Too Vast for Words: Writing Prompts for Large Subjects

The essay is a grapple, a cheerfully desperate attempt to drape words on thoughts or emotions  mostly too vast for words.
                                    —Brian Doyle

By Marcia Aldrich

What writer among us hasn’t felt overwhelmed by the enormity of the subject before us? In teaching student writers I realized that they needed strategies to tackle a large subject, to come at it from the side or through the back door—to sneak up on it, so to speak.

One unit I taught in creative no...