Let's Get Personal!

FOR ENGLAND!

This month, I submitted a personal essay/narrative for a writing contest because, England don't come cheap and  I wanted to challenge myself in a new writing style. And I learned a lot from this experience! My topic was pretty open and vague: "Applied Christianity in daily living."
I've flirted with doing this essay contest since last semester and planned on doing it over Christmas Break, but let's be real, Christmas break was all about family, friends, and taking a reprieve from everything. After coming back from Christmas break, I wrote down this essay on every weekly to do list, and, in true procrastinator fashion, never did anything till I had 3 days to go. Last semester, I read this awesome BYU devotional speech about fear and faith, and it changed my perspective on life. So I knew I wanted to write something about changing my fear to faith, but I wasn't sure how to go about it. In my manic process of speed writing, I learned a lot about personal essays:

• Personal essays are not church talks, but church talks can be personal essays. In my church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), our Bishop (he's like an unpaid preacher) doesn't preach to us for all of the main meeting. Instead, the church members talk over different subjects- the atonement, prayer, the love of God, etc. Anyways, when I first started writing my essay, I struggled with finding the right style and format. Because it was over a personal religious subject, it often tried to become a church talk, but what stopped it was the focus on my story and how it changed me, rather than how it could change others. 
• Personal Essays are vulnerable. I didn't realize how personal it would get when I was writing 7 pages about myself. In a research paper, you can hide behind other pronouns--It, He, She, They, We. There's a certain distance you use because you are talking about another subject, not yourself. To continuously use "I" brings vulnerability. It forced me out from behind a wall of words I usually protect my ideas with. 

• Personal essays need to be honest. In other essays, the interpretation of the text is flexible because it's rare to have an author just come out with exactly what they meant. Speculation of how historical events, social atmosphere, and the author's personal life all contributed into the text is what builds your argument. As I wrote, I wanted to embellish and change a lot of my story to make it more interesting, more impactful, and for it to fit in the form I originally wanted. It was frustrating, hard, and a weirdly self-revealing when I wanted to exaggerate or make up experiences. It forced me be truthful to myself, which isn't always the easiest thing to do.  
• Personal Essays are empowering. The whole writing process made me reflect upon my experiences this last year, and it helped me see my growth. When I let others proofread it, it was terrifying to have them read over this  personal narrative (perhaps more personal and tender because it talks about my religion and how it affects me), and have them judge it. But it made me confident in myself. Sharing it made me own up to my experiences and my growth. Taking ownership for who I was and who I am actually decreased my self-consciousness about writing.
•  Also I had enough time to do a rough draft! It was a gory, incoherent mess of a paper, but marvelous to vomit out. It made me realize how wonderful such a rough draft is. I maybe used

  

  Credit: Sittinginsplitink

  7% of it in my real essay. But, it got me writing because I didn't agonize over every word and sentence; I just wrote whatever came into my head. It gave me freedom to experiment with different forms and structures. I want to remember to do a rough draft like this for my future papers.Which are coming up!!!

Anyways, you can read my personal essay here ( sadly, it didn't get selected, but I wanted to publish it somewhere). It's not as polished as I'd like, but I was writing up to the last 2 hours before I had to submit it. For future personal essays, I want to focus on one specific experience rather than the combination of experiences I talked about here, because the combination maybe weakened my paper.