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 in chief were known for their eloquent ferocity. A talent for writing was the only arguable explanation for my behavior.   I had only recently discovered the essay as a genre. I took to it immediately and had had some modest success in getting my essays published on a wide range of websites, from capricious 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 exclusive writers grant? At first I thought the idea was laughable. Who the infernal region 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 search for the pieces I would submit.   I looked for the essays with a real punch to them. I would include those that had been published or had received at least an practiced mention. There was that unmatched I wrote about going to Mexico. Then one of my canoe essays. Not something corny like me and Ed on the Allegheny, exclusively the one where I used paddling as a platform to entrance our Mad Max transportation system. I included another weeklong piece and then a couple of my short pieces.   Reviewing the essays, I became self-aware 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 varied from my own, but what style are the reviewers looking for? Are they the super sheer literary types that will dismiss my essays for having a social or governmental consciousness? Literature Not polemics Jack Warner was right If you want to file a message, go to Western Union Take your soap recession and be gone   I w as making myself crazy. I am a writer. This writer will now print off these selections in the stage required by the arts council, will put them into a manilla envelope, go to the post office and send them to Columbus.