redrosethorns is a woman-owned publication company, focusing on mental health, gender/sexuality, and empowerment.

I’m grateful that my essay Dear Skin was published on their blog. 🙌

It’s a personal essay / flash non-fiction piece where I reflect upon aging and beauty standards.

Check out their blog if you like poetry, too!

I thought I’d share some thoughts on essay writing, as it’s a pretty different direction from the type of material I used to write in my twenties.

Early Essays

Earlier this year, a colleague of mine recommended Jessica Simpson’s memoir.

I read it and enjoyed it so much that I got a bunch of other memoirs to dive into. Some, like Paulina Porizkova’s memoir, were a collection of essays.

I did a little bit of creative writing from 2015 – 2021, moving between short essays and short stories.

While I didn’t write many essays, I REALLY enjoyed penning (or typing) my thoughts for the cathartic essay I did in response to a Musepaper monthly prompt.

It was satisfying and energizing to channel anxiety, grief, and other negative emotions into a brief non-fiction piece.

I get the same satisfaction from journaling, though it’s a different medium compared to an essay or blog post. My journal entries usually have a stream-of-consciousness quality featuring random tangents.

An essay, in comparison, needs to be a lot tighter than a rant-style journal entry. There needs to be a cohesive structure so that the beginning, middle, and end make sense within that short amount of space.

From One to Several

I found the idea of weaving together a collection of essays fascinating.

It’s challenging to keep to a common theme so that the collection doesn’t come across as disjointed or haphazard.

I bookmarked the following articles to get a better understanding of how to write an essay collection:

• How to Write a Collection of Essays – Writing Tips Oasis
• #5onFri: Five Tips for Crafting an Essay Collection People Will Read – DIY MFA
• Deep Dive into Short Forms: Flash Nonfiction – DIY MFA
• How to Write A Memoir in Essays – Marion Roach Smith

First Ten

I’ve completed 5 essays and have 2 that are published, as of last count.

I was chugging along at quite a good pace this past June, then fell behind as I had some other Life Things to see to.

I managed to work on some short fiction pieces in June as well.

My essays are loosely themed around the experience of finding my way as an adult woman.

I’d love to get them eventually published as a chapbook.

Chapbooks are more commonly associated with poetry, so I might keep expanding my essay collection to see if it can be published as a longer book project.

Other Writing Goals

Apart from these essays, I’d like to complete a few more horror short stories and see what I’d like to do within that genre.

It’d be cool to complete a horror short story collection or novella one day.

I don’t know if I could write a horror novel as the plotting and pacing would be on a much more complex level.

I’ll take it step by step for now and see to completing my first set of 10 essays first.