There's another genre of personal essay that the essayist can't consciously do (I think), but which the editors of national magazines (or the NY Times style section) are able to unerringly sniff out like some kind of hunting dog:
The reflective essay by the woman -- and it's almost always a woman, for whatever reason -- who doesn't realize she's the villain of the piece. You know the genre, "My husband was clinically depressed and the children were annoying, and so I realized that after living for everyone else all my life, it was time to do something entirely for me, so I had an affair, then told my husband I was leaving him, and since my kids are resilient, they'll be fine."
That sort of essay can be incredibly successful, but it takes a very particular combination. You need someone who's a good writer, highly literate, and lacking enough in self-awareness that she gives all the clues she's an unreliable narrator without seeing them herself. You *also* need an editor who has a very keen sense of, "This, *this* will absolutely generate hate-clicks! Let's run it!"
The villain or the piece OR the moron of the piece. E.g. The "finance expert" from The Cut who somehow got caught in the most ludicrous scam (shoebox money lady).
Not a personal essay, but one of the higher-ups at my company once sent out an office-wide email warning against a crypto ATM scam he had fallen for. I think it was everybody's favorite email of the year.
The danger of writing a piece like that is that fine, you get your hate-clicks, but then you are "I left my husband and children for some dude" lady and I think that's usually it for you. CHH has thousands of paid subscribers. Lena Dunham is on her fourth book, David Sedaris is up to fifteen. Do the blitheringly un-self-aware types ever leverage their hate-clicks into careers?
So back when it was getting all the buzz, I read All Fours by Miranda July, and honestly you nearly laid out the plot of the book, like a novelization of that format. Within the book itself, I could never tell whether the main character was intended to read as a villain or not. And honestly that unresolved ambiguity was the only reason the book worked for me at all.
But I have heard that by the evidence of further speaking and writing after the book came out, that the author does intend the main character to be a protagonist, in which case I think that's pretty yucky, and very much like your unaware villain magazine writer.
The piece about the neighbors extorting two grand from you is still one of my favorites. It's weird and specific to you, but it's incredibly relatable. Who hasn't had a strange or outright bad neighbor? Seriously, a banger.
I know what you mean you mean about half-honest, half-coy pieces. I'd rather read any "Am I the Asshole" Reddit post than that. Yes, they are all fake, but they at least elicit a reaction from me!
If you aren't going to be honest, then at least be entertaining.
A subspecies of personal essay so many people *want* to think other people will read but that they won't - how backpacking in Tuscany/Bali/Costa Rica helped you discover yourself. People try to preface recipes on the Internet with these and that will usually lead to me skipping out on both the recipe and the essay.
This was excellent, your point about how readers hate "half-self-awareness" especially. I usually reflexively say that writing is not therapy, but you make a strong case for the main way it *can* be therapeutic: in pushing the writer toward greater self-knowledge if, like you, they genuinely want to improve their craft.
Imo you should teach a creative nonfiction class (you could do it asynchronously online if you want to maintain your anonymity). You'd crush it.
I think the thing with Lena Dunham is that she is both genuinely incredibly talented and very annoying.
In the current discourse about her, I seem to frequently see people retconning the story with Girls. The most important thing about Girls, and the reason Dunham is a famous person, is that it was a really good show. That doesn't mean it was to everyone's taste (I find a lot of it very hard to watch), but it's an interesting and very well executed show. She is famous because she created and executed on a very good prestige TV show. That's super hard to do, and she pulled it off because she's very talented. Any take that skips over this or downplays it is missing the point.
“I thought that my story about dating a guy in my teens who was obsessed with my mom would be huge because it was just such a weird thing, but it wasn’t significantly more successful than any of my other personal essays!”
How do you measure the success of your articles? I’m a subscriber, and I click in nearly every new article you post, even if I don’t finish reading it because it lost my interest.
So how do you know if one article is more successful than the other? Number of likes and comments?
I always feel bad when you talk about losing a fairly small number of subscribers as something you pay close attention to, because I subscribe and unsubscribe pretty often for reasons having to do with my own life rather than anything having to do with your writing.
There's this great book called StoryGenius that has defined what makes a good story for me, and now I see that everywhere.
People are looking for stories to help them figure out how to navigate life. The ones that seem to pull on that feeling the most are the ones that everyone wants to read.
I suppose the same goes for personal essays. Even more so actually. Like, everyone has an anxious feeling that everyone hates them, even if it's tucked away in a distant corner of their mind. When you write about that actually happening, people want to see what they can learn from it.
Lots of the train wreck essays from The Cut are from people we don't get and would prefer to stay away from, but holy shit, how do they perceive things? And what can I add to my toolbox to ensure i can keep well clear of people like this? That's what keeps me reading.
