I look for the kind of text that doesn't look like the writer I'm considering. Plutarch is a great example.

A risk is something that feels risky to the person who's taking it.

In college I studied essays with a poet, and so I think my interpretation of the genre was always going to be a little off-kilter.

I like Plutarch because I've read him forever, and I know that he's incredibly funky, even though his mainstream image is as Mr. Unfunky.

Sometimes the essay is where we end up when everything that we know must change.

Yet there are some critics in the nonfiction world who still look at some of today's stranger interpretations of the essay and say "You don't belong here. That's not how we do things." I think that's problematic.

Back in the day, a lot of our instructors in nonfiction were actually fiction scholars. So they would bring in stories as models for the essay. And in some ways that's a good idea, because we can all learn from other genres. But I think it also made me realize that I literally didn't have an essay model, and that if I wanted one I would have to find it.