Essay as Dumpster Diving

So this was an off-the-cuff piece I wrote in my creative non-fiction class today. We were given the prompt "Essay as... (insert metaphor of choice).

Written, revised, and done in 15 minutes. Feeling good about creating quick content. Happy with how it turned out. Thanks for reading. :-)

Essay as Dumpster Diving

Writing essays can be like dumpster diving. You have a general idea of what you’re getting yourself into, but are unsure (in the beginning) of where you will end up, what you will find. Instead of the potential treasure you could find in a bin, you will see your subject matter unfold on the page, revealing literary treasures of another kind.

You’ll need certain tools to enter this trade, and a thick skin. You’ll need to know, or develop the ability to discern) what is valuable and what really is garbage. Sorting through the finds (revising and editing) is necessary. Some things that at first seemed valuable, will have lost their shine a day later. Your chosen words, sentences, even subject matter may not hold up when left to marinate for a few days. Thus, the necessity for sorting and culling, to keep only the really good, really useful material.

Sometimes it is an unrewarding and lonely endeavor. The hours are long and there are no guarantees of success, resolution, or even making a coherent point in your essay. You may spend an entire weekend sorting through hot, stinky bins, under a glaring summer sun, and find nothing more valuable than a weathered garden gnome. A fifty-page essay that you have struggled to create, while living on ramen noodles and store-brand Pop Tarts, with no heat and only occasional electrical service, may be a dud, earning you nothing but a full disk drive, a pile of rejection letters, and bills marked overdue.

But then again, the first pick of the day, in that first dumpster, might yield an enormous bag of lost and found coats, hats, gloves, and scarves that will keep you and your kids warm for the next five winters. It’s all a crap shoot, but if you don’t look in the bin, if you don’t sit down in front of your word processor or put pen to paper, you will have neither successful essay nor warm winter coat.