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How To Pitch BuzzFeed: A Guide For Freelancers And Contributors

Interested in pitching BuzzFeed? Here's how.

BuzzFeed Staff

Have you ever wondered if BuzzFeed accepts freelance and contributor pitches?

Great, welcome! We do, and this guide should help you along your way.

We're always looking for freelance writers who can contribute entertaining and well-researched pieces to BuzzFeed.com, though what we're taking pitches on can vary based on the season.

Format-wise, we welcome pitches for lists (with a minimum of 15 items in each list), how-to guides or explainers, super timely or trending news stories, first-person stories about trying something interesting, and more.

(Personal essays can be submitted to BuzzFeed Reader , as we do not currently accept pitches for them.)

Right now, we are looking for content to fit these coverage areas:

Pop culture 📺.

We welcome all pitches about the world of TV, movies, music, and celebrity.

HBO Max's "Pure" Made Me Feel Seen As Someone Who Has OCD

16 Easter Eggs Spotted In "The Umbrella Academy" Season 2

17 Things Every "American Horror Story" Fan Is Totally Guilty Of

18 Times BTS Actually Gave The Best Life Advice

Currently, BuzzFeed is looking to expand our LGBTQ+ coverage and we’re looking for everything from classic BuzzFeed posts like identity posts and quizzes to pop culture breaking stories. Also, in particular, we’d love to cover more identities like trans, non-binary, asexuals, demisexuals, and even more lesbian content.

20 LGBTQ Movies Everyone Should Watch At Least Once  

I’m Asexual And Here Are Just 14 Things I Refuse To Hear Anymore

No, I'm Not Showing You My Transition Before-And-After Pictures, And Here's Why

"Crazy, Stupid, Love" Actor Lio Tipton Celebrated Pride Month By Coming Out     As Queer And Non-Binary

16 Fascinating Behind-The-Scenes Facts You Never Knew About Your Favorite LGBTQ+ Movies  

Lifestyle 🥑

Lifestyle covers food, relationships, mental health and wellness, DIY, parenting, general life skills, and more.

Topics are often service-driven: anything people might be interested in doing better or learning more about. You should either be qualified to write on the topic with authority, or lay out a plan to do research and interview experts who are.

Here Are The Best Trader Joe's Snacks According To Nutritionists

What To Do If Your Sex Drive Is Much Lower (or Higher) Than Your Partner's

I Tried A Bunch Of TikTok Life Hacks (And Some Were Low-Key Brilliant)

8 Tiny But Effective Habits I Turn To When I'm Feeling Stressed Or Anxious

10 Expert Tips For Thoughtfully Talking About Racism With Family Or Friends

The (Really Good) Iced Coffee Recipe That's Fueled Me All Through Quarantine

Personal Finance 💵

We’re looking for service content geared towards younger Millennials and Gen Z’ers who are just starting their financial lives. Think: explainers, Gen Z/Millennial finance trends, budgeting and savings hacks, money etiquette, personal stories/“I Tried” posts.

31 People Share The Best Money Advice They've Ever Gotten

10 Seriously Useful Money Tips That Everyone Can Use

27 Money Tips For Students That Are Actually Useful

Sex & Love 💘

We’re open to pitches about sex and wellness. Topics are often service-driven: anything people might be interested in doing better or learning more about. Or it can tackle a topic that people might not know how to discuss or approach! You should either be qualified to write on the topic with authority, or lay out a plan to do research and interview experts who are.

I Masturbated Every Day For A Month And Before You Say Anything, It Was Actually Really Powerful

What Lesbian Sex Position Are You?

How Much Random Vagina Knowledge Do You Have?

Sex Is Painful For Me — These 9 Things Help

The 14 Stages Of Getting Your Period That Everyone With A Period Can Relate To

This Is Why People With Vaginas Get Bleached Stains In Their Underwear

K-Pop and K-Drama 🎙️

We're always looking for writers who are knowledgeable about the world of K-Pop (from BTS to all of the smaller groups) and viewers of the soapiest, most romantic K-Dramas.

25 Popular Korean Actors Who Originally Started Their Careers As K-Pop Idols

24 K-Dramas That Are Made Even Better By Their Fantastic Soundtracks

These Are The 27 Best K-Dramas And Movies On Netflix Right Now

Evergreen stories, "I Trieds", explainers, quizzes, and lists about beauty, with bonus points if it relates to Gen Z. We're especially interested in the "less is more" aesthetic — think: skincare, minimalism, TikTok tutorials or trends, beauty on a budget.

