Author and editor Sari Botton on giving yourself permission to write personal essays

As a woman born in the mid-1960s and living in a patriarchal culture, I have always struggled to feel justified in taking up space anywhere, most of all on the page.

Writing about my experiences is my passion and chosen profession, but I have always wrestled with feeling entitled to it, especially since some deride this kind of work by labeling it navel-gazing and oversharing, which implies it's unwelcome information, especially when it comes from women.

These are the thoughts that dog me.

Who am I to think my story has value? Who am I to believe anyone will care about what I have to say about my perceptions of the world around me and my own particular experiences? As crime novelist Laura Lipman writes in the introduction to her essay collection, My Life as a Villainess, the question that hovers over anyone who dares to write personal essays, especially a woman, is who the hell do you think you are? Among the many catalysts for my resistance toward writing this has been a certain negative attitude in our culture toward first person writing.

For the uninitiated, reliably every few years, some critic takes a massive dump on personal essays, memoirs, or both.

One of the arguments that keeps getting regurgitated is that the authors, frequently women or others who are marginalized, aren't writing about an experience that's extraordinary enough or that their lives aren't sufficiently interesting to warrant a publishing contract.

The criticism catches fire and circulates on social media as if it's some new idea.

Memoir haters pile on.

Then comes the backlash from first-person diehards like me.

My defense goes like this.

While there's definitely room for sensational essays and memoirs by people who have had outrageous experiences or who are famous for one reason or another, that's actually not the meat and potatoes of the first person category.

And it's not what dedicated fans of this kind of writing seek in it.

No, the primary job of the essayist or memoirist is to use the craft of writing to illuminate and make meaning of the ordinary, to name or crystallize experiences that are incredibly common in such a way that readers understand their own versions of those common experiences anew.

There's more to it, though.

It's the job of the essayists and memoirists from marginalized groups to shed light on their experiences, even the average ones, especially the average ones, which have frequently been ignored by a culture and field long dominated by affluent white men.

When women, LBGTQIA, BIPOC, and disabled writers dare to share their perspectives on everyday experiences, it is a bold political act.

I offer you this mini-dissertation on first-person writing as a way to calibrate your expectations for this, my somewhat experimental, episodic memoir in confessions, and to apprise you of my mission with it.

Let me confess right out of the gate that I have not lived an exceptional life.

I did not survive some horrific accident.

I did not win the lottery or endure remarkably unfortunate circumstances.

I've had my difficulties.

I've been through my share of traumas and tough times emotionally, financially and otherwise.

But we're not talking tabloid material.

I am a writer, mainly of first person nonfiction, a woman writer in my 60s.

an age at which American culture tends to deem us boring, invisible, and disposable.

As a woman born in the mid-1960s and living in a patriarchal culture, I have always struggled to feel justified in taking up space anywhere, most of all on the page.

Writing about my experiences is my passion and chosen profession, but I have always wrestled with feeling entitled to it, especially since some deride this kind of work by labeling it navel-gazing and oversharing, which implies it's unwelcome information, especially when it comes from women.

These are the thoughts that dog me.

Who am I to think my story has value? Who am I to believe anyone will care about what I have to say about my perceptions of the world around me and my own particular experiences? As crime novelist Laura Lipman writes in the introduction to her essay collection, My Life as a Villainess, the question that hovers over anyone who dares to write personal essays, especially a woman, is who the hell do you think you are? Among the many catalysts for my resistance toward writing this has been a certain negative attitude in our culture toward first person writing.

For the uninitiated, reliably every few years, some critic takes a massive dump on personal essays, memoirs, or both.

One of the arguments that keeps getting regurgitated is that the authors, frequently women or others who are marginalized, aren't writing about an experience that's extraordinary enough or that their lives aren't sufficiently interesting to warrant a publishing contract.

The criticism catches fire and circulates on social media as if it's some new idea.

Memoir haters pile on.

Then comes the backlash from first-person diehards like me.

My defense goes like this.

While there's definitely room for sensational essays and memoirs by people who have had outrageous experiences or who are famous for one reason or another, that's actually not the meat and potatoes of the first person category.

And it's not what dedicated fans of this kind of writing seek in it.

No, the primary job of the essayist or memoirist is to use the craft of writing to illuminate and make meaning of the ordinary, to name or crystallize experiences that are incredibly common in such a way that readers understand their own versions of those common experiences anew.

There's more to it, though.

It's the job of the essayists and memoirists from marginalized groups to shed light on their experiences, even the average ones, especially the average ones, which have frequently been ignored by a culture and field long dominated by affluent white men.

When women, LBGTQIA, BIPOC, and disabled writers dare to share their perspectives on everyday experiences, it is a bold political act.

I offer you this mini-dissertation on first-person writing as a way to calibrate your expectations for this, my somewhat experimental, episodic memoir in confessions, and to apprise you of my mission with it.

Let me confess right out of the gate that I have not lived an exceptional life.

I did not survive some horrific accident.

I did not win the lottery or endure remarkably unfortunate circumstances.

I've had my difficulties.

I've been through my share of traumas and tough times emotionally, financially and otherwise.

But we're not talking tabloid material.

I am a writer, mainly of first person nonfiction, a woman writer in my 60s.

an age at which American culture tends to deem us boring, invisible, and disposable.