The Essay as a Form of Giving Up

One way to consider the essay is as a way to capture, study, and release back into the world a question or story that preoccupies you.

This week, the Catapult magazine team launched a new series, I Give Up. The weeklong series showcases writers exploring various things that they’ve renounced in the past few years—jobs, habits, objects, ambitions, relationships, etc.—and how the act of letting go can be both difficult and freeing. When the editors invited writers to contribute, we encouraged them to take the theme in whatever direction they chose, no matter how unexpected. We were rewarded, and pleasantly surprised, to see that giving up is a powerful way to frame a vast range of moments of transformation, tension, and change—exactly the kind of moment at the core of a strong essay.

Much ink has been spilled on the etymological roots of essay—per Montaigne, to attempt, to test, to exercise. But perhaps it’s just as generative to think of the essay as an act of giving up, of stepping back. Not exercise, but exorcise. One way to consider the essay is as a way to capture, study, and release back into the world a question or story that preoccupies you. In this writing prompt, we invite you to think about framing your next essay as an act of “giving up,” and what craft questions or thematic explorations that angle may give way to.

1. Consider a thing that you’ve lost, given away, let go of, or taken back—whether this process was voluntary or accidental, mutually agreed-upon or unilateral, devastating or liberating (and note that these are not always polar opposites!).

2. Zero in on a very narrow and concrete element of that experience. Make it as specific and graspable as you can. For example, if you’ve given up one country for another, consider a specific intersection that you miss, or a route that you no longer take. If you’ve renounced a relationship, consider the objects that feel most representative of that bond.

3. Concentrate the dynamics of the essay on that object or scene—purely what it feels like to have given up that particular thing, rather than the bigger picture it represents. Stay close to it for a few paragraphs, or even a full scene, until you pull back (if you so choose) to reflect on the broader questions that that object taps into or holds.

You can use this prompt as an entry point into essays that are also about something else, that aren’t explicitly framed around giving up. This prompt can serve as a way to practice picking up an object, examining it from multiple angles, and creating a sense of movement or change by simply charting the process of reflection.