I Tried The Drugstore Moisturizing Hack That's All Over Instagram, And My Skin Is Completely Glowing

I Got A Perm In The Year 2021 And Loved It, Despite Not Being A Grandma

18 Inexpensive Beauty Hacks That'll Change Your Life

If you have a freelance pitch outside of these topics, feel free to pitch it to us! Just know that this is what we need to fill the most.

Due to the volume of submissions, we’re not able to respond to all emails individually. But if we’re interested, we will usually get back to you within two weeks. If something is truly time-sensitive and you need a response sooner, please note that in the subject line.

To submit a pitch, email [email protected].

Please include the title of your piece with a few sentences about what it would look like and/or examples of points in your list. If you're new to us, feel free to include writing clips or samples from your previous work. Please do not send us completed drafts.

And yes, we pay for published pieces! Rates vary depending on amount of reporting or research, turn-around time, and topic expertise.

16 Personal Essays About Mental Health Worth Reading

Here are some of the most moving and illuminating essays published on BuzzFeed about mental illness, wellness, and the way our minds work.

BuzzFeed Staff

1. My Best Friend Saved Me When I Attempted Suicide, But I Didn’t Save Her — Drusilla Moorhouse

"I was serious about killing myself. My best friend wasn’t — but she’s the one who’s dead."

2. Life Is What Happens While You’re Googling Symptoms Of Cancer — Ramona Emerson

"After a lifetime of hypochondria, I was finally diagnosed with my very own medical condition. And maybe, in a weird way, it’s made me less afraid to die."

3. How I Learned To Be OK With Feeling Sad — Mac McClelland

"It wasn’t easy, or cheap."

4. Who Gets To Be The “Good Schizophrenic”? — Esmé Weijun Wang

"When you’re labeled as crazy, the “right” kind of diagnosis could mean the difference between a productive life and a life sentence."

5. Why Do I Miss Being Bipolar? — Sasha Chapin

"The medication I take to treat my bipolar disorder works perfectly. Sometimes I wish it didn’t."

6. What My Best Friend And I Didn’t Learn About Loss — Zan Romanoff

"When my closest friend’s first baby was stillborn, we navigated through depression and grief together."

7. I Can’t Live Without Fear, But I Can Learn To Be OK With It — Arianna Rebolini

"I’ve become obsessively afraid that the people I love will die. Now I have to teach myself how to be OK with that."

8. What It’s Like Having PPD As A Black Woman — Tyrese Coleman

"It took me two years to even acknowledge I’d been depressed after the birth of my twin sons. I wonder how much it had to do with the way I had been taught to be strong."

9. Notes On An Eating Disorder — Larissa Pham

"I still tell my friends I am in recovery so they will hold me accountable."

10. What Comedy Taught Me About My Mental Illness — Kate Lindstedt

"I didn’t expect it, but stand-up comedy has given me the freedom to talk about depression and anxiety on my own terms."

11. The Night I Spoke Up About My #BlackSuicide — Terrell J. Starr

"My entire life was shaped by violence, so I wanted to end it violently. But I didn’t — thanks to overcoming the stigma surrounding African-Americans and depression, and to building a community on Twitter."

12. Knitting Myself Back Together — Alanna Okun

"The best way I’ve found to fight my anxiety is with a pair of knitting needles."

13. I Started Therapy So I Could Take Better Care Of Myself — Matt Ortile

"I’d known for a while that I needed to see a therapist. It wasn’t until I felt like I could do without help that I finally sought it."

14. I’m Mending My Broken Relationship With Food — Anita Badejo

"After a lifetime struggling with disordered eating, I’m still figuring out how to have a healthy relationship with my body and what I feed it."

15. I Found Love In A Hopeless Mess — Kate Conger

"Dehoarding my partner’s childhood home gave me a way to understand his mother, but I’m still not sure how to live with the habit he’s inherited."

16. When Taking Anxiety Medication Is A Revolutionary Act — Tracy Clayton

"I had to learn how to love myself enough to take care of myself. It wasn’t easy."

