This document outlines 10 different types of personal essays: 1) contemplative essays which explore ideas without reaching conclusions, 2) memoir essays which use personal experiences to reflect on broader themes, 3) lyric essays which combine elements of poetry and prose to seek insights, 4) nature essays which appreciate the natural world through detailed observations, 5) travel essays which find unique details about other places, 6) spiritual essays which grapple with questions of faith and belief, 7) gastronomical essays which thoughtfully consider food, culture, and desire, 8) humor essays which package uncomfortable truths in a amusing way, 9) blog essays which meander through multiple subjects while developing a singular voice, and 10) flexible essays which pursue ideas like "

1. ESSAY WRITING

2. WHAT IS AN ESSAY?
An essay is a prose writing that expresses thoughts.
Attitudes and opinions of a writer on subject of human
interest. It can either be formal or informal.The former
is a serious one while the informal is also known as the
personal essay.There are no set rules to follow in essay
writing; it is the author’s attitude that will determine the
tone or attitude of the essay, as well as the structure and
choice of details. (Arroyo, 1994)

3. KINDS OF PERSONAL ESSAYS
1. The Contemplative Essay – An essay for rumination where the
essayist may explore or keeps an open mind and may never reach
a final conclusion. Representative writers for contemplative essay
are Montaigne andVirginia Woolf. Contemplative essay is less
structured and less direct which may not begin with an idea then
strive to prove the writer’s point.
2. The Memoir Essay – serves as one’s mere own recollection;
something memorable on the mind of the writer, making use of
personal experience for reflection on much grander themes, not
just, “this happened to me,” but, “this happened and it gave me
occasion to ponder.”

4. KINDS OF PERSONAL ESSAYS
3.The Lyric Essay – A playful form that overlaps literary boundaries.A combination of
poem and essay, it quests for insights and illumination, but relies as much on
language and image as it does on narrative and idea.
4.The Nature Essay – Suited to an appreciation of nature because the essay has its
meandering disposition like in the essays of Henry DavidThoreau capturing his
Walden Pond as well as his thoughts on solitude and encroaching technology.What is
not commonly seen is the essay’s characteristic: the blazing sunset; blooming flowers
with the sweet scent of spring; the baby animals which are stunningly cute as kittens,
etc. Representative essayists of nature is Annie Dillard in “Living LikeWeasels” which
tells us: “I have been thinking about weasels because I saw one last week. I startled a
weasel that startled me, and we exchanged a long glance.”That locking of eyes
serves as an occasion for Dillard to consider the difference between her protected life
and life in the predatory wilderness, an also potential lessons from this secretive
creature.

5. KINDS OF PERSONAL ESSAY
“I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical senses
and the dignity 0f living without bias or motive.” Publication outlets for this form range from
glossy magazines devoted to birding and ecology to more literary venues.
5.TheTravel Essay – Like the nature essay, travel essays depend on detailed observation and an
ability to find and depict unchartered paths. It is more of seeking the “new, absolutely
contemporary and constantly shifting wonders of the modern world,” as essayist Pico Iyer advised.
Iyer has chronicled airport culture instead of cathedrals, or the odd detail that just offTiananmen
Square, near Mao Zedong’s mausoleum, sits the world’s largest KFC, where people are filing
around in awe, taking picture of one another in front of the tables and staring at the pictures on
the walls that show such promised lands as Santa Barbara and Hollywood.” Essays from National
GeographicTraveler are good examples to read which focus on travel.

6. KINDS OF PERSONAL ESSAYS
6.The Spiritual Essay –The confessions of St. Augustine may have been the world’s first memoir, and
though the ancient diction , even in translation, can be off putting, the book remains powerful and
startling.Why? Because St. Augustine told the truth. He didn’t claim that his Christian beliefs were
uncomplicated or that he fully understood his faith. Remember that the role of essays means to
struggle towards an answer, and this suggests another important aspect of the form, which is
“conflict.”
7.The Gastronomical Essay – We spend so much time thinking about food, that it’s only natural we
write about it as well. A good food essay is more like a nature essay.When “researching” this sort of
piece, pay close attention to aroma, texture, taste and color, but also let your mind wander. M.F.K.
Fisher’s 1942 book of food essays, How to Cook aWolf, is shock-full of cooking tips, recipes, humor and
sumptuous description, but it’s also firmly grounded in her skeptical outlook and the wartime
shortages of the era. Food is not just sustenance; it is culture, consequence and desire.

7. KINDS OF PERSONAL ESSAY
8.The Humor Essay –The manner of presentation – how a truth is packaged
– is all that differentiates what makes us close our eyes and wince from what
makes us crack a smile. Every successful humorist knows that the line
between an uncomfortable truth and a good belly laugh is remarkably thin.
Thus, David Sedaris wrote about a time he caught a wicked virus: “It was a
24-hour bug, the kind that completely empties you out and takes away your
will to live.You’d get a glass of water, but that would involve standing, and so
instead, you just sort of stare toward the kitchen, hoping that maybe, one of
the pipes will burst, and the water will come to you.” Often, the opposite is
true:The best jokes sneak up on you.

8. KINDS OF PERSONAL ESSAYS
9.The Blog Essay –Trying out an idea? Meandering through multiple subjects? Searching for a
singular voice?That’s what the best bloggers do, whether blogging about food, politics,
parenthood or puppies.To post to a blog is “to let go of your writing in a way, to hold it at arm’s
length, open it to scrutiny, allow it to float in the ether for a while, and to let others, as Montaigne
did, pivot you toward relative truth.” Audience must be foremost in your mind, as a blogger.
10.The “Everything Else” Essay – Sanders, a contemporary essayist has compared writing the
essay to “the pursuit of mental rabbits,” implying that a successful essay is a hunt, a chase, a
ramble through mental thickets to capture a glimmer or fuzzy truth. Keep in mind that it is the
journey rather than the destination that always matter most. And that journey can take you
anywhere, and encompass any question.

9. END OF PRESENTATION