Today is day one of Essay Camp. A few months ago I began following a writer on Twitter. I don’t know much about her other than she seemed cute and was living in Paris and was writing. She has something like 10,000 followers or more. On her substack, of which I’m a free (unpaid) subscriber, she is running a one-week or ten-day essay camp (I forget how long). The goal, I think, is to write an essay, maybe several.
Today’s lesson was that an essay can be about anything. It can take lots of forms. It can make an argument. It can be an observation. It can tie together unrelated things. An essay is what we choose to make of it. The broader point was to not get too hung up on subject and/or form (at least not at the start). Most writers and aspiring writers struggle with starting. We get in our own way. We let fear and shame and a lot of mental stuff prevent us from opening up and beginning. I’ve touched on this a few times on this blog. I’ve mentioned that one of the greatest benefits of writing every day (or at least almost every day) is that it gets easier to write every day. There’s a wall between the brain and the pen (or keyboard). Breaking down that wall allows words to flow. Breaking down that wall often involves learning to care less about whether the words are good (they’re usually not) and to focus more on getting them down. Good, if it’s going to happen, often shows up in the editing and revising. This was about setting the hunk of clay or the piece of marble (or whatever other sculpting metaphor you wish) in front of you.
Today’s lesson was about writing something, writing anything. One of the prompts was to write about one thing until you’ve exhausted yourself and then another thing and then another until you’ve written about five things. I didn’t do that. And that’s ok (the teacher gave us permission), because she said, quite a few of us wouldn’t. Instead, I picked a subject and just wrote. Today’s lesson was also about writing and not going back…. just following the train and going going going. So that’s what I did . I wrote for about twenty minutes, maybe more. I didn’t go back and edit or re-read, I just kept going. I titled it, put the date on it and saved it for tomorrow (or for whenever I come back to it).
I’m curious to see what tomorrow’s lesson or exercise will be. This one was just enough out of my comfort zone to feel like a good stretch. I usually go back and revise as I write, so pushing past that urge felt new. This felt good in the way that my Daily Fifty-Two feels good. It is, if nothing else, a practice in discipline, a practice of putting words together. One after the other. I suspect there’s also a lesson in there about the benefits of constraints and boundaries, deadlines and goals. I’m curious to see where this all goes… and if nowhere, I think I’ll have been just as happy to have taken the trip.