UCLA Writers Faire

Conversations from the Archive
August 2013
Los Angeles, California

Writing the Personal Essay

Daniel M. Jaffe
Nancy Spiller
Aaron Shulman

Excerpts:

Daniel M. Jaffe (on what writing should accomplish): If you experienced it the way I experienced it, this is the only conclusion you can come to.

[Personal essay] saves therapy bills.

Aaron Shulman: Personal essay is easier to publish than fiction.

Nancy Spiller: It doesn’t get any easier. Sometimes you have to kill your babies.

Jaffe: Why mask? It’s very liberating.

Shulman: It’s a marketable form. We have a confessional culture. Short, pithy pieces are marketable/publishable. Know who you’re writing for. Have a killer pitch letter. Know your publication.

Spiller: Meet editors at events. Have face time. Ask them what they’re looking for.

Shulman: Have mentors. Ask for help.

Jaffe: It is harder to publish [personal essays] now than ten years ago. Read, read, read. Does your sensibility fit the publication? Can I read it as though I’m not the writer? Do I buy it? Get past self-indulgence.

Spiller: Sometimes being self-effacing can do a lot.

Shulman: If anything in the essay makes me feel good about myself, I should cut it.

Spiller: You surprise yourself constantly. You don’t know where you’re going.

Truth and Imagination

Daniel M. Jaffe
Les Plesko
Leon Martell

Excerpts:

Leon Martell: How do you tell the truth?

Daniel M. Jaffe: The tension in the work is between factual accuracy and insight. [It’s about] reshaping events that actually happened to achieve insight (shortening/lengthening experience).

Les Plesko: Start with a mood and a character.

Martell: Fiction makes too much sense. Reality doesn’t make sense. Find the unifying principle that holds it together. How we organize the truth is what readers are looking for. When you make a choice—choose a direction—you’re eliminating certain things. The truth is malleable. Continue to surprise.

Jaffe: [It’s about] human psychological truths.

Martell: The specifics resonate. I don’t know anything about the truth, and that’s the truth.