1. PERSONAL WRITING Essays, Narratives, and Memoirs

2. PERSONAL NARRATIVE Focused on an important event.

3. PERSONAL MEMOIR Focused on an important relationship between the writer and a person, place, or object.

4. PERSONAL ESSAY Focused on a belief or insight about life that is important to the writer. A personal essay often combines elements or both the narrative and the memoir since an insight about life or a personal belief is usually based upon both experiences and relationships that have taught the writer what individual values are most important.

5. THINK ABOUT IT What kind of personal writing is Night by Elie Wiesel? If you did the assignment about your own personal odyssey after reading Homer’s The Odyssey in English 9, what kind of personal writing was that? This marking period, you will be working on writing a personal essay.

6. MORE EXAMPLES With your partner, read “My Pal, Robert,” “My First Lifeline,” and “Accomplishing Big Things in Small Pieces.” Look for the author’s purpose (What is the author trying to say here?) Identify which supporting details in each piece most effectively contribute to the author’s purpose. What type of personal writing is each one?