modern love essay tips

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by Writing Workshops Staff

11 months ago

• #Modern Love
• #Online Memoir
• #Online Personal Essay
• #Personal Essay
• #Personal Essays
• #The Art of Memoir
• #Writing a Memoir
• #Writing Tips

How to Get Your Story Published in the New York Times Modern Love Column

Introduction to Writing for Modern Love:

The New York Times Modern Love column is a weekly series that features stories about relationships, feelings, betrayal, and revelations. It is one of the most widely read columns in the paper and has been a beloved staple for readers for many years. If you’ve ever wanted to write for The New York Times , submitting a story to Modern Love is one of the best ways to do it. Here’s how to write and pitch your piece.

Writing Your Piece for Modern Love

The first step in getting your work published in Modern Love is writing your story (you can write about your ex or write about true love ; you could even write about your family ). Remember that this column focuses on relationships and personal reflections, so use that as your inspiration when coming up with ideas.

Once you know what to write about, begin drafting your story. Keep it short—Modern Love essays usually range from 500-1,200 words—and make sure to focus on vivid details that bring your piece to life.

The essay should be honest and true while still entertaining and engaging. And don’t forget to make sure you’re following all the submission guidelines!

Pitching Your Piece to The New York Times

Once you’ve written your piece, it’s time to pitch it!

To do this, go to the Modern Love page on The New York Times website and click “Submit an Essay for Consideration” at the bottom. From there, fill out all necessary information (including a brief but compelling description of your essay) before submitting it directly through The New York Times website or emailing [email protected] with “Submission Attached” in the subject line.

Make sure all information is accurate and complete before submitting it—this will help ensure that your essay gets seen by an editor more quickly!

20 Modern Love Prompts

• The story of how I met my partner and the twists and turns our relationship took.
• The moment I realized I had been in an emotionally abusive relationship.
• The journey of learning to trust again after being betrayed by a loved one.
• The difficulties of maintaining a relationship while dealing with a chronic illness.
• The unexpected love that developed between two people who initially disliked each other.
• The decision to open up a relationship and the challenges that came with it.
• The story of falling in love with someone from a different culture and how it affected our relationship.
• The journey of rebuilding a relationship after infidelity.
• The realization that I was in a codependent relationship and the steps I took to change it.
• The story of falling in love with someone who was initially just a friend.
• The moment I realized I was in love with my best friend.
• The day I found out my partner had been cheating on me.
• The decision to end a long-term relationship because of differences in values.
• The journey of learning to love myself after a toxic relationship.
• The unexpected love that blossomed between two coworkers.
• The challenges of navigating a long distance relationship.
• The moment I realized I was gay and how it affected my relationship with my family.
• The realization that my partner and I had grown apart over the years.
• The unexpected joy of falling in love again after heartbreak.
• The realization that my relationship with my parents had changed and how we learned to navigate it.

Tips on How to Write and Pitch your Piece:

• Start by reading the column regularly. Familiarizing yourself with the tone and style of Modern Love will help you get a better sense of what they are looking for in a piece.
• Think about your story. What about your relationship, feelings, betrayals, or revelations makes it unique and interesting to readers? How can you convey your story compellingly and honestly?
• Write a strong and concise pitch. Your pitch should include a brief summary of your story, your credentials as a writer, and why you think your story would be a good fit for Modern Love. Keep your pitch to around 250-300 words.
• Follow the submission guidelines. Read and follow the submission guidelines on the Modern Love website. This includes guidelines on length, formatting, and how to submit your pitch.
• Be patient. The Modern Love column receives a high volume of submissions, so it may take some time for them to review and respond to your pitch. Don't get discouraged if you don't hear back immediately, and consider submitting your pitch to other publications as well.

How to Submit Your Piece

Modern Love has two submission periods, September through December and March through June.

Send submissions to: [email protected] . Please put the subject of your essay or a possible title in the email subject line.

Limit your essay to 1,500-1,700 words.

Attach your essay as a Microsoft Word-compatible doc and paste the text into the body of the email. If your first submission is incomplete, please resubmit one complete entry; do not submit just the missing pieces in additional emails.

Essays must be entirely true. Do not use pseudonyms (including for yourself), composite characters or invented situations or scenes. There are no exceptions to this rule.