I’ve got an enduring guess as to your first name! Purely vibes based, no sleuthy stalking. Honestly still chasing the high of thinking PinkPantheress was “probably called Vicky or something”
I’ve written a best-selling tell-all memoir — in my mind.
Various things hit me all day long that I could turn into essays. I have had the same thoughts about Sedaris, whom I absolutely adore (he once told me a family secret at a book-signing!) I could tell some compelling stories that would be made good by my framing of them, but I don’t wish to expose myself and people close to me in that way. So I keep these stories — and my framing of them — to myself.
I’ve considered publishing such pieces under a pseudonym, but I’d want to claim them.
On the point about "half self awareness" and falling prey to it yourself, I would say that this is actually a big benefit of the blog and comments format. In isolation, the examples you highlight might be off putting, but in this format, they are just one part of the whole. For instance, my take on the essay about screens keeping kids alive was much less "it is annoying that she is preaching at us that her hangups are actually correct", and much more a recognition that you were working through a real hangup by putting it out there and getting feedback. But that's because I've been reading your essays for years. If I had just come across it without having any familiarity with your previous writing, my reaction would have been different.
The unlinked I’m-very-hot essay makes me think of some of the writing done when EmRata decided to show everyone she was an intellectual - granted, EmRata is indeed hot but that’s something that’s probably less profound to everyone else, as it’s not actually surprising that hot people exist and are liked and/or resented for being hot
One of the things that is worth considering why a particular "big personal essay" is written is how much the publication or editor is actively green lighting or encouraging said essays to be written because previous personal essays got tons of buzz and more important clicks. We may be "hate" reading said essay and making fun of how non-self aware or quite frankly deranged the writer comes across...but to the magazine or publication in question the only they compare about is did you read it or are you talking about it on your substack in a way that might get your readers to read it.
There are a lot of "downstream" consequences to the fact that newspapers/publications have a lot more data as to what stories actually get read (it's tragic in many ways, but there's a reason so many news orgs have slashed the budget for international news generally) and one "downstream" consequence is getting the same variations of the same story getting written over and over again because it's clear we're reading them. This was something I sort of came to realize when there became a zillion "trips to Trump country" stories. The thing is, a lot of these stories were reasonably well written, often had interesting quotes or anecdotes and sometimes even real political insight. But man they became...repetitive. To the point there became almost a template to these things; a description of traveling to some small town that sounds like the writer is on a safari when in fact they drove west on Interstate 80 for two hours, a conversation with an older man right around retirement age at a diner talking about how he doesn't like this or that Trump did but is still with him, a picture accompanying the article of the older man staring plaintively out the diner window, details about how the local factory closed 25 years earlier, various observations of a town in decline etc. Point being, these articles got churned out with such regularity they became fodder for derision given how derivative and cliche they became. But here's the thing, you know why they kept being written? We kept reading them. Same reason there is endless articles about campus controversies my entire life**.
An exchange from the movie "Private Parts" worth keeping in mind at all times
Researcher: The average radio listener listens for eighteen minutes. The average Howard Stern fan listens for - are you ready for this? - an hour and twenty minutes.
Pig Vomit: How can that be?
Researcher: Answer most commonly given? "I want to see what he'll say next."
Pig Vomit: Okay, fine. But what about the people who hate Stern?
Researcher: Good point. The average Stern hater listens for two and a half hours a day.
Pig Vomit: But... if they hate him, why do they listen?
Researcher: Most common answer? "I want to see what he'll say next."
The hate watchers, the hate listeners, the hate readers can bizarrely be the target audience. And likely is part of why these "personal essays" are crafted the way they are crafted.
** There is no aspect of American life covered wildly out of proportion to its actual importance to American society then "controversies" at elite colleges; protests, a professor saying something beyond the pale, student group statements etc. Forget you're actual feelings at what ever "controversy" you're thinking of, the actual "controversary' does not deserve nearly as much coverage as about 50 other things happening in the country that day.
There's another genre of personal essay that the essayist can't consciously do (I think), but which the editors of national magazines (or the NY Times style section) are able to unerringly sniff out like some kind of hunting dog:
The reflective essay by the woman -- and it's almost always a woman, for whatever reason -- who doesn't realize she's the villain of the piece. You know the genre, "My husband was clinically depressed and the children were annoying, and so I realized that after living for everyone else all my life, it was time to do something entirely for me, so I had an affair, then told my husband I was leaving him, and since my kids are resilient, they'll be fine."
That sort of essay can be incredibly successful, but it takes a very particular combination. You need someone who's a good writer, highly literate, and lacking enough in self-awareness that she gives all the clues she's an unreliable narrator without seeing them herself. You *also* need an editor who has a very keen sense of, "This, *this* will absolutely generate hate-clicks! Let's run it!"
