Personal essays are very popular on the internet right now. Like others who use the internet, I occasionally have strong-ish, activist-y, or emotional opinions about what this could mean, and whether or not it is bad. For the sake of this multi-part guide, I’ve tried to compartmentalize these feelings to the best of my ability in hopes of producing a practical and utilitarian primer for those who think they may want to go online in 2015 and publish writing about their life. Much exists already on the craft of writing itself, the theory of the essay, the benefits of talk therapy, the pitfalls of the so-called content industry, and other arguably adjacent topics. I’ve yet to come across a guide to personal writing that focuses on the internet as a platform specifically, so I am leveraging the newsiness of the topic plus six-ish years of writing about my life online in order to write the one I wish existed.

This guide comes at you in the form of questions. None of these questions have right or wrong answers, and ultimately I do not have any stake in whether or not you or anyone else eventually publishes a personal essay online. This guide is essentially a refined version of the questions I ask myself before sitting down to write a first-person piece of nonfiction writing for publication on the web. The thoughts contained herein are necessarily informed by the highly specific condition of existing online and in the world as me. Existing as you is different, so I can’t really promise anything more than a set of concerns that my own experience has proven worth highlighting. Both feelings and the internet share an unpredictable volatility, so your own results will almost certainly vary.

1. Do you read personal essays?

This seems like a ludicrous question to ask of someone who is considering writing a personal essay, but for some reason there exists a misconception that writing is an alchemical essence that flows forth without explanation from a yet-identified gland. But good writing does not just happen. Certainly, some people are inclined towards language in the way that others are inclined towards music or athletics, but even the best, most original writer spends some time getting familiar with what other similar writing might already exist. If you are thinking about publishing a personal essay online, you will likely find it beneficial to your success to spend some time reading other personal essays that have already been published (especially essays on topics that are similar to yours). Knowledge of the genre, its landscape, and its shortcomings can help you to understand what you do and do not like, and what may or may not work well for you.

2. Why do you want to publish a personal essay online?

A second misconception that persists is the idea that that published writing is somehow the most noble way to tell your story. Often, movies and television and even books themselves treat “publishing a piece of writing” as the triumphant reward for a writerly-ish protagonist who has overcome some personal difficulty. This narrative is a highly romanticized value judgement that is not based in reality. In most cases, even for professional writers, a published piece of personal writing is not the ideal way to contend with a difficult or meaningful life experience. This is doubly the case if your story is not extravagantly unique, or if you are not accustomed to writing for a public audience.

Before you sit down to write your personal essay for eventual publication online, it is useful to interrogate your motives. There are lots of reasons people publish stories about their own lives on the internet for others to read: in pursuit of glory, for attention, to vent, to share joy, in hopes helping others, in hopes of helping them self, out of spite, out of financial necessity, out of political angst, to prove they can do it, to one-up an enemy, or in order to exact revenge. These reasons and others are entirely valid, but in the vast majority of cases, a published essay is not the most efficient or effective means of accomplishing them. Which introduces the question:

3. Are you sure you need to write a personal essay at all?

Consider the following situation:

You’ve broken your leg. You call your mother crying, and she tells you to go to the hospital. At the hospital, you fill out forms before seeing a doctor. Later that week in therapy, you express frustration that you will need to wear a cast to your friend’s wedding. Fifty years later, at the couple’s anniversary party, you browse old photos of the wedding and laugh together about how stupid the cast looked with your outfit.

The above situation tells several versions of the same story, each accomplishing something different. The phone call to your mother serves as an immediate emotional response to the situation, or rather, a literal cry for help. The hospital forms tell the story of the leg-breaking in the sparsest terms possible, with many facts and zero analysis or emotion. At therapy, you analyze the experience and your various frustrations in a self-gratifying way in hopes of coming to terms with the situation. The eventual retelling at the anniversary party is highly romanticized, glossing over the initial pain of the experience for the purpose of generating some bonding nostalgia between friends.

Just like each account of this incident accomplishes something different, so would a retelling in the form of a personal essay.

Allow me a technical moment:

A personal essay has two ingredients: 1) personal, and 2) essay. These two ingredients aren’t always easy to combine. An essay is a systematic discourse, meaning it moves its readers through an idea or set of ideas in a methodical, deliberate, and understandable way. Many types of writing hinge on developing an argument, where the writer is expected to arrive at or defend a definitive opinion. The word essay comes from the French verb essayer, meaning “to attempt.” Essays differ from many other types of writing in that they don’t always need to progress an argument in order to be good. In my view, this is one of the best things about the genre, because it exists as a tool for talking in and around disparate-yet-related ideas that might never add up to something as fully-reconciled as an opinion, a stance, or a grand unified theory of anything.

In this sense, the essay is a good match for many personal experiences, because often in life our personal experiences don’t end in a way that is fully finished or easy-to-understand. That said, a good essay is hard to execute, especially when it focuses on something of intense personal value.

Anything you write must contend with the fact that readers read selfishly. You are a reader right now, and there is no doubt you are reading selfishly too — looking for ways that the information from this guide can be of relevance to your own life and interests. This is not to say that all personal essays should be relatable, but rather that care should be taken to make sure that the personal information is presented in a way that offers sufficient value to a reader. Think of the broken leg stories from before. The crying phone call makes sense as a phone call, but but would likely feel too irrational masquerading as an essay. Similarly, the hospital forms would read as too dry to hold anyone’s interest. The therapy session is too self-serving for an outside reader to feel any investment of their own, and the nostalgic story is too specific to be enjoyed by anyone who wasn’t there when it happened.

Aldous Huxley called the essay a three-poled tent, suggesting that a great essay includes: 1) something personal to the writer, 2) something factual or objective, and 3) something analytical or universal. Unless your story is wildly exceptional (most stories aren’t) or your voice is wildly unique (most voices aren’t), your experience probably won’t thrive as a personal essay without two or more of these poles in place. To consider the broken leg example again, an essay about how you broke your leg and cried is probably boring. An essay about breaking your leg and waiting for ten hours in the failed American emergency room system offers a more factual, newsy approach. An essay about feeling powerless and frustrated in the face of bureaucracy could ground that factual, newsy approach in a more universal idea, making for an essay that has all three tent poles in place. Not every essay needs to appeal to every reader, but an essay with all three poles will probably be rich enough to appeal to readers who do not share your exact same lived experience.

Essays, like songs or sports games, are filled with moving parts that accomplish different things. Not all personal experiences will make sense in those terms, so finally, ask yourself:

4. Does your story need to be written in order for you to tell it?

In many cases, the urge to write a personal essay might be better reconfigured into some other means of engaging with narrative. If you overcame a heroin addiction and want to help others who might be struggling in a similar way, a volunteer position at a harm reduction organization will probably make more substantial use of your story than a personal essay for XOJane. If you hate your ex-boyfriend and want to punish him, perhaps you will be better served by taking a shit on his lawn. If you used to be a sad or mean person and you’d like to prove to old friends that you’ve finally changed, that story might be better told incrementally, by taking time every day to engage with kindness and joy. Painting, music, writing in an unpublished journal, being nice, being mean, learning, volunteering, travel, and therapy are all productive and often satisfying ways of making sense of complicated life experiences. Do not be afraid to think carefully about whether or not a published essay is the form that will actually serve your individual needs in the end. All personal experience is valid, but the bottom line is, not all personal experience makes for good published writing.

If you’ve considered these ideas, and still feel like publishing a personal essay, congrats! In Part 2, I’ll talk through some of the logistical considerations and questions you might want to think through when it comes to figuring out the wheres, whats, hows, and how muches of publishing personal writing online.