Essays must be previously unpublished. Work that has appeared online — on another news website, a personal blog, Medium or elsewhere — is considered previously published.

Essays will be edited in consultation with writers, and writers will be compensated for work that is published.

Getting published in The New York Times can be incredibly rewarding—especially if it's in their beloved weekly series Modern Love! Writing compelling pieces and pitching them properly are important steps in getting noticed by editors at The New York Times ; following these steps can increase your chances of having your work seen by them. Whether you're a seasoned writer or just starting out, writing for Modern Love is always an amazing experience that can give you great satisfaction once published!

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How to get published.

Emilie Poplett

Writer , editor, consultant.

• Nov 6, 2019

Making Modern Love

Updated: Jun 11, 2022

What I learned from getting published in the New York Times' beloved column, and what I want aspiring Modern Love authors to know.

Fellow writers and readers, let's be friends! Connect with me on Twitter .

Modern Love has been called the “American Idol” of aspiring memoirists —and for good reason. The New York Times column has inspired a star-studded podcast, a television show, and some 50 or 60 book deals.

And an acceptance is hard to come by. Even before the column exploded into pop culture, editor Daniel Jones was receiving 9,000 or so submissions a year. With only one spot per week, that puts the chances of acceptance at… slim. (I don’t do math, okay? I do words only. You get it.)

In some ways, my acceptance into the column feels like too much of a fluke for me to offer any sound advice about "getting in." I am not an aspiring memoirist. I don’t rub elbows with Twitter-verified reporters or bestselling authors. I am a 29-year-old cat lady who copes with the not-so-shiny parts of life by writing them into essays, and I don’t typically submit those essays for publication.

This time I did.

So here's a little bit about what my experience was like, what I learned from working with Dan, and how I (unwittingly) “cracked the code.”

A note on "getting in."

I’ve seen dozens of articles about how to get an essay accepted into Modern Love. They’re all about studying the formula—the “thesis in two beats," the "four step narrative," the declarative nature of the column's first sentences and the revelation that comes in its last sentences—and then emulating what you’ve read.

I’m not sure I buy it.

Yes, you should familiarize yourself with the column, respect its submission guidelines , and only submit what could reasonably be considered a potential fit. But if you’re trying to replicate someone else’s voice, it’s going to feel duplicative and inauthentic. And you’ll be doing your story a disservice.

I think my essay was accepted because I didn’t dissect the formula and try to reproduce it. I told my story as honestly as I could, in the way I felt the story needed to be told, and that was good enough.

That’s not to say that I wasn’t familiar with the types of essays they typically run. I've read and loved the column since I was 22, and my essay was inspired by a piece that ran four years earlier, “ When a Couch is More Than a Couch ” by the late Nina Riggs. Her essay, along with her gorgeous memoir The Bright Hour , felt so immediate and profound to me. She had received her cancer treatment at the same hospital in North Carolina where I was a patient. We drove the same routes, entered through the same doors, likely made small talk with the same nurses. So I wrote my story because Nina wrote hers.

But her work is far too beautiful and transcendent to reduce it to a strategy for snagging a high-profile byline. Nina made me want to understand the ways I was coping with my mortality. She made me want to explore my own story. Maybe there’s an essay somewhere in the archives of Modern Love that will do for you what Nina’s essay did for me. I hope so.

I can’t tell you what worked for other people, but I can tell you what worked for me, and it was writing by ear. Writing because I wanted to make sense of what had happened to me. Writing until I felt like I had a story that moved and breathed and said what it needed to say, for no other reason than I needed to have said it.

I know this is sort of eye-roll-y advice. "How do I get published in Modern Love?" "By not trying so hard to get published in Modern Love!" Bleh.

My point is that you should tell your story the way your story demands to be told.

Tell your story as honestly and painstakingly as you know how.

Tell your story because it matters.

Then decide what to do with it.

With all that said, if your goal is to get a byline in Modern Love, there are patterns worth noting—many of them provided by Dan himself.

Dan has said that often the pieces that get published are the ones that tell the story of someone’s life. The story of the most painful, the most absurd, the most significant thing that has ever happened to that person.

It’s not something you’ll write in a weekend. I spent probably eight or 10 months chipping away at mine, and for at least the first handful of them, I had no intention of publishing it. My draft lived in a Google doc titled "This one is for me." As is the case with most personal essays, I didn’t know where I was going until I got there. It took a lot of time—a lot of letting myself write in different directions—before I realized what the essay was even about.

