My ideal essay would be one that was a personal essay, of which I had the freedom to choose the topic. This would be in contrast to a specifically themed essay of someone else’s choosing. I would therefore be allowed the creativity and leeway to pick something that was personally meaningful to me, and writing it would feel fun and perhaps even a bit cathartic.
In one sense, this would actually be quite similar to the historical non-fiction writings we are reading. The authors are writing about real, true events. But they are picking on exactly what to write about and they are choosing to impart their own flavor to the re-rendering of events. I would love to do that with my own life.
Ultimately, I think the challenge of writing such a memoir would be fun and challenging. Challenging because it would take same technical work to take events in my own life which flow so naturally and turn them into a well-crafted, fully fleshed out essay. I think the final product would be something that I could be proud of.
I would start by creating a very rough, working version. Something analogous to these blog entries, where I feel free to spill out my thoughts in a moderately disorganized fashion. Then I would go through the process of shaping it and making it conform to certain standards of essay writing. I wouldn’t do this out of blind deference to the laws of writing; rather it would be a proven technique to make my own personal experiences pleasant to read and accessible to the widest possible audience.
If we were ever offered the opportunity to write a personal non-fiction ‘creative’ essay, I would view it as a wonderful opportunity!