I read Dinty W. Moore's Crafting the Personal Essay immediately after mailing my honours thesis in last year. Academic writing had wrung me out and left me unable to write anything less than formal prose. Dinty Moore soon turned me around and whet my appetite for more learning and writing.
Crafting the Personal Essay is a very readable and motivating book on writing the personal essay. Moore covers the nuts and bolts of writing the humorous, nature, travel, lyric, spiritual and food essay, providing numerous examples and tips. This is the first time I have heard essay writing defined as chasing "mental rabbits' but that is exactly what it is: a "hunt, a chase, a ramble through thickets of thought, in pursuit of some brief glimmer of fuzzy truth". He exactly describes the essay-writing process, how to work through ideas and feelings and nail them to paper.
There are plenty of exercises to get the writer's pen to paper and build a fund of ideas and starters. Highly recommended!
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