One of my favorite creative nonfiction authors and editors, Sari Botton (whose Skillshare class I highly recommend ), has said, “Write from the scars, not from the wounds.” If you're writing from the wounds, you might also need some intentional time away from the piece before you can return to it with enough emotional distance to do some decent editing. If this is the most important story of your life, it deserves time to breathe, and so do you.

A magical writing fairy named Laura Copeland did the work of compiling a whole bunch of other great tips from Dan . One of my favorites is tip #14 : Ditch the pitch mentality. Here’s what he says about it:

I still end up reading many essays that read as though they were written with a pitch mentality. They don't seem to have grown organically or stumbled into surprising places or reached a place of heightened awareness. Instead, they feel constricted and workmanlike, hemmed in by a need to execute a pre-conceived point…

It's comforting to write that way, to not let yourself get lost, to write by following the essayist's equivalent of a pre-set GPS device. And it can be scary and inefficient to careen off the road into the deep woods. You might waste all kinds of time and energy and still wind up totally lost. But you also might discover a place that can't be boiled down into a two-sentence pitch. It just can't. If someone wants to understand, they're going to have to read the whole thing. And if you've done your job well, they're going to want to.

What I love most about creative nonfiction is that it gives the writer the ability to explore, to deviate, to discover. Give yourself the space to do that rather than locking yourself into formula or analysis, and I think you will end up with a much more authentic, more interesting essay. When you write with the intention of exploring, you might stumble on something unexpected and beautiful. It'll be meaningful for you , first and foremost. It'll be honest. And that will make it good.

Most of us have that piece. The one we've been writing quietly, in private, for months or even years. The one that scares us the most. The one that is the most emotionally taxing to write. That's what this essay was to me.

Go write that one.

Then, when you're done, if you think it might make sense for Modern Love (and if you're cool with turning your soul inside out for millions of people to read and scrutinize), you can read all 34 pages of Dan's tips and incorporate them into your editing process in whatever way feels genuine to you.

I have not done a lot of submitting in my life, but I understand the rules to be:

Follow the submission guidelines .

Don’t be a jerk.

My cover letter was brief. Basically: “I think this essay could be a good fit for Modern Love. Thank you for reading it.”

I didn’t include any credentials because I don’t have any. I’d written one previous essay which was published in HuffPost . I don’t have an MFA. I never took a college course on creative writing. I don’t have a long list of clips. None of that was required. Dan is great about working with emerging writers who have interesting stories to tell. As he puts it, “ If your essay is rejected, it's not because you didn't have a connection or credits. If your essay is accepted, it's not because you have a book coming out. It's because you wrote an essay that made me stop drinking my coffee.”

I sent the email off and went on with my life. I had no expectation of a response of any kind. About four and a half months later, I got an email. It read:

This piece is fantastic. Let's talk about it?

I was only halfway through my first cup of coffee in the morning when I saw it. Having honest-to-God forgotten that I ever submitted the piece, I figured Daniel Jones was the guy from whom I was awaiting a quote for gutter cleaning. Then I saw his email signature, at which point I probably stopped breathing for 20 seconds, because "Oh, that Daniel Jones."

Despite his illustrious career and success, Dan is a super nice, down-to-earth guy with absolutely no discernible ego. You're submitting your words to a real live human, and he is a really good dude.

The Modern Love editing process

We set up an initial phone call, which lasted for about an hour. For the first half of it, he asked me questions about my story, and I walked him through what happened. In the second half we talked about the essay itself.

He read his notes aloud for me. It went basically like this:

I like that sentence…

Let’s establish your age higher up in the piece…

You can’t say ‘batshit’ in the New York Times …

It was a funny and encouraging and all-around nice conversation. I was nervous about it, but he put me at ease. He told me my essay was an easy acceptance, that it was well written but not overwritten. He approached it with the eye of a seasoned editor, but—if I may be so cheesy—with the heart of a reader, which is part of what makes him so good at what he does.

When we ended the call, I sent along a bone marrow biopsy pathology report and some notes from my oncologist to verify that my story is true.

The editing process was smooth and easy. We didn’t make many edits. Dan tightened it up and sent it my way in a Google doc for approval. Then it went to a second editor, Anya, for final edits. And that was it!

