When to Write a Personal Essay: A Reasonable Standard
The past few months have been full of navel-gazing essays about the relative merits of writers writing navel-gazing essays. Blogger Kate Fridkis weighs in with one more this week—a fairly run-of-the-mill heave in defense of personal writing. One argument in particular deserves to be highlighted:
When I read about a duty officer at a Russian nuclear command center who saved the world from nuclear destruction and never received much credit, I immediately thought, "I wish he'd written a personal essay about this!"
Fair enough: anyone who saves the world from destruction can write a personal essay. The rest of us can chill for a while.