In the summer of 2017, I got the urge to write again, but this time what I kept writing were personal essays. It seemed everywhere I looked, I saw a story that related to my life. I started writing by hand, getting everything out of my head and onto paper. After submitting a few essays, and having them all rejected, I realized my craft needed a lot of work. While I had always thought of personal essays and memoir as non-fiction (which they are, because they are true stories), they have more in common with fiction and its narrative structure. It doesn’t matter if a story if fiction or memoir, just that it is told well.
For now, I spend most of my time writing in my Sarah Walker Art History Thriller series and in my personal journal. I know the journals will provide a rich resource when I return to personal essays and memoir in the coming years.
You can find all of my personal essays here. For my A Year In England series click here.