"Did it change your life?"

This is what people want to know. Did it change your life? Did publishers come banging down your door? Did the local news contact you for an interview? No (although that has happened for plenty of Modern Love writers). But I got a pretty beautiful moment out of it. Here’s what I wrote after I picked up a newspaper with my name on it:

I used to see people achieving their bucket list goals and think, “Their lives must change overnight.”

Then I got a bucket list opportunity. And my life didn’t change. It didn’t become more glamorous. I didn’t become more worthy. People didn’t love me more than they had the day before. I heard beautiful, kind, life-giving words from loved ones and colleagues and strangers, and then we all went on with the regular stuff of life.

I am still scrubbing cat puke out of the carpet. I am still up in the middle of the night wondering if my sadness will crush me for good this time. I am still doubtful, still insecure, still (almost) as sick as I was in the story they ran in the Sunday paper.

It was a beautiful experience, but it was just a moment. And now it’s a really pretty piece of paper that hangs on my wall.

This is all just to say, your accomplishments don’t determine your worth. The visible successes are not the core of us. They are momentary. We are momentary. Whatever it is, we go on.

Some final thoughts

It was the honor of a lifetime to be published in Modern Love. A completely thrilling and beautiful experience. But I know I didn't get there through hard work alone. Publication involves luck and good timing, and I am not a particularly lucky individual, historically speaking. So it would have been easy for me not to submit my essay at all.

If I had only submitted my writing to places I thought might actually publish it, I would never have sent it to the New York Times . Never ever.

So, as the saying goes, don't self-reject. Don't be the one to decide that it's not good enough. Send it anyway. You never know.

Connect with me on Twitter .

Thank you so much for sharing this, Emilie. It’s delightfully satisfying to hear about the other side of my favourite column in the paper, a peek at this particular Oz. (Ozes plural? You and Daniel Jones? The second editor too?) Anyways. Sending you gratitude and happy healing vibes from Toronto.

loved this! Thank you for sharing and wishing you all the best x

How to Get Published in Modern Love, McSweeney’s or Anywhere Else You Want

Today’s post is by Allison K Williams ( @GuerillaMemoir ).

Recently, a writer on Twitter bemoaned yet another rejection from a place they very much wanted to be published. A string of kind responses urged:

Just keep trying. Publishing’s a numbers game. Send out more submissions right away!

Kind, yes. Helpful? No.

They aren’t exactly platitudes—getting published in general is indeed a numbers game, requiring persistence and fortitude.

But getting published in a particular venue doesn’t happen by pulling up your socks for another try. Magazines, newspapers and websites are not interested in your perseverance. They are interested in your excellent, targeted writing that suits their audience and fits their voice. Whether you’re aiming for The New York Times, McSweeney’s, or Parents magazine, you must research and analyze what they already publish.

Sometimes you don’t even have to write the essay before selling it. Commercial essays, articles and 0p-eds often sell with a pitch—a short (short!) email addressing three simple questions: Why Now? Why Here? Why Me?

What’s culturally relevant about your personal story? Often, that’s the difference between the past and the present.

Last New Year’s, on my fifth glass of champagne, I was still rationalizing that I wasn’t really an alcoholic.

My dad, an alcoholic, always called St. Patrick’s Day, “Amateur Night.” As March 17 approaches, I’m already buying bottles of sparkling cider and soft lemonade.

Cultural relevance also means figuring out who cares right now. Does your story tie into a recent political speech, incident on live TV, or bestselling book? When you’re on your soapbox, what are you responding to or in dialogue with?

What makes this website, magazine or NPR station an ideal venue for your work? Researching their audience helps you make that case. Look at their ads—are they targeting consumers of McDonalds, Mercedes-Benz or Medic-Alert bracelets? Specific demographic information is often linked way down on the bottom of the magazine’s website. Look for “Media Kit” or “Advertise with us”—the venue compiles their own data so potential ad buyers know who exactly they’ll be reaching.

Why are you the best person to write this piece? What in your personal experience makes you an “expert” in this topic, whether that’s surviving a bad drug trip or getting your kid to eat their peas?

Boiling down those three key points into 100-200 words also show you understand the magazine’s voice and tone isn’t easy—but it’s a skill that can be learned and practiced.