Topics in this article

• Mental Health

• Freelancing
• Internet Writing Journal
• Submissions Gudelines
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Winners of the 2024 Kirkus Prizes Announced

Han Kang Wins The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2024

2024 National Book Awards Finalists Announced

Booker Prize 2024 Shortlist Announced

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18 Essay-Length Short Memoirs to Read Online on Your Lunch Break

We scoured collections, magazines, and online journals to bring you the 18 best short memoir examples you can read over your lunch break.

Emily Polson

Emily Polson is a freelance writer and publishing assistant at Simon & Schuster. Originally from central Iowa, she studied English and creative writing at Belhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi, before moving to a small Basque village to teach English to trilingual teenagers. Now living in Brooklyn, she can often be found meandering through Prospect Park listening to a good audiobook. Twitter: @emilycpolson | https://emilycpolson.wordpress.com/

View All posts by Emily Polson

I love memoirs and essays, so the genre of essay-length short memoirs is one of my favorites. I love delving into the details of other people’s lives. The length allows me to read broadly on a whim with minimal commitment. In roughly 5–30 minutes, I can consume a complete morsel of literature, which always leaves me happier than the same amount of time spent doom-scrolling through my various social news feeds.

What are short memoirs? 

What exactly are short memoirs? I define them as essay-length works that weave together life experiences around a central theme. You see examples of short memoirs all the time on sites like Buzzfeed and The New York Times . Others are stand-alone pieces published in essay collections.

Memoir essays were my gateway into reading full-length memoirs. It was not until I took a college class on creative nonfiction that I realized memoirs were not just autobiographies of people with exciting lives. Anyone with any amount of life experience can write a memoir—no dramatic childhood or odd-defying life accomplishments required. A short memoir might be an account of a single, life-changing event, or it may be reflection on a period of growth or transition.

Of course, when a young adult tells people she likes writing creative nonfiction—not journalism or technical writing—she hears a lot of, “You’re too young to write a memoir!” and “What could someone your age possibly have to write about?!” As Flannery O’Connor put it, however, “The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can’t make something out of a little experience, you probably won’t be able to make it out of a lot. The writer’s business is to contemplate experience, not to be merged in it.”

Memoir essay examples

As the lit magazine Creative Nonfiction puts it, personal essays are just “True stories, well told.” And everyone has life stories worth telling.

Here are a few of my favorite memoir examples that are essay length.

SHORT MEMOIRS ABOUT GROWING UP

Scaachi koul, “there’s no recipe for growing up”.

In this delightful essay, Koul talks about trying to learn the secrets of her mother’s Kashmiri cooking after growing up a first-generation American. The story is full of vivid descriptions and anecdotal details that capture something so specific it transcends to the realm of universal. It’s smart, it’s funny, and it’ll break your heart a little as Koul describes “trying to find my mom at the bottom of a 20-quart pot.”

ASHLEY C. FORD, “THE YEAR I GREW WILDLY WHILE MEN LOOKED ON”

This memoir essay is for all the girls who went through puberty early in a world that sexualizes children’s bodies. Ford weaves together her experiences of feeling at odds with her body, of being seen as a “distraction” to adult men, of being Black and fatherless and hungry for love. She writes, “It was evident that who I was inside, who I wanted to be, didn’t match the intentions of my body. Outside, there was no little girl to be loved innocently. My body was a barrier.”

Kaveh Akbar, “How I Found Poetry in Childhood Prayer”

Akbar writes intense, searing poetry, but this personal essay contextualizes one of his sweetest poems, “Learning to Pray,” which is cradled in the middle of it. He describes how he fell in love with the movement, the language, and the ceremony of his Muslim family’s nightly prayers. Even though he didn’t (and doesn’t) speak Arabic, Akbar points to the musicality of these phonetically-learned hymns as “the bedrock upon which I’ve built my understanding of poetry as a craft and as a meditative practice.” Reading this essay made me want to reread his debut poetry collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf , all over again.

JIA TOLENTINO, “LOSING RELIGION AND FINDING ECSTASY IN HOUSTON”

New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino grew up attending a Houston megachurch she referred to as “the Repentagon.” In this personal essay, she describes vivid childhood memories of her time there, discussing how some of the very things she learned from the church contributed to her growing ambivalence toward it and its often hypocritical congregants. “Christianity formed my deepest instincts,” she writes, “and I have been walking away from it for half my life.” As the essay title suggests, this walking away coincided with her early experiences taking MDMA, which offered an uncanny similarity to her experience of religious devotion.

funny short memoirs

Patricia lockwood, “insane after coronavirus”.

