I’m Ready to Write :: Graduate College Admissions Essays

Im Ready to Write   I had been scribbling in diaries and journals for years. My letters to the editor were known for their eloquent ferocity. A talent for writing was the only plausible explanation for my behavior.   I had only recently discovered the essay as a genre. I took to it immediately and had had whatever modest success in getting my essays published on a wide range of websites, from off-the-wall e-zines to on-line literary journals.   Was I ready? Was I ready for a real test-to submit my work to the state arts commission for an individual sources grant? At first I thought the stem was laughable. Who the hell did I think I was?   My mom knew. She would hold my face in her hands and stare directly into my eyes and say, You are a writer Repeat after me I am a writer   If my mom believed that, I would not argue with her. I would collaborate in the fiction for now. I began to seek for the pieces I would submit.   I looked for the essays with a r eal punch to them. I would include those that had been published or had received at least an honorable mention. There was that genius I wrote about going to Mexico. Then one of my canoe essays. Not something corny like me and Ed on the Allegheny, but the one where I use paddling as a platform to view our Mad Max transportation system. I included another longer piece and then a lucifer of my short pieces.   Reviewing the essays, I became self-conscious about my style. It is too popular to be literary, and too literary to be popular. It combines gravitas with humor. There are well-regarded authors whose style is not so different from my own, but what style are the reviewers looking for? Are they the super pure literary types that will dismiss my essays for having a social or political consciousness? Literature Not polemics Jack Warner was right If you want to send a message, go to Western Union Take your soap box seat and be gone   I was making myself crazy. I am a writer. This writer will now print off these selections in the format essential by the arts council, will put them into a manila envelope, go to the post office and send them to Columbus.