Literary media outlets usually consider only finished essays, but that requires specific targeting, too. For creative nonfiction, the most successful submissions very closely fit the tone and structure of what’s already published. It’s easier for editors to imagine publishing your work when they can feel how your essay fits their mission.

The New York Times Modern Love column is notable for the number of writers who have gotten memoir deals from their essays there. Modern Love has very clear guidelines. The essays are about “modern” love—some element in the story didn’t exist 20-50 years ago. They want submissions of 1500-1700 words. Most writers can follow those requirements.

But look deeper. Consult this list of Modern Love essays by topic and cross-reference chronologically. Has your topic been done in the last 3 years? Find another angle. Read all the previous essays in your category. Does your story seem too much like one already published? How is your angle new?

Do some literary analysis (which sounds terribly MFA-snobby, but it’s not hard). Notice that nearly all Modern Love essays start “in scene.” That is, we’re in the present, with the narrator, at a moment of action or crisis. Then the narrator loops back to the past, showing how they ended up in that moment. Then they move forward in time from the opening scene; what happened next? How did they come to realize the need for change? Modern Love essays end with another clear moment of action, realization or decision: based on everything I just showed you, here’s some beautiful wisdom.

Write your essay as creatively as you wish. But before you submit, revise it using the structure they usually publish. Yes, Modern Love is still incredibly competitive—but “keep trying” with essays you know are right for the venue and your odds are much better.

Another dream venue for many writers is McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. I’ve worked with writers on more than 20 pieces published by McSweeney’s, and they all have three things in common:

• Specific point of view. A clear answer to “Who are you and why are you telling us this?”
• Tight writing. McSweeney’s pieces don’t have a wasted word. When aiming for any humor outlet, do one more pass after your “final” draft and remove every word that isn’t absolutely necessary. (Rewriting by hand helps!)
• A little bit mean. McSweeney’s specializes in sharp, clever satire that cuts like glass. If your piece is “nice” or “sweet,” it’s not for them. Plenty of other humor sites have a softer edge.

Am I suggesting you subvert your creativity to someone else’s mold?

If you are a beautiful genius whose work defies categorization, who can’t be constrained by form, then you do you! Submit to literary magazines rather than commercial outlets or focus on publishing books. Or heck, start your own magazine where no two pieces are alike and the audience is different every issue.

But if you’d like to see your work in national publications—and get paid—it’s not enough to “keep trying” and hoping your work is what they want. Tailor your essay to smoothly fit their voice and mission. A couple of hours of analysis will not only improve your publication (and payment!) chances, you’ll also be a better writer—and that’s a win whether you’re published or not.

Allison K Williams has edited and coached writers to publication with many of the best-known outlets in media. As a memoirist, essayist, and travel journalist, Allison has written craft, culture and comedy for National Public Radio, CBC-Canada, the  New York Times,  and many more. She leads the Rebirth Your Book writing retreats series and, as Social Media Editor for  Brevity , she inspires thousands of writers with weekly blogs on craft and the writing life. Allison holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Western Michigan University and spent 20 years as a circus aerialist and acrobat before writing and editing full-time. Her latest book is Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro From Blank Page to Book (Woodhall Press, 2021). Learn more at her website .

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Thanks for this fascinating essay on getting essays into publications, Allison. In the past, I’ve done some of this research and had essays in Indianapolis Monthly Magazine, Family Fun, and the Saturday Evening Post. Yet in my half-written essay for Modern Love, I missed the element about how it is “modern.”

I’m wondering if you’ve tried another strategy, although it’s sometimes difficult to do. Check into the editor’s background and interests, (especially if aiming for a smaller publication, not national) and if they write in the front of the magazine, it can be fairly simple. I once unknowingly tapped into the editor’s personal subject they were interested in with my pitch, although I only learned that later. Using the tips you’ve shared to break in to a more regional publication where the competition is not so fierce can be rewarding. In fact, in the past I frequented a Writer’s Market feature telling how to “break in” to listed publications. As hard as this can be to succeed in, there are ways to help ourselves slant the odds in our favor.

You’re so welcome! And I love that idea of tapping into the editor’s interests and backgrounds, and yes, definitely starting regional is easier.

Hey Allison,

This is great advice. When you keep on trying, you usually try with the same everything. This is where thinking outside the box could benefit you. You can definitely get inspired by the difficulty and challenge your mind. Creativity tends to rise above and beyond when against the wall, but it can get stuck if you get in its way.

