Get Out of Your Own Way

Get Out of Your Own Way

When you first begin your essay, you might wonder how you’ll have enough to say. But when you find your story and get into it, you’re going to be surprised how soon you run out of space. (It’s pretty standard for my coaching students to have first drafts of 1200 – 1500 words.)

Having too much to say is a better problem than having not enough to say, but it’s still a problem! You don’t want to leave out chunks of your story, and ideally, you don’t want to just cut all of the details out either. So what to do?

There are a lot of different solutions—and the longer your rough draft, the more likely you are to need all of them—but try starting by getting out of your own way.

Aren’t you supposed to be in the essay? Yes, but you don’t always have to say that for your reader to know you were there. The offending clauses are ones that add a layer of *you* between your reader and your story. They’re ones like …

“I remember”

“I learned”

“I realized”

“I saw”

“I decided”

“I began”

“I still remember when”

“I can still see”

Each of those clauses is going to introduce another complete thought. Grammatically, you don’t need that introductory clause. And we are already seeing your story, your memories, filtered through your own lens. That extra layer, that extra clause, is like scratches on the lens, like smudges of your fingerprints. Get out of your own way, and take yourself—the observing self—out of the sentence.

“I realized I had never been so far from home.”

“I had never been so far from home.”

The meaning is still clear, is it not?

Perhaps you’re telling the story of a backpacking trip.

“I woke that morning and crawled out of my tent. I watched the sun rise over the far mountains.”

Do you need to watch the sunrise? If you get out of the way, your reader will watch the sunrise without you.

“I woke that morning and crawled out of my tent as the sun rose over the far mountains.”

(To be fair, in that example I’d probably cut the tent: “I woke that morning in time to watch the sunrise over the far mountains.”)

If you began to do something in the past, you did it. If you decided to do something, and then you did it … do we need to hear about the moment of decision? In a college essay, this advice serves double  purpose—it improves the prose, AND it cuts words.

This isn’t, of course, an ironclad rule. Few “rules” of writing are. Sometimes the moment of decision or beginning is an important moment and can’t be overlooked. But it’s worth trying to take it out and hearing how it sounds. When you’re at 689 words and counting down, look for places to get out of your own way.

If you’re overwhelmed by the number of words you have yet to cut, think about scheduling a 15-minute consultation to learn how I can help.

(Photo by Daniel Mirlea on Unsplash)