I am applying to graduate programs. The personal statement is the part I have rewritten more times than I want to admit, and have produced almost nothing usable from, until last week.
The thing that finally worked was a piece of advice, attributed to Hemingway, that I had read many times and never taken seriously. It is, roughly: when you can’t write, sit down and write one true sentence. Then write another one. Don’t stop until you have a paragraph of true sentences. The rest of the essay is what comes from that.
This post is partly a debrief and partly an apology to anyone who I’ve previously told that this advice was too cute to be useful.
What was failing
The personal statement, as a genre, has a few well-known traps. The most familiar is the opening anecdote: the writer recalls a moment from age seven when something Significant happened, and frames the rest of their life as following from that moment. It almost never works. It almost always reads as a retroactive narrative imposed on a life that was actually messier than that.
The second trap is the list of credentials with feeling words: I led a research lab (and learned so much), I co-authored a paper (which changed my perspective), I volunteered (and was humbled). It is a CV in slightly more emotional packaging.
I was writing the second one. Repeatedly. Every draft started as something I wanted to say and ended as that.
What “one true sentence” actually means in practice
I think the trick is partly about lowering the bar. True is a much lower bar than good. True doesn’t have to be elegant. True doesn’t have to be the opening line of an essay. True just has to be a sentence whose claims you would defend if challenged on them, written in language that sounds like you actually talk.
So I sat down and wrote: I want to do this work because the resources I needed weren’t there, and I had to make them, and I think I can keep making them.
That sentence is not the opening of a personal statement. It’s not even particularly graceful. But it is true, in the specific sense that I would defend every clause of it if a stranger pushed on it. And from that sentence, the rest of the essay was discoverable. I could ask: what work is “this work”? That gave me the second paragraph. I could ask: which resources weren’t there, and what did I do? That gave me the third paragraph. I could ask: why do I think I can keep making them? That gave me the fourth paragraph.
Why this matters beyond personal statements
The “one true sentence” technique, as a writing prompt, generalizes. The clinical statements I’ve been drafting for the BRCA resource were stuck for the same reason — I was trying to write good sentences before I had figured out which sentences were true. That sequence is exactly backwards, and Hemingway turned out to be right.
I don’t think this is universal advice. People who are blocked by perfectionism specifically — who can recognize when something is unfinished but can’t tell when it’s bad — benefit a lot from the truth lens. People who are blocked by a different reason will need different advice. But for me, this was the unlock.
Two programs, one sentence that finally worked
This essay went out to two graduate programs last week. I will report back. The other thing the truth lens is good for, it turns out, is closing the laptop and doing something else.