Author Patricia Lockwood caught COVID-19 in early March 2020. In addition to her physical symptoms, she chronicled the bizarre delusions she experienced while society also collectively operated under the delusion that this whole thing would blow over quickly. Lockwood has a preternatural ability to inject humor into any situation, even the dire ones, by highlighting choice absurdities. This is a rare piece of pandemic writing that will make you laugh instead of cry–unless it makes you cry from laughing.

Harrison Scott Key,  “My Dad Tried to Kill Me with an Alligator”

This personal essay is a tongue-in-cheek story about the author’s run-in with an alligator on the Pearl River in Mississippi. Looking back on the event as an adult, Key considers his father’s tendencies in light of his own, now that he himself is a dad. He explores this relationship further in his book-length memoir, The World’s Largest Man , but this humorous essay stands on its own. (I also had the pleasure of hearing him read this aloud during my school’s homecoming weekend, as Key is an alumnus of my alma mater.)

David Sedaris, “Me Talk Pretty One Day”

Sedaris’s humor is in a league of its own, and he’s at his best in the title essay from Me Talk Pretty One Day . In it, he manages to capture the linguistic hilarities that ensue when you combine a sarcastic, middle-aged French student with a snarky French teacher.

SAMANTHA IRBY, “THE WORST FRIEND DATE I EVER HAD”

Samantha Irby is one of my favorite humorists writing today, and this short memoir essay about the difficulty of making friends as an adult is a great introduction to her. Be prepared for secondhand cringe when you reach the infamous moment she asks a waiter, “Are you familiar with my work?” After reading this essay, you’ll want to be, so check out Wow, No Thank You . next.

Bill Bryson, “Coming Home”

Bryson has the sly, subtle humor that only comes from Americans who have spent considerable time living among dry-humored Brits. In “Coming Home,” he talks about the strange sensation of returning to America after spending his first twenty years of adulthood in England. This personal essay is the first in a book-length work called I’m a Stranger Here Myself , in which Bryson revisits American things that feel like novelties to outsiders and the odd former expat like himself.

Thought-provoking Short memoirs

Tommy orange, “how native american is native american enough”.

Many people claim some percentage of Indigenous ancestry, but how much is enough to “count”? Novelist Tommy Orange–author of There There –deconstructs this concept, discussing his relationship to his Native father, his Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood, and his son, who will not be considered “Native enough” to join him as an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. “ How come math isn’t taught with stakes?” he asks in this short memoir full of lingering questions that will challenge the way you think about heritage. 

Christine Hyung-Oak Lee, “I Had a Stroke at 33”

Lee’s story is interesting not just because she had a stroke at such a young age, but because of how she recounts an experience that was characterized by forgetting. She says that after her stroke, “For a month, every moment of the day was like the moment upon wakening before you figure out where you are, what time it is.” With this personal essay, she draws readers into that fragmented headspace, then weaves something coherent and beautiful from it.

Kyoko Mori, “A Difficult Balance: Am I a Writer or a Teacher?”

In this refreshing essay, Mori discusses balancing “the double calling” of being a writer and a teacher. She admits that teaching felt antithetical to her sense of self when she started out in a classroom of apathetic college freshmen. When she found her way into teaching an MFA program, however, she discovered that fostering a sanctuary for others’ words and ideas felt closer to a “calling.” While in some ways this makes the balance of shifting personas easier, she says it creates a different kind of dread: “Teaching, if it becomes more than a job, might swallow me whole and leave nothing for my life as a writer.” This memoir essay is honest, well-structured, and layered with plenty of anecdotal details to draw in the reader.

Alex Tizon, “My Family’s Slave”

In this heartbreaking essay, Tizon pays tribute to the memory of Lola, the domestic slave who raised him and his siblings. His family brought her with them when they emigrated to America from the Philippines. He talks about the circumstances that led to Lola’s enslavement, the injustice she endured throughout her life, and his own horror at realizing the truth about her role in his family as he grew up. While the story is sad enough to make you cry, there are small moments of hope and redemption. Alex discusses what he tried to do for Lola as an adult and how, upon her death, he traveled to her family’s village to return her ashes.

Classic short memoirs

James baldwin, “notes of a native son”.