Loved the read!

The 8 Best 'Modern Love' Essays

Isn't it a fantastic feeling when you stumble upon a column that makes you think, "I can't believe I survived without these stories in my life"? Ever since I read my first New York Times "Modern Love" essay, I was hooked by the series' concept of meditations on connection. The New York Times began publishing essays on the subject, written exclusively by NYT readers, in 2004. However, the series has experienced an upswing in popularity in recent months. This is mostly due to the excellently-produced Modern Love podcast (from WBUR) that's been around since January of this year. In each episode, a talented actor brings a favorite "Modern Love" article to life . Listening to an episode is a great way to freshen up your commute, or provide a soundtrack to your afternoon walk.

But with all these essays, podcasts, and even a Modern Love: 50 True and Extraordinary Tales book out there, I sometimes feel like there's an embarrassment of riches when it comes to "Modern Love." How on earth am I supposed to pick the best stories? Since I know I'm not the only one with this problem, I dug into the "Modern Love" archives from the past three years and picked eight of my favorite stories from 2014-2016. Whether you're a newcomer to the series or you've been a longtime fan, you'll enjoy this assortment of essays on all kinds of unlikely love.

1. Just One Last Swirl Around the Bowl

Dave Barry, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of the New York Times' "This Land" column , wrote this essay about his daughter's dying fish. One of the few Modern Love pieces that isn't about romantic love, the essay explores his memories of his parents' deaths, and how he tried to care for them as best as he knew how during their final days. While his daughter comes to terms with the fish's imminent death, Barry, too, reflects on what it means to watch someone you love die.

You can also listen to Jason Alexander read this on the Modern Love podcast , and he does a bang-up job.

2. All Twisted Up by Genderbending

Delacey Skinner doesn't know what to think when she discovers that her ex-boyfriend is dating a trans woman. This information causes Skinner to question her own identity as a woman. She's never felt particularly comfortable in her femininity, so what does it mean that her ex now has a relationship with someone who presents herself as far more traditionally feminine than Skinner herself ever has? Skinner's essay is a poignant and thought-provoking take on gender identity.

3. Putting Love to the Stress Test

What happens when you meet a person so scarily similar to yourself that you assume something has to go wrong? In this essay, Jasmine Jaksic signs up for OkCupid and finds a man who's answered almost every question on the site in the same way as her. Since she and her new beau are both software developers, they decide to implement a real-life version of the "stress test," which is the practice of testing a computer program to its limits. What Jaksic discovers during the four weeks of their stress test changes the way she thinks about the necessities of a relationship.

4. Sharing a Cab, and My Toes

After abandoning her life as an academic, Julia Anne Miller fulfills her decades-long dream of moving to New York City. While working as a writer for a test-prep company, she sets out to explore the city. Each of her coworkers nurses an artistic dream, and the test-prep job is only a way to pay the bills. Miller's dream: to perform. One night, she shares a cab ride home with a coworker, leading to a bizarre sexual experience. This forms the basis of her eloquent meditation on what it means to get what you want.

5. One Bouquet of Fleeting Beauty, Please

This stunning and lyrical essay will make you smell tulips and lilies as you're reading. Written by Alisha Gorder, it tells the story of Gorder's time at a floral shop, arranging and selling bouquets to people trying to communicate with their loved ones through flowers. People often send commonplace messages with their bouquets, such as "Happy Birthday" (H.B.), "Happy Anniversary" (H.A.), and "Thinking of You" (T.O.Y.). But sometimes, what they're trying to say isn't so simple. Gorder weaves those anecdotes into the fabric of her own life: when she was 18, her boyfriend of two years killed himself, and she was forced to learn an agonizing lesson about love.

6. One Thousand and One Nights of Laundry

Wendy Rasmussen, the author of this melancholy reflection on love and loss, married an Iraqi refugee and then divorced him. Her essay captures an episode of her life in which she went to his house with their sons to do laundry, since she didn't have a working laundry machine. One night, her drunk ex-husband told her a story about escaping from Iraq by crossing the Saudi Arabian deserts, and about the man he left behind in the sand. Rasmussen's essay is subtle, but evocative, and it's a read you won't forget.

