Hi.

If you're visiting for the first time today, chances are that you did a modicum of online sleuthing after reading my Modern Love essay.

Welcome.

Let's say that you came to offer me opportunities, be they literary or theatrical. You're welcome to email me at artnixie at yahoo dotcom. The project dearest to my heart right now is a long-form narrative journalism piece on the New Orleans pet rescue. I've been unable to place it.

Or let's say that you were hoping for sheet music to the Louis Quatorze song. Scroll.

But it is much much more likely that you are a writer, that you write or want to write personal essays, and you are doing research.

I'm happy to share.

Not-so-very-insider Tips on How to Publish Your Personal Essay

Disclaimer: I have absolutely no inside information on how the sausage is made. I've never been to the factory. I've never met the foreman. Everything that follows is either my individual experience or rank extrapolation.

Myth: You need to "know somebody." I used to know some somebodies, but that was long ago. In this case. I had no ins, dropped no names, came over the transom.

It does look to me as though some contributors are invited to submit to the column, especially writers with a following or an unusual background or a compelling story they've got coming soon in book form.

And if you're a man, or at least other than the white-educated-woman demographic who seem to often write for this column, I'd think your perspective might make a welcome change. What are you waiting for?

You don't need to query an essay. Send it in the body of your email following a short introductory letter. The email address is on the Times website next to the column every week. If you want to personalize the greeting, the editor's name is easily searchable online. Simply state that you are sending a submission to the column, perhaps summarize its plot or theme in a sentence (no need to compare it to anything or insist it's perfect for the column), and list your writing credentials.

The main thing is that you send one piece only. Don't pitch an array of ideas or say, "Gosh, so many crazy things have happened, which one would you like a piece on?" Don't worry so much about length; the editor is proactive. However, make sure you send enough to work with (with a tight, brief, polished gem, it'll be either a perfect fit or a big miss), but not so much that you're basically saying "Um, I think there's a piece in here somewhere, let me just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks for you." In other words, I wouldn't send over 2,200 words absolute, absolute tops. I think I sent 1700. A different 1700 than the ones that ended up in the piece after multiple revisions.

In general, as for any submission, you increase your chances by familiarizing yourself with the venue. Read the column for several weeks. Recent essays are archived and linked every week in the Sunday Styles.

Essay topics range from major life events over quite long periods of time, to small, telling vignettes. I think personal essays work best when you write about something that is emotionally loaded for you, and can show why without hyperbole and without being precious. But I, at least, prefer the distance of time. If you write about something quite recent or ongoing, a messy divorce, or a gravely ill family member, it's often hard to get or convey perspective; things are very raw, and attempting to tame them into a coherent story can feel artificial or a sort of betrayal of your own confusion.

I also prefer to write small stories that are really about universal things. This is a common choice, often to the bafflement of readers. One ML essay was about a technology-assisted breakup. A blogger wrote that she was upset that that essay gave such short shrift to ethical implications of the writer's lover actually being engaged to another woman. Well, "I was 'the other woman'" is a different essay, one the write chose not to write. But nor did she omit the information; it hovered over their interactions ominously. In another essay, a man mentioned, but chose not to explore, the end of his marriage. Instead, he wrote about the contemporaneous obsession a student developed for him. Yet the essay is sort of about the end of a marriage, of spurious accusations alleged and major bad behavior acknowledged.

This is the sort of sideways, illumination-by-indirection approach. Then there are straight-ahead narratives that are really about what they say they're about. If the time period is long and the events major, I can get frustrated as a reader, feeling as though I'm getting an outline or a synopsis instead of entering the writer's experience. These, I think, are hard to write well.

You do want to think about issues of betrayal. Writing about something does in fact change it. It fixes and defines it, lays it out like a specimen. And the essay form does not allow for organic character development, nuanced ambiguity, all the ambivalence and indifference and love and hate at once. The people dearest, or once dearest, to you will become partial, even caricaturish. (This particular column, in fact, has an illustrator, and so that is literally often the case.) There are some things I wouldn't write about for such a public venue. These things are very particular to each writer.

And you're under no obligation to enter a "confessional." Personal essays can be polished and distant, almost theoretical, and still truthful and moving. You're not on the stand and you're not on the couch. You don't need, above all, to violate your own sense of propriety in the name of honesty. When you read other essays, notice when something bothers you, if you feel the writer has crossed some sort of line. That's *your line*, not their line. For example, I don't mind writing about making mistakes, looking foolish, embarrassing myself. Some people do. I don't like reading about lots of puke and shit. Some people find that gritty and authentic. And I really wince when a writer sells the people they love/d down the river to show how they have grown. I think it's very tricky to portray other people's bad behavior or foibles without being disingenuous about your own complicity. Oh, and I hate being led by the nose into having a certain emotion, or some ta-da insight, or neat little psychoanalyzed, hemetically sealed closure. I like ambiguity and porousness.

These are matters of taste, but they also point to choices. I think things have the best chance of success if you make clear choices. What you're putting in and why. What you're leaving out and why. How broad, how detailed, how interior. What's your stance on the events? Bemused, angry, wistful, wise. And what are you leaving for the reader to feel? You can let the reader feel like shaking you and telling you to get a clue. That's a choice.

I like to write in the same words I use to think and talk, and with the same rhythm I use in speech. That's a choice.

In my case, I was writing about a quite long relationship, one that has gone through many stages and is far from the easiest I've had. When I think about it, I can fall into "He always..." "He never.." But not even my closest friends have the patience for that. So I chose a point of entry to one of our perennial struggles through a small event. Small, but important to me, as it's one I replay in my mind many times when I'm holding mock-trials in the "he always/he never" court.

I chose to keep the setting as claustrophobic as I'd felt. And I chose to leave out other, equally important facets of the relationship, as I'd do them no justice and they'd just muddy the waters. Also, when you have a partner this willful and idiosyncratic, why spend all that hard-earned capital on just one essay? I chose not to go into detail about the traumatic event that led to us living together in large part because that's *his* story, not mine, to tell. However, I thought it was important to say it was a fire, because that is specific and evokes specific images and emotions.

So after you have a sense of what they publish and you've chosen your story, you've only to write it. Write it, let it sit, revisit it, repeat. Make sure you give yourself the best chance of acceptance by sending in a piece that has meaning for you, that is as strong as you can make it, and that you feel good about in a deeper way than just being satisfied that you've nailed what "they" want. Send it in. The editor is very nice, very busy, and takes his job seriously. For me, that meant more extensive and invasive editing than I'd every experienced. On the other hand, he sort of hinted that other writers had been much more amenable or required far fewer rounds of revision. It was all very friendly, but took a long time.

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The Louis Quatorze Song

Tin Pan Alley-ish, think "Yes, we have no bananas"

Intro: (sung-said over a piano vamp using one note except for last few syllables)

He was a large black securities analyst in a tailor-made suit
She was a sweet young blonde from Solomon Smith Barney
They met on the Louis Rukeyser show.

She looked at him with her big blue eyes and said
There's just one thing I'd like to know...

Chorus: (Stride piano. Uptempo!)
What is it for? The Louis Quatorze?
The Louis Quatorze! The Louis Quatorze! (shouted from assembled company)
What is it for? The Louis Quatorze?
What's it for? What's it for? What's it for? (shouted from assembled company)

(Add verses that you almost immediately forget about any two people who strike your fancy. Sing chorus as much as you like.)