The villain or the piece OR the moron of the piece. E.g. The "finance expert" from The Cut who somehow got caught in the most ludicrous scam (shoebox money lady).
Not a personal essay, but one of the higher-ups at my company once sent out an office-wide email warning against a crypto ATM scam he had fallen for. I think it was everybody's favorite email of the year.
The danger of writing a piece like that is that fine, you get your hate-clicks, but then you are "I left my husband and children for some dude" lady and I think that's usually it for you. CHH has thousands of paid subscribers. Lena Dunham is on her fourth book, David Sedaris is up to fifteen. Do the blitheringly un-self-aware types ever leverage their hate-clicks into careers?
So back when it was getting all the buzz, I read All Fours by Miranda July, and honestly you nearly laid out the plot of the book, like a novelization of that format. Within the book itself, I could never tell whether the main character was intended to read as a villain or not. And honestly that unresolved ambiguity was the only reason the book worked for me at all.
But I have heard that by the evidence of further speaking and writing after the book came out, that the author does intend the main character to be a protagonist, in which case I think that's pretty yucky, and very much like your unaware villain magazine writer.
The piece about the neighbors extorting two grand from you is still one of my favorites. It's weird and specific to you, but it's incredibly relatable. Who hasn't had a strange or outright bad neighbor? Seriously, a banger.
I know what you mean you mean about half-honest, half-coy pieces. I'd rather read any "Am I the Asshole" Reddit post than that. Yes, they are all fake, but they at least elicit a reaction from me!
If you aren't going to be honest, then at least be entertaining.
A subspecies of personal essay so many people *want* to think other people will read but that they won't - how backpacking in Tuscany/Bali/Costa Rica helped you discover yourself. People try to preface recipes on the Internet with these and that will usually lead to me skipping out on both the recipe and the essay.
This was excellent, your point about how readers hate "half-self-awareness" especially. I usually reflexively say that writing is not therapy, but you make a strong case for the main way it *can* be therapeutic: in pushing the writer toward greater self-knowledge if, like you, they genuinely want to improve their craft.
Imo you should teach a creative nonfiction class (you could do it asynchronously online if you want to maintain your anonymity). You'd crush it.
Speaking of Lena Dunham’s personal writing, if you’ve never read her 2020 essay on losing her fertility, I highly recommend it, as it’s a stunning piece of writing: https://harpers.org/archive/2020/12/false-labor-lena-dunham-fertility/
I think the thing with Lena Dunham is that she is both genuinely incredibly talented and very annoying.
In the current discourse about her, I seem to frequently see people retconning the story with Girls. The most important thing about Girls, and the reason Dunham is a famous person, is that it was a really good show. That doesn't mean it was to everyone's taste (I find a lot of it very hard to watch), but it's an interesting and very well executed show. She is famous because she created and executed on a very good prestige TV show. That's super hard to do, and she pulled it off because she's very talented. Any take that skips over this or downplays it is missing the point.
I have a question.
“I thought that my story about dating a guy in my teens who was obsessed with my mom would be huge because it was just such a weird thing, but it wasn’t significantly more successful than any of my other personal essays!”
How do you measure the success of your articles? I’m a subscriber, and I click in nearly every new article you post, even if I don’t finish reading it because it lost my interest.
So how do you know if one article is more successful than the other? Number of likes and comments?
Paid growth and positive comments (proportion to my overall audience size at the time.)
I always feel bad when you talk about losing a fairly small number of subscribers as something you pay close attention to, because I subscribe and unsubscribe pretty often for reasons having to do with my own life rather than anything having to do with your writing.
I bet that sex scene gets *really* hot once Kim Jong Un shows up.
There's this great book called StoryGenius that has defined what makes a good story for me, and now I see that everywhere.
People are looking for stories to help them figure out how to navigate life. The ones that seem to pull on that feeling the most are the ones that everyone wants to read.
I suppose the same goes for personal essays. Even more so actually. Like, everyone has an anxious feeling that everyone hates them, even if it's tucked away in a distant corner of their mind. When you write about that actually happening, people want to see what they can learn from it.
Lots of the train wreck essays from The Cut are from people we don't get and would prefer to stay away from, but holy shit, how do they perceive things? And what can I add to my toolbox to ensure i can keep well clear of people like this? That's what keeps me reading.
I think your anonymity is helpful, although I imagine the people you care the most about know your identity so maybe not so much as one would think.
I’m anonymous mostly to hide from online weirdos- everyone irl knows I’m CHH
I’ve got an enduring guess as to your first name! Purely vibes based, no sleuthy stalking. Honestly still chasing the high of thinking PinkPantheress was “probably called Vicky or something”
I’ve written a best-selling tell-all memoir — in my mind.
