Are You Better Off? Want to Start Writing that Essay? Here’s How

ARE YOU BETTER OFF? This is the question on which the results of the upcoming election seems to ride, at least as indicated by legitimate mainstream media. And it’s a good question. Worth considering, discussing at home and in school, the question also makes a fine reason to write a short piece of memoir. Though here is some advice.

We don’t need another screed. Nope. We don’t need more or louder yelling. What we need is for you, the writers of the memoir, to take on the big, seemingly imponderable questions of the day, hit them with a hammer and break them down.

Are you better off?

The very nature of our country and its climate suggests that this is an economics question. But what if you pluck the question from its purely dollar and cents base and have a look at it? When I do, I get fascinated with how we measure success. With this is mind, ask yourself again: Are we better off than we were x number of years ago?

What is your metric? How are you gauging that all-too-important measure of “better off?” In purely economic terms, I am not better off. I got laid off from my 6-year radio job right before Christmas. My retirement plan is still climbing back from the loss we all endured. But what else do you need to know to make you think more deeply about what it means to be well-off?

An essay I would read or listen to on the radio would discuss how your definition of success has altered one way or the other by the circumstances of life. For instance, my gay friends can marry in my state now. And we are not, in fact, in a depression. And like many Americans, I’ve absorbed the message that I need to clean up my own debt. I recently sat with a lifelong friend of mine as he died exactly as he had chosen to do so – at home in rural New York, and on his own terms. This differs greatly – monumentally – from the dreadful, prolonged deaths of both of my parents.

Now how would you build this essay?

Right now, the Democratic convention is on, and the message they bring is that America is, in fact, better off. That’s where I got my idea for this essay. That’s where I got what is known as the news peg. This is what writers do: we read and we react. And this is also what memoirist can do – writing short pieces of memoir that help shape and define national arguments. Remember: Memoir is not only that one big book that begins when your great-great grandfather was born and ends with what you ate for lunch yesterday. At least not with me as your guide. Here, we write with intent.

News peg in hand, the next thing you do is look at other essays online, or listen to some on the radio. These essays run somewhere around 600-750 words. Now you’ve got your space limit. Good.

Next, you gather some facts, and to do that you go to a good, reliable news source. This requires what we call in the trade of writing, news literacy. You need to have some. Having it requires recognizing a good place from which to quote facts and figures. You know how I feel about inaccurate sourcing.

News peg, word count and some good, hard thought to the myriad indices that measure success, it’s time to write a first draft. For more on that, see here. And write on.