Pivotal Moments: An Introduction to Personal Essay Writing with Jane Ganahl

Pivotal Moments: A Personal Essay Class with Jane Ganahl

Every single day there are moments that could inspire a personal essay: finding your late mother’s favorite shoes, exploding in anger when someone tailgates you on the road, not knowing how to answer when your curious grandchild asks when you’re going to die. These are moments that cause you to pause, reflect and learn: the basis of a solid personal essay. In this two-hour introductory class you’ll learn how to identify these pivotal moments, find the lessons therein, and write about them in a way that resonates with readers. Because the best personal essays don’t just relate something that happened to you — they draw the reader in with deep sharing and offer a new perspective. This brief class will help you harness your observational and writing skills, for purpose and possibly even profit.

Students will learn:

- Why write personal essays (hint: self-therapy)

- How to choose a topic (and topics to avoid)

- The 5 elements of a good essay

- How to structure your essay with an outline

- The importance of perspective

Jane Ganahl is a writer, teacher, and co-founder of Litquake. As a Hearst newspaper journalist for many years, she wrote the “Single Minded” column, which led to her memoir, Naked on the Page: The Misadventures of My Unmarried Midlife. She was also the editor of the anthology Single Woman of a Certain Age. Her essays have appeared in five different anthologies, on Match.com, and in the magazines Spirituality & Health, VanityFair.com, RollingStone.com, Huffington Post, Bazaar, and Salon, among other places. She is also a crazy cat lady, with a small nonprofit that tends feral colonies on the coastside. http://janeganahl.com/