The Art of the Personal Essay

 “The Art of Influence”, was a striking piece of literature with over seventy-five personal essays written by various scholars.  What strikes me in this passage is that throughout most of the passage the authors tone is very consistent.  The tone throughout this passage is one that is genuine, honest and delivered in more of a friendly manner than of one that is demanding.  In the first part of the passage, written by Lopate, he expresses how a personal essay is noted more as friend than an author. “It’s friendly, conversational tone, its drive toward candor and confession, and its often-quirky first-person voice.”  

The first section alone of this passage makes me realize how important honesty and integrity is when it comes to the ability to influence or persuade an individual in ones writing.  In Lopate’s writing he allows for the reader to learn about life lessons that have not been shared with anyone or that he does not want shared with the reader.   This alone shows me as a writer that in order to be an influencer through my writing I have to gain that same level of trust from my reader through honesty, and more important being conversational.  I know as a writer that I tend to write what I think and what my views are. With that being said, I know that it is important to maintain a level of conversation so that there is a communication between the reader and the writer.  This communication is the understanding of what is written by me the writer and what is assumed by the reader.

Social media plays a huge role in Influencing people.  Before social media we relied on “word of mouth”, leaning on what others had to say about a piece of writing.  Also, before social media we had to rely on reviewing multiple documents to see if there was credibly and validity of the material that was being presented.  However, today social media today has changed how we view material and has influenced the reader and the author that much more.  Social media, is no considered to be the norm of how material is presented.  The more an author is able to get his/her passage reviewed or shared on social media the more the passage is viewed as a work of art.  Moreover, social media has a mixed role of being both positive and negative.  The positive aspect of social media is that it allows for a passage to be view easier and more regular. Also, it allows for the reader to receive immediate feedback, therefore being able to make changes as needed to any new piece that will be written. However, the negative impact of social media is that the document is readily available. So in the event the piece of writing is not well written or not in the form as what the author wanted then that will display a lack of credibility of the author, which in the long run could hurt the authors ability to write more pieces to reach his/her audience.

Being able to influence someone can be done intentionally and unintentionally.  Over the years, there have been times when I was influenced to do something that I was not comfortable doing. Also, I have been influenced unintentionally as well.  The unintentionally that I speak of is where one is influenced based on the outcomes of others actions. Even when those actions are not the right actions that need to be represented.  For example, a couple of years ago a group of my friends decided that they wanted to go rock climbing. I did not want to do it, however, after watching them all go and talk about how much fun it was, I decided I would try. Now I am afraid of heights but because everyone else was doing it and I was at the bottom looking up I had to try for myself.  Therefore, the unintentional influence here was the fact of me seeing how much fun everyone else was having and I was not. I was afraid of falling or getting hurt, but no one else did before me in my group of friends or the others that were at the wall.