7. Finding My Own Rescuer

Anna March brings us this story about the love of her life, a man disabled in a car accident when he was 16. Though he has to use a wheelchair, Adam is anything but helpless: he can cook, walk the dogs, and drive, and he helps keep March's life in order when they move in together. But their new house has more than one story, and while they're waiting for the proper ramps to be installed, the tables turn in their relationship. Now March is the one caring for him - and she doesn't know if she's up to the task.

8. No Labels, No Drama, Right?

This is the essay that made me start following "Modern Love" - mostly because I've seen the exact same story play out in my friends' lives so many times. The author, Jordana Narin, writes about the man who occupied the space between friend and boyfriend for so long that she hardly knew how to handle her relationship with him - especially because, as a Millennial and college student, she didn't know how to admit her feelings. If you've tried to navigate the muddy waters of hookup culture, this is an essay that will resonate with you.

Images: Caleb Ekeroth , Brenda Helen , Luis Llerena, Daria Sukhorukova , Kai Oberhäuser , freestocks.org /Unsplash; jill111 , Unsplash , ferobanjo /Pixabay

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Writing the (Modern) Love Essay is a nonfiction course for writers of all levels interested in transforming their lived experience of romance into an essay. You’ll learn how to transfer your story of love onto the page in a compelling, authentic way, while avoiding the pitfalls of cliché.

We will read essays from the New York Times’s Modern Love and Tiny love series; excerpts from longer form memoir by Ocean Vuong, Sophie Calle, and Elizabeth McCracken, among others; poetry by Frank O’Hara; monologues from documentary theater by Leigh Fondakowski. Always, we’ll be searching for the methods and tactics other authors used to tackle the challenge of finding fresh ways to write about love. Always, we’ll be looking for how you can steal their tools. You will look at how specificity, voice, and form hook the reader and keep them reading. Then, you will apply these lessons to your own work.

Over six weeks, you will work your way from concept to a full draft of an essay. Your piece will be workshopped by the group, providing concrete feedback for revision. We will also talk about the personal essay market, how to know when your work is ready for submission, and how a short essay can be a jumping off point for longer work.

At the end of the class, you will have taken the raw material of life and shaped it into a tight and intriguing piece of nonfiction writing.

Learning Goals

• Learn to use specifics to fend off the danger of falling into clichéd language or imagery
• Discover how a clear voice carries the reader through a piece
• Identify the mechanics of how different forms of essay support different stories

Writing Goals

• Write and workshop a full essay
• Revise essay, based on feedback, into a submission-ready essay

Zoom Schedule

We will meet on Zoom Thursdays, starting February 1st, from 7-9pm Eastern. 

Weekly Syllabus 

Week 1. devil’s in the details: specifics.

The specifics of a love story are what make it unique, what make the reader really feel like they’re there, and what allow you to avoid the dreaded cliché.

This week, you’ll map out specifics of your love story: not just what happened, but how it felt—across all five senses.

Assignment: Pick a moment—or a few—in your love story. Write down each specific thing you can remember surrounding that moment, making sure to pay attention to every sense.

Week 2. Comic, Tragic, Epic, Other: Container

You’ll explore different forms for the love essay—from tiny to full-length, comic to epic—drawn from the New York Times’ Modern Love and beyond. You’ll consider how they work as vehicles to get their stories of love across to the reader.

This week, you’ll identify an ideal form for your love essay.

Assignment: Imagine your essay in at least two different containers. Sketch an outline of what facts each would include.

Week 3. Siren song: Voice

How does the “voice” of a love essay drive it? How does it keep the reader moving along?

This week, you’ll zero in on the voice of your love essay.

Assignment: Write a paragraph of your love essay in one voice, then rewrite it in another

Week 4. A Home for Your Essay: Modern Love and Beyond

What are the homes for love essays, in print and on the internet? How can you tell when your essay is ready to submit? This week, you’ll learn about the personal essay publication ecosystem.

Assignment: Prepare for first class workshop. 

Week 5. Workshop, Round One

How can you craft active questions to get the information you need out of a workshop? How can you give effective feedback? This week, we’ll talk strategies for workshopping and begin to workshop your essay.

Assignment: Prepare for second class workshop. 

WEEK 6. Workshop, Round Two

This week, we’ll finish workshopping essays and talk strategies for revision: how to make the most of the feedback you’ve received; how to come back to the work with fresh eyes; how to keep going when you hit the doldrums.