This memoir essay comes from Baldwin’s collection of the same name. In it, he focuses on his relationship with his father, who died when Baldwin was 19. He also wrestles with growing up black in a time of segregation, touching on the historical treatment of black soldiers and the Harlem Riot of 1943. His vivid descriptions and honest narration draw you into his transition between frustration, hatred, confusion, despair, and resilience.

JOAN DIDION,  “GOODBYE TO ALL THAT”

Didion is one of the foremost literary memoirists of the twentieth century, combining journalistic precision with self-aware introspection. In “Goodbye to All That,” Didion recounts moving to New York as a naïve 20-year-old and leaving as a disillusioned 28-year-old. She captures the mystical awe with which outsiders view the Big Apple, reflecting on her youthful perspective that life was still limitless, “that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month.”  This essay concludes her masterful collection,   Slouching Towards Bethlehem .

Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried”

This is the title essay from O’Brien’s collection, The Things They Carried . It’s technically labeled a work of fiction, but because the themes and anecdotes are pulled from O’Brien’s own experience in the Vietnam War, it blurs the lines between fact and fiction enough to be included here. (I’m admittedly predisposed to this classification because a college writing professor of mine included it on our creative nonfiction syllabus.) The essay paints an intimate portrait of a group of soldiers by listing the things they each carry with them, both physical and metaphorical. It contains one of my favorite lines in all of literature: “They all carried ghosts.”

Multi-Media Short Memoirs

Allie brosh, “richard”.

In this blog post/webcomic, Allie Brosh tells the hilarious story about the time as a child that she, 1) realized neighbors exist, and 2) repeatedly snuck into her neighbor’s house, took his things, and ultimately kidnapped his cat. Her signature comic style drives home the humor in a way that will split your sides. The essay is an excerpt from Brosh’s second book, Solutions and Other Problems , but the web version includes bonus photos and backstory. For even more Allie classics, check out “Adventures in Depression” and “Depression Part Two.”

George Watsky, “Ask Me What I’m Doing Tonight”

Watsky is a rapper and spoken word poet who built his following on YouTube. Before he made it big, however, he spent five years performing for groups of college students across the Midwest. “Ask Me What I’m Doing Tonight!” traces that soul-crushing monotony while telling a compelling story about trying to connect with people despite such transience. It’s the most interesting essay about boredom you’ll ever read, or in this case watch—he filmed a short film version of the essay for his YouTube channel. Like his music, Watsky’s personal essays are vulnerable, honest, and crude, and the whole collection, How to Ruin Everything , is worth reading.

If you’re looking for even more short memoirs, keep an eye on these pages from Literary Hub , Buzzfeed , and Creative Nonfiction . You can also delve into these 25 nonfiction essays you can read online and these 100 must-read essay collections . Also be sure to check out the “Our Reading Lives” tag right here on Book Riot, where you’ll find short memoirs like “Searching for Little Free Libraries as a Way to Say Goodbye” and “How I Overcame My Fear of Reading Contemporary Poets.”

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21 of my favorite personal essays I've written

I bare it all on the page (or at least, make it look like i have).

This is my newsletter about my life, interests, and work, including my books, writing, and classes. To show your support consider becoming a free or paid subscriber . For $5/month or $50/year, paid subscribers get access to my full archives. I hope you’ll also check out my Substack personal essay publication Open Secrets , which publishes an original essay every week.

One of the paradoxes of personal essays is that the author seems like they’re sharing every intimate detail about their lives relevant to the topic at hand. They’re taking readers into their minds and hearts and bedrooms and bathrooms and relationships. They’re confessing to misdeeds and flaws, often sharing things they haven’t told anyone (or very few people) in their private lives. The reader feels like they’re privvy to something special, and likely, they probably are.

Yet, of course, instead of literally sharing everything they were doing and thinking and feeling, essayists are always making choices about what to include and exclude, about how far to let the reader in, and where to shut that door and draw a little space around themself for privacy. It’s a line I walk every time I write an essay, and when I wrote my sex columns for The Village Voice and Philadelphia City Paper and The Frisky, and when I wrote about my dad’s alcoholism for Parade magazine when I was in college, and even now, when I post on social media. Because whereas my life has been pretty much an open book for over 30 years, since I was a teenager, that’s not the case for my partner, my family members, or many of my friends. I take their privacy seriously, while also being a fierce advocate for my own right to write what’s in my heart and mind.

