The Not-Quite-Staying-Home Mom

 I spent the weekend editing college essays. This was to audition for a job as an editor; I didn't realize that was the job until halfway through the interview call, but life is strange.

A few things became clear to me--through my interview, and through my homework--and I'm writing them down for the day when my first child turns seventeen.

*The point is to make the judge *like* you. Many students think they are aiming to "seem impressive," but in fact a recitation of triumphs is boring. It's better to pick a failure, and describe the failure in a charming way. A corollary, from my college writing class: "You aren't writing to score a date. You're writing to tell the truth about your life."

*This is the time to have the "show, don't tell" talk. Some writers push back against the cliche. It's fine to "tell"! Maybe. But, since the space on an application is limited, I think "showing" is crucial here. Many students will want to make a vague statement, then repeat it several times, as if the act of repetition will force the statement to become true. "I have always loved classical civilizations." "Ancient Greece is just my deepest obsession." "When I think of Athens and Sparta, I simply become excited." BAD! ....The thing a student should look for is: concrete nouns. If I'm writing about musical theater, I have a host of technical terms at my fingertips: "Bernadette Peters," "11:00 number," "Jack Viertel," "conditional love song," "diegetic music." The topic that seems to churn out endless concrete nouns: That's the thing the child should be writing about.

*Bird by bird. It seems to me that writing feels crazily onerous to many kids, so a kid will choose one topic and just wade through, and wade through, in a grim, joyless way. I think a better option is to list three or four topics and actually follow the various ideas through five or six paragraphs. The one that keeps "tugging" on your sleeve--the one you keep returning to--that's the topic to commit to. Since high-school English classes do not seem to approach writing in this way, the college essay can become a kind of mountain-to-be-scaled (and this doesn't have to be the case).

We'll see what comes of this. It's been fun to think about.