Various things hit me all day long that I could turn into essays. I have had the same thoughts about Sedaris, whom I absolutely adore (he once told me a family secret at a book-signing!) I could tell some compelling stories that would be made good by my framing of them, but I don’t wish to expose myself and people close to me in that way. So I keep these stories — and my framing of them — to myself.
I’ve considered publishing such pieces under a pseudonym, but I’d want to claim them.
“Yes, I was a fifteen-year-old girl dreaming of growing up to be a crotchety, neurotic gay Greek man.” I’ve never had an original experience.
Publishers have been purchasing their way onto the bestseller lists for a long time (article from 2013 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/02/22/heres-how-you-buy-your-way-onto-the-new-york-times-bestsellers-list/ ). Bestseller does not necessarily mean great, particularly since this book is probably more of a Netflix treatment than an actual book
“ and a lot of people being “tricked” into enjoying your mediocre writing is basically the same thing as being a good writer.”
That is one of the most ridiculous things you have written (that I have read). Do you really measure quality by popularity?
I think she's defining "good" as people want to read it and enjoy it. She's not saying popularity equals GREAT writing.
Yes, thank you
Good writing is a matter of taste, good writers are a matter of satisfying the people who pay them to write
I think you conflated the word "good" and the word "quality". These are very related but not synonyms.
On the point about "half self awareness" and falling prey to it yourself, I would say that this is actually a big benefit of the blog and comments format. In isolation, the examples you highlight might be off putting, but in this format, they are just one part of the whole. For instance, my take on the essay about screens keeping kids alive was much less "it is annoying that she is preaching at us that her hangups are actually correct", and much more a recognition that you were working through a real hangup by putting it out there and getting feedback. But that's because I've been reading your essays for years. If I had just come across it without having any familiarity with your previous writing, my reaction would have been different.
The unlinked I’m-very-hot essay makes me think of some of the writing done when EmRata decided to show everyone she was an intellectual - granted, EmRata is indeed hot but that’s something that’s probably less profound to everyone else, as it’s not actually surprising that hot people exist and are liked and/or resented for being hot
One of the things that is worth considering why a particular "big personal essay" is written is how much the publication or editor is actively green lighting or encouraging said essays to be written because previous personal essays got tons of buzz and more important clicks. We may be "hate" reading said essay and making fun of how non-self aware or quite frankly deranged the writer comes across...but to the magazine or publication in question the only they compare about is did you read it or are you talking about it on your substack in a way that might get your readers to read it.
There are a lot of "downstream" consequences to the fact that newspapers/publications have a lot more data as to what stories actually get read (it's tragic in many ways, but there's a reason so many news orgs have slashed the budget for international news generally) and one "downstream" consequence is getting the same variations of the same story getting written over and over again because it's clear we're reading them. This was something I sort of came to realize when there became a zillion "trips to Trump country" stories. The thing is, a lot of these stories were reasonably well written, often had interesting quotes or anecdotes and sometimes even real political insight. But man they became...repetitive. To the point there became almost a template to these things; a description of traveling to some small town that sounds like the writer is on a safari when in fact they drove west on Interstate 80 for two hours, a conversation with an older man right around retirement age at a diner talking about how he doesn't like this or that Trump did but is still with him, a picture accompanying the article of the older man staring plaintively out the diner window, details about how the local factory closed 25 years earlier, various observations of a town in decline etc. Point being, these articles got churned out with such regularity they became fodder for derision given how derivative and cliche they became. But here's the thing, you know why they kept being written? We kept reading them. Same reason there is endless articles about campus controversies my entire life**.
An exchange from the movie "Private Parts" worth keeping in mind at all times
Researcher: The average radio listener listens for eighteen minutes. The average Howard Stern fan listens for - are you ready for this? - an hour and twenty minutes.
Pig Vomit: How can that be?
Researcher: Answer most commonly given? "I want to see what he'll say next."
Pig Vomit: Okay, fine. But what about the people who hate Stern?
Researcher: Good point. The average Stern hater listens for two and a half hours a day.
Pig Vomit: But... if they hate him, why do they listen?
Researcher: Most common answer? "I want to see what he'll say next."
The hate watchers, the hate listeners, the hate readers can bizarrely be the target audience. And likely is part of why these "personal essays" are crafted the way they are crafted.
** There is no aspect of American life covered wildly out of proportion to its actual importance to American society then "controversies" at elite colleges; protests, a professor saying something beyond the pale, student group statements etc. Forget you're actual feelings at what ever "controversy" you're thinking of, the actual "controversary' does not deserve nearly as much coverage as about 50 other things happening in the country that day.