Writing a personal essay doesn't have to be hard. One would think that the most important part of a personal essay would be writing a draft. This isn't so. While it is important, there are other parts of the writing process that are just as important for writing a focused "A" paper.
One of the first tasks you do before you write the rough draft is to have a topic that is appropriate for a personal essay.
As you may recall, a personal essay should be written in first person, usually about an account of an event, a story about a person, a travelogue of a place or an illustration of an object (in words) that is or was special to you. Well, does that mean you should write about your mom, your childbirth (if you're a woman) or your vacation? Any of these topics are a good choice for a personal essay.
Recall that the writing process:
1. Brainstorming--Create your topic. Narrow it down.
2. Outlining--Yes, this is necessary!
3. Drafting--Writing your draft from the outline.
4. Revising--Looking at the paper and paragraphs as a thorough explanation of your thesis.
5. Editing--Correcting errors in spelling, grammar, capitalization, punctuation and missing words/typos. Run a spell-check during this step.
That's it! Those are the five writing steps. You can do them any way you want with any topic. You can revise while you're editing if you want or vice versa. Whatever you're comfortable with.