the closeness in his gaze, his dedication to looking, that transforms the subject." In reading Ackerly, Mann reflects how we tend to "prioritize a weighty topic over the force of an author’s gaze, the clarity of her prose, the sincerity of her emotion." He goes on: "[I]t’s important for me to remind myself sometimes that, at its heart, that’s all a great essay is: a virtuoso performance of care."
Frequently we talk at Hillside about how the interesting writer is the interested writer — how just isolating and describing the specifics of experience with careful attention (attention that is full of care) is not only a necessary step in realizing an authentic meaning to convey but is also an engaging act in itself. As Mann writes, "spending one’s time fretting about aboutness is a deflection from the essayist’s real challenge: to think and feel as deeply and specifically as possible about whatever it is you’re looking at."