Samantha Ducloux Waltz had been threatening to attend the reading series I host, The Northwest Author Series, for months, when she finally showed up two weekends ago to hear poet extraordinaire, Sage Cohen. While there she was so kind as to remind me that I had hit her up for some tips on writing personal essays for this blog…like weeks ago. (Where is my head sometimes?)
Samantha was one of the first fellow writer folks I met after moving to Oregon in 2004. If I am remembering correctly we both volunteered to sit in the Willamette Writers booth at Wordstock, Portland’s Annual Festival of the Book. Since then, it seems like I hear repeated announcements about Samantha’s personal essay publications. Her essays appear in the Cup of Comfort and Chicken Soup series, as well as a number of other anthologies, and have won several awards.
Here’s those tips she shared with me that I have been keeping all to myself…
If the question is how to write a better essay then I think the keys are:
- Strong techniques that we use in fiction like characterization, dialogue, time, place, rich language, etc. — the old show don’t tell.
- A good idea that is developed through scene. At the heart of an essay is a strong, universal concept.
- I always, always, always run my work by other writers. Have someone critique your works who can give good feedback. I’m amazed, sometimes, that something isn’t clear. Or something falls flat. In my head it was so wonderful.
- Keep trying. I wrote a couple of things for A Cup of Comfort before I got anything accepted. And I get rejections right along with everyone else so I have to keep trying along with the new kids on the block.
- Study your markets. The tone of my Chicken Soup pieces is different from the tone of my Cup of Comfort pieces. Those aimed at anthologies not part of series are harder to analyze, of course. Redbook has a very distinctive tone. So does Newsweek. I’ve been in Christian Science Monitor, a wonderful market for the personal essay, but I’ve been rejected too.
The markets that pay me wouldn’t buy my groceries. A Cup of Comfort pays $100.00. Chicken Soup pays $200.00. The other anthologies I’m in pay between $50.00 and $100.00. But I love being in books.
And yet the markets I write for are very competitive. A Cup of Comfort volume uses forty to fifty stories selected from 3,000. Chicken Soup has more stories in a volume, but may have more submissions.
Getting started is the hardest. Getting that first publication. Then you start getting calls for submissions from editors and you get to go to the top of the slush pile.
If the question is how to make more money, there are some magazines that pay a whole lot more. Redbook and Newsweek would be examples. I haven’t tried these markets yet, but it is one of my New Year’s resolutions to do so.
Samantha’s website is Paths of Thought.
