It’s a lofty goal, to imagine translating one’s own personal experiences in a way that instructs and illuminates, moves and inspires, another human being. Even attempting to do such a thing is heroic; that’s why I think workshops ought to begin with praise—for what the author has attempted to do, if not succeeded in doing—and then, since good writing is about thinking, a segue into an exchange of ideas inspired by the essay at hand. The most important question to be asked is “What is this piece about below the surface?” The writer doesn’t necessarily need to have an answer to that question—the route to creating art is meandering and brambly, and most artists can’t tell you exactly how it’s done—but in any case, the reader has to be able to answer the question.

Because a good essay—for that matter, a good short story, memoir, novel—is about ideas, that’s how it elevates itself beyond and above its nominal subject to illuminate something universal. Literature instructs, which means the writer has to be wiser and more knowledgeable than the reader. So half of my teaching efforts are spent teasing forth these ideas and issues embedded in the work I see in nonfiction workshops. The other half of my efforts are spent trying to convince students that making art is in fact difficult, is supposed to be difficult. Writing school isn’t any easier than med school; it’s just shorter.

There’s a great essay by Annie Dillard called “The Death of a Moth” that I return to again and again, both as teacher and as writer. It is, on the surface, the story of a lonely woman who lives with her cats and goes to the woods to read about Rimbaud in the light of a campfire. Under the surface, that important deeper layer, it is about what it is to be an artist, to burn yourself up so completely in service to your work that you are transfigured, like the moth in the candle flame, or sacrificed on its altar, like Virginia Woolf. It’s almost embarrassing, as much of Dillard’s work can be, in its egotism and nakedness. It’s a shocking essay for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is its unerring description of the natural world. Her images are neon—a flare of light that illuminates a blue sweater sleeve, a sudden flash of jewelweed, a burning moth cloaked to the candle like a monk in saffron robes.