Thanks for reading Rachel Kramer Bussel’s Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

I’m thinking about all of these issues as I prepare to launch my personal essay publication and Substack newsletter, Open Secrets . We launch Monday, April 3, and I’m so proud and excited to bring you a brand new essay every week, through at least September 2023 (I will run it indefinitely if I get enough paying subscribers to pay authors; I pay $100/essay on acceptance). I hope you’ll subscribe; there are free and paid options.

So today I’m going to share 20 of my favorite personal essays I’ve written. I’ve included links save for two that are offline because The Kernel and Lemondrop are no longer publishing; I’ll share them in full in my newsletter soon.

It’s been a doozy of a week and it’s only Wednesday, so I’m just sharing the links and snippets, but soon I’ll be detailing the backstory and inspiration for some of these essays and tips about how I sold them, for paying subscribers. So without further ado, 21 of my favorite personal essays about everything from hoarding to being an introvert to dating and finances and kink and jealousy and giggle incontinence (a term I learned from a reader after publishing) more.

HuffPost Personal, “ The First Time I Peed On My Boyfriend’s Floor, I Was Mortified. Then It Kept Happening. ”

Salon, “ I’m a sex writer with a secret shame -- hoarding ”

HuffPost Personal, “ Want To Know Why People Stockpile Toilet Paper? I'm A Hoarder And I Have A Few Ideas. ”

Refinery29, “ The Beauty Of Not Sleeping Together ” - my essay on sleeping in separate bedrooms

Washington Post , “ I love my boyfriend, but I never want to get married ”

SELF , “ I Suddenly Stopped Being Kinky and I’m Not Sure Why ”

Shondaland, “ Why I Turned Down a Hoarding Reality Show ”

The Girlfriend, “ I Became An Introvert In My 40s ”

Jezebel, “ Loving My Body—Kinda, Sorta, Sometimes ”

Salon, “ Baby talk ”

The Independent, “ Kim and Kanye’s kids deserve better than this ”

Business Insider, “ After a friend my age died on my birthday, I bought life insurance — and even though my family said I shouldn't, I don't regret it ”

Redbook, “ Why My Boyfriend of 5 Years and I Only Have 5 Photos of the Two of Us Together ”

The Goods, “ The best $2,000 I ever spent: many, many rounds of bingo ”

YouBeauty, “ What I’ve Learned About Size and Body Image by Dating a Fat Man ”

TueNight, “ What I Learned From My Stalker ”

BuzzFeed, “ Why I’m Jealous of My Friend’s Unplanned Pregnancy ”

The San Francisco Chronicle , " Nurturing Is Part of Fatherhood " (my very first essay published when I was 19)

The Toast, “ You Can Have Too Many Books ”

The Kernel, “ I'm addicted to Google News Alerts ”

Here’s the opening few paragraphs:

“Your Google alert on Paris Hilton just went off,” my boyfriend recently sneered at me, handing me my iPhone with disgust.

His reaction wasn’t so much about my following a star whose gossip currency has long since depreciated. He would have had the same reaction if the alert had been for “Carrie Brownstein,” “porn star,” “schadenfreude,” or “frosting”—all of which I have alerts for, along with 9,995 others. I would have even more, but Google only allows users a maximum of 10,000 alerts. No topic is too big (sex), too small (Serenity Prayer) or too odd (high fructose corn syrup) to pique my interest.

His repulsion was centered around the fact that in any given hour, I will likely receive at least a handful of such emails, which light up my phone in a way that would make a casual bystander think I’m popular. I’m not, but my inbox certainly is. In the last half hour, from 9 to 10 pm on a Thursday evening, I’ve received 26 alerts. I’ve learned such random factoids as: There’s a Bob’s Burgers -themed animated Sleater-Kinney video , Kelly Brook’s cleavage was “hard to miss,” and Virgin America had a good fourth quarter . None of them were of any particular urgency or relevance to my life (though the video amused me), but I still welcomed the information, because I don’t believe one can ever possess, in a literal sense, “too much” information.

