What to write about when nothing has happened to you
By Ryan Jaffe ·
I hear this in the first session constantly. No tragedy, no championship, no startup. Nothing worth five hundred words.
The premise is wrong. Essays do not get their power from the size of the event. They get it from the quality of the noticing. A student who can tell me exactly why she reorganizes the walk-in cooler a certain way has more material than a student who spent a week building houses abroad and felt generally moved.
So we go looking somewhere else. What do you do when no one is watching. What are you strangely particular about. What argument do you keep having with your family. What did you believe at twelve that you no longer believe.
Ordinary life, examined closely by one specific person, is not a fallback topic. It is the assignment.