Writing with Empathy
When you write with empathy, you're putting yourself in the place of the person you're communicating with. Empathy is the ability to ‘imagine’ what it would be like to experience what another person is experiencing. Empathic people are intuitive and often sense the unspoken needs, emotions or tensions of people. But what does this mean when writing a personal statement? If you can communicate your own feelings, ideas and beliefs with the focus on the reader, you will have an essay that not only defines who you are but will give the reader a chance to grow and develop with you. How does this happen? Storytelling. Concrete, engaging content that persuades the reader to continue reading. All good writing is persuasive.
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Read the Room
Coaching writers requires the ability to understand your writer and quickly scan them for a number of factors including low self-esteem, damage from poor teaching, a false sense of skill, and an overall fear of process. Your objective is to increase their confidence in themselves while establishing a relationship that welcomes feedback. In other words, read the room! Because I often work with students writing their Common Application and supplementary essays or students struggling in English or history, there is often an extra welcome challenge: parents. I am a parent; I love and respect parents but sometimes they block progress in their offspring as that offspring struggles to discover their authentic and unique voice. Parents, on the whole, view their children as gifted and wonderful.
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How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?
“It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.” —Ernest Hemingway. No one wants to hear the truth when it comes to writing because it’s boring and painful. Words exist in our world so why can’t everyone write well enough to constantly produce beautiful poetry, galvanizing journalism, novels that enthrall and essays that change lives? You love to dance so why not be a ballerina? You love to speak so why not a TED Talk? The truth is no one is good immediately and many will never achieve anything beyond okay after dozens of revisions. An idea is not a book, movie or play. It’s a thought and until you sit down and make that thought come to life with excellent writing, like a dream, it slips away.
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