You pour your heart and soul into a personal essay, publish it, and readers don't care.
Zadie Smith did the opposite. One of the most-read essayists of her generation, Smith took herself almost entirely out of her essays. Instead, she wrote about the world.
Readers, she found, don't come to an essay to meet the writer; they come to understand something about the world. They appreciate the writer to the extent that the writer can tell them something about the world that is true, useful, or beautiful.
So in which direction should your essay point—inward, to the author; or outward, to the world?
For Zadie Smith, pointing outward doesn't drain the feeling from the text; it reorients it. She sublimates her personal convictions and experiences into ideas and objects that the reader can stand next to and scrutinize. Her essays thus serve as less a mirror and more a window onto the world.
Thinking alongside a reader, it turns out, feels more intimate than inviting them in.