Lemondrop, “ Why I Got the Word ‘Open’ Tattooed On My Back ”

Here’s the opening:

I'd always thought that I wasn't a tattoo person. There wasn't a single image I felt I had to have on my body. But when my friend Sheela and a bunch of other cool ladies I know made plans to get tattoos while we were all in Chicago, I decided I wanted in on the action. I still couldn't come up with an image that worked for me, until I realized that I'm not a visual person so much as a word person. As a writer, words are what matter most to me; I stay up late at night reading, not watching TV. I remember quotes and song lyrics more than I remember movie scenes. Once I decided I wanted a word, the one that came to mind was "open." I tend to be extremely pessimistic, and when something goes wrong in my life, instead of trying to fix it or make it better, I assume there's something wrong with me and that's why the problem is occurring. This is especially the case with relationships. If someone breaks up with me, as happened in May, or just decides to stop talking to me altogether, I wonder not only what I did to cause them to not want me anymore, but I assume that other people I might date will also treat me that way. It's a vicious cycle, and one I'd like to break.

__________________________________________________________________________

Want to learn how to write and sell your own personal essays? Join me for my next Essay Writing 101 Zoom class , which is limited to 20 people. We will discuss what makes a powerful personal essay, write to prompts for six different types of essays and analyze examples of them, and cover how to submit essays to editors and how much you can earn, typically about $100 (what I pay for Open Secrets ) to $1,000.

Essay Writing 101 class registrants also receive access to my private list of 50+ current essay markets with links to writing guidelines and editors to submit to, plus my commentary and advice on how to better your chances and have early and extended access to submitting essays to Open Secrets. After class, Essay Writing 101 alumni will receive an invitation to a private Slack channel where you can continue the conversations, share writing questions and news, and form a community with fellow essay writers. I will also share updates in the Slack channel about newly published essays to study and essay writing news.

Have questions about the class? Comment here or email me at mail at rachelkramerbussel.com with “Essay class” in the subject line and I’ll get back to you ASAP.

What are students saying about my Essay Writing 101 class?

Praise for Essay Writing 101:

“If you’re thinking about writing essays, Rachel Kramer Bussel’s essay class will give you the courage, the confidence and the know-how to start pitching. She brings a wealth of knowledge, resources and tips in a compact two-hour session, filled with prompts to start the writing process. Highly recommended.” — Suzanne Jefferies

“ I have attended many creative nonfiction and essay writing workshops since 2020, and the one I took with Rachel Kramer Bussel is above and beyond the best I have been to. During the session, she offered personalized responses that carefully considered each of her students as serious writers and gave me the confidence to get even more stuff out into the world.

She balanced both the complexities of publishing with the intricacies of craft. The two-hour workshop helped us create new essays, edit ones in the works and send them to the world. Rachel is also a working writer who knows the ins and out of the industry, and her insight is unique, thoughtful, practical, and inspiring. So if you want to empower your words on the page, you better attend the next one.” — Gretchen Comcowich

“Here’s what I especially appreciated about the class: your coaching style that is listening for all the clues of what folks are saying and your uncanny ability to speak directly into anyone’s personal essay ideas. You had suggestions for publications, for other essays or pubs to read that were similarly themed, the suggestion of placement associated with holidays or dates.” — Teri McCormick Hinton

“Rachel shares terrific information and ideas with writers in her essay workshop. Her prompts lead in unexpected directions, and her thoughtful feedback provides new ways to structure and publish material. This workshop is highly recommended for both novice and experienced essayists.”   — Stella Fosse , author of Aphrodite’s Pen: The Power of Writing Erotica after Midlife

“Rachel Kramer Bussel’s Essay Writing 101 packs a lot of valuable information into a relatively short class! Thanks to thought-provoking writing prompts, insightful feedback from Rachel, a wealth of resources, and an inspiring group dynamic, I left this workshop with several potential topics and angles for essays and ideas about where I could pitch them. I feel more confident than ever to start submitting!” — Angie Reiber

“I took Rachel’s Essay Writing class to explore my creative side that had been long asleep. The class not only awoke my desire to write, but it opened up so many parts of my own personal story that I didn’t know were hidden there! Rachel is so supportive in her guidance and so generous with tips, structure and prompts. I highly recommend working with Rachel!” — Ati Egas

“Both of Rachel’s Erotic Writing and Essay Writing 101 classes were incredibly inspiring, informative, helpful and encouraging. The writing prompts given were very unique and fun, firing a creative writing process that has continued well after class. Rachel was incredibly supportive when students read aloud, giving excellent ideas, feedback and asked great questions to promote the process.  After class, Rachel’s emails have been full of incredibly useful information on publishing, insight and additional information that has been immensely helpful.” — Candice Leigh

Essay Writing 101 class details and registration here

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