But back to the essay: "After that article came out, there was quite a lot of reaction," he said.
In the end, I come back to the essay by Joe Amato, whose writing has done as much as anybody's to help us rethink place, locality, region, and community thriving.
There are still surprises, much as writers may be surprised when their creations take an unexpected turn, but we manage to contain those surprises by bringing them back within the essay that is our lives.
In his brief foreword, he explains that when he was starting out, he felt that he was "helping to bring back the personal essay", but 30 years on, it is a form with which he continues to struggle.
The idea, then, is to send you back to the Essays.
Once you've written your rough draft, you should go back and revise the essay and check for any lapses in your logic, and unproved points, or any weak arguments.
One applicant picked "reflective," wrote the essay back to front and attached a hand mirror.
The process continued, back and forth, until the essay was as good as it could possibly be.
I did what you did back then, and mailed the essay to an editor whose name I plucked off the masthead of Ladies Home JournalLadies Home Journal
