How to Write an Essay in Six Steps

Lesson 6 of 8: Finding Your Essay’s Heartbeat

If you’re new here, The Forever Workshop is an experiment in affordable education for writers. For $10 per month, you’ll receive a variety of month-long workshops by experienced instructors.

This month’s workshop, Finding Your Essay’s Heartbeat, is from Andrea A. Firth! Sign up for just $10/m to receive this week's and next week’s lessons, plus full access to our catalog of workshops. You can find the introduction post here if you’re new to this course. Happy writing!

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Writers, today we write!

I’m going to walk you through a six-step prompt, and by the end you will have a draft of a personal essay well underway. I recommend that you set aside an hour to complete the prompt. Find a writing space and time without distractions. Use a pen and paper or a computer, that’s up to you. Use your phone or other device as a timer and allocate ten minutes for each step. You may find some steps go faster or slower, or you may not fully complete a step in ten minutes. That’s ok—adjust the timing per step as needed, but a total of sixty minutes is plenty of writing time for one sitting without a break.

I’ve adapted this six-step prompt from a prompt taught by the awesome essayist Marion Winik. Read the steps one at a time—don’t read ahead. Set your timer for ten minutes and write.