By the end of the two weeks of workshop, you’ll have a plan for revising your essay and actionable notes to get you to your next draft.

Student Feedback for Paz Pardo:

Paz has provided me with some of the best feedback I’ve ever received on my writing. Even in early stages of a project she is able to identify key unanswered questions that inspired me and drove me forward in my subsequent drafts. Her comments are focused, identifying the most important areas to address, instead of providing a laundry list of comments. Finally, Paz has this gift of offering both love and encouragement with her direct, honest and insightful feedback. Working with her is always rigorous, exhilarating and full of joy.  George Bazett

About Paz Pardo

Paz Pardo’s writing has been featured in The New York Times Modern Love column, LitHub ,  The Brooklyn Review, The I Scream Social Anthology: Volume 1 , and Howlround Theater Commons, among other venues. Her novel  The Shamshine Blind  was selected as one of the best scifi/fantasy novels of 2023 by Library Journal and one of the best debuts by Crimereads. She received her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers in 2018.

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First Lines of Rejected “Modern Love” Essays

By Zach Zimmerman

Modern Love is a weekly column, a book, a podcast—and now, in its 16th year, a television show—about relationships, feelings, betrayals and revelations. — The Times.

My husband and I don’t text, we don’t talk, we don’t live together, I don’t know where he lives (I have my guesses), and we’ve never been more in modern love.

The vows wrote themselves, pouring from my ballpoint pen like milk being poured from a gallon of milk.

At the top of Machu Picchu, as the woman I would one day call my wife vomited up the engagement ring I’d hidden in her Nalgene, I caught a glimpse of God’s plan.

I asked Sally to watch “When Harry Met Sally” with me on our third date. My name isn’t Harry—it’s Henry—but it would have been very cool if it were Harry.

It felt right when I swiped right, but when he left I wished that I had swiped in the other direction (left).

The charcuterie board was covered with meats, cheeses, and a dog-eared letter from my late great-grandfather.

First, he stole my identity. Then he stole my heart.

In this “Modern Love” essay, I will argue that, although my ex cheated on me with my best friend, I share blame for the demise of our relationship, insofar as I could not successfully articulate my emotional wants, needs, and feelings in a concise, productive way during the relationship.

When I met Sally, I asked if she’d seen “When Harry Met Sally.” She had. I hadn’t. My name is Brian.

“What is love? Baby, don’t hurt me,” Haddaway sang over the hospital loudspeakers as a baby named Haddaway hurt me during a scheduled C-section.

I’m Christian. My husband is Jewish. We’re getting a Buddhist divorce.

Of all the Etsy shops in all the towns in all the world, she bought used baby shoes from mine.

I called No. 54 at the D.M.V. where I work. The next day, No. 54 called my number.

Men always ask me to watch “When Harry Met Sally” because my name is Sally, but they’re never named Harry, so they’re not as clever as they think.

Everything on my wedding day was picture perfect—it’s how I knew that something was horribly wrong.

Love is like a box of chocolates, in that I like both of those things.

In rural Alabama, where coyotes holler and jug bands play, “I love you”s are rarer than routine medical care.

The dick pic looked familiar, as if I’d seen it in a dream; then it dawned on me that it was a picture of my own penis.

When you realize you don’t want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible, Sally.

I didn’t know love until I gave birth and fell in modern love with the obstetrician. ♦

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I.C.C. Prosecutor Requests Warrants for Israeli and Hamas Leaders

The move sets up a possible showdown between the international court and israel with its biggest ally, the united states..

Hosted by Sabrina Tavernise

Featuring Patrick Kingsley

Produced by Will Reid ,  Diana Nguyen and Shannon M. Lin

Edited by Liz O. Baylen and Michael Benoist

Original music by Elisheba Ittoop

Engineered by Chris Wood

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This week, Karim Khan, the top prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, requested arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the country’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant.

Patrick Kingsley, the Times’s bureau chief in Jerusalem, explains why this may set up a possible showdown between the court and Israel with its biggest ally, the United States.

On today’s episode

Patrick Kingsley , the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times.

Background reading

Why did a prosecutor go public with the arrest warrant requests ?

The warrant request appeared to shore up domestic support for Mr. Netanyahu.

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