How To Write A Personal Essay That Will Get Published Online, In 11 Practical Steps

I'm not gonna lie: the hardest thing to get printed on Bustle as a freelancer is a personal essay. That said, personal essays are also what I'm most in need of as our features editor. The reason they're so difficult to get accepted is not because I don't need or want them — it's because they are among the hardest to write well.

Though personal essays sometimes have an unfair reputation for being somehow "soft" or "self-indulgent," in my opinion, they are actually one of the most effective ways to communicate a point, experience, or even a feeling to a wide audience. So if you're thinking of pitching a personal essay to Bustle — or any other online publication, for that matter — know that we very much want to hear your stories.

But before you pitch, there are several things you can do to ensure you have the best chance possible of actually getting your essay printed. When it comes to writing for the web, the rules are not the same as they might be in school, or in a literary journal — and you're going to need to know how to adjust your essay accordingly.

Here are my tips, as the editor who decides what runs — and the writer who's totally been there.

1. When In Doubt, Start With What's On The Tip Of Your Pen

Having an idea of what you're going to write about is obviously where you want to start. Sometimes I get pitches that seem like four essays in one — even though the topics might be interesting, there's too much material to fit into an (ideally for us) 1000-1400 essay with any real resonance.

So how do you narrow things down — or figure out what to write about in the first place? I recommend free writing to find out. Take out a journal and write longhand for ten to twenty minutes. Don't let yourself pause — the important thing here is to keep writing without censoring yourself. Don't worry about it being intelligible. If you're stuck, write, "I'm stuck, I'm stuck," until something else comes out. You might try starting each sentence with "I remember" or "I see/smell/hear/feel" in order to drum up more details from the recesses of your mind.

2. Scan Your Freewrite For Details

When you're done with your freewrite, your creative muscles will already be warmed up — and you'll be able to see the patterns in your verbal diarrhea. Chances are, there's more good stuff there than you think. You might pick out a particular moment — a line even — that sparks a memory.

I suggest starting small: perhaps you notice that you're writing a lot about your ex. Is there one line about them that stands out to you, like maybe the memory of the time they snatched the remote away from you? Then I recommend starting your essay at that scene, and going from there. Remember, you can always change your beginning — the important thing is to pick a jumping-off point that feels doable rather than daunting. Is there a memory you can start with? Some dialogue? Remember, details are your friend, and, as a rule, the most powerful personal essays are quite specific.

3. Map Your Arc

Structure is the main place I see personal essays stumble. I like the advice I heard on a Moth podcast a few years ago, which I'll paraphrase here: Every good story gives the audience a sense of where the protagonist began, a moment of change when something in the protagonist shifts, and ends with a sense of where the protagonist is now — and why it matters.

Now, that might sound a lot like a beginning, middle, and end — but it's not quite the same. This kind of arc can be nonlinear as well, as long as it communicates those three things. (Nor should your essay ever be tied up in a pretty, simple bow.)

For example, I wrote a personal essay about my experience of realizing that being gluten-free wasn't right for me. The essay began with a very visual moment of me squatting in the woods, anxious about whether I'd be able to poop. (Hey, whatever draws the reader in.) From there, the essay then details my experience — why I became gluten-free in the first place, and how I started questioning whether I needed to be. The essay then ends back in those woods — chronologically, we're in the same moment we started, but are left with my aha moment, and a clear sense of how my perspective changed.

I picked such a graphic scene to begin and end my essay because looking back on an experience that spanned two years, I didn't know where to start. But in journaling, I found that my mind kept returning to that moment in the woods as a turning point and a clear image connected to my experience. Starting it with a scene made an overwhelming essay feel much more doable. Knowing that would be both my starting an ending point, it became much less daunting to write everything in between.

I suggest mapping out what your arc is, and making sure it's clear in your mind before you start writing. It will make your essay much clearer, and easier for the reader to draw meaning from.

4. Write Like Your Family Won't Read It

This advice comes straight from the most talented personal essayist I know — Bustle's own Gabrielle Moss. She jokes that this is easier for her since she's actually estranged from her family, but even if you're not, it's good advice to write like they aren't watching. Often, we censor ourselves way more than we need to, and it keeps us from writing with the kind of honesty that makes an essay connect.

See if you can write as though no one's reading. Tell yourself you can always edit out certain details later, and try to write with as much honesty as possible. You'll end up with more details this way, and likely, a much better personal essay.

If you feel scared about telling the whole truth, think about the personal essays and books that have most affected you. Chances are they resonated because they were honest, and expressed something you'd felt that you hadn't been able to put into words yet. If you can tell your story honestly and with vulnerability, it is a real gift to give your reader. They aren't going to judge you for it — in fact, it's exactly what will make them respect you as a writer.

Which brings me to...

5. Value & Cultivate Honesty

Whenever you write, keep the question Am I being honest? in the front of your mind. If something reads somewhat disingenuous, or you're only telling half the truth — know that readers and editors can smell it a mile away. It's natural to want to protect your ego or privacy, but try to stay genuine and raw; it's a personal essay, after all. Often, a couple days of distance between you and a first draft can help provide perspective on this one, tempting as it is to keep tinkering.

As a writer, it's also important that you continue working on your own self-awareness. Therapy, meditation, walking, yoga, journaling, spending time alone — all of these practices help us get to know ourselves better so that we can call ourselves on being disingenuous in our writing (and life). The time you spend processing your thoughts is what gives your words meaning, so you should spend as much time getting to know yourself as you do trying to write honestly.

6. Make The Personal Political

This doesn't mean you literally have to make every personal essay political (though I love that too and here are some great examples!). What I mean is, as you're writing, try to keep this question at the front of your mind: Is this relevant to someone who doesn't know me?

Now, this certainly doesn't mean you need to explain yourself, or your point, explicitly. Some of the best personal essays let the reader infer meaning, simply by evoking universal feelings. That said, I often see writers stumble under the assumption that because an experience was important to them or happened to them, it will be important to everyone.

That can be true — but you need to have a sense of how it matters before you start writing, otherwise it can be easy to get too caught up in your own *feels*.

Ask yourself: How is this relevant to people who don't care about me personally? Does my story represent a larger struggle or common experience?

The answers should be yes, even if you're writing, say, about the experience of coming out, and know all women are not gay. This essay is a great example of a writer communicating a very specific experience in universal terms that the reader can empathize with.

7. Review Your Essay For "Texture"

It's a writing class cliche, but it's true: show, don't tell. That doesn't mean you can't ever tell; it just means that after you've written your essay, you should review it for texture, as I like to think about it.

A good essay usually has some moments of telling, some scenes, some beautiful descriptive language, some dialogue, and often, some outside perspective (i.e. stats, quotes from other essays or articles, social/political context). Those are not hard-and-fast rules of course — you might write an essay that is pretty uniform and simple in style, like this one. But where I see most people tripping up is in describing everything and showing next to nothing.

Once you've finished a first draft, look at the essay and see where you can replace a telling graph with a scene or dialogue that illustrates the same point.

8. Be A Ruthless Self-Editor

Often, I get personal essays that have clearly not been closely edited. They have typos, lack structure, or have too much repetition and rambling. When you're pitching for online publication, you need to assume that the editor reviewing your essay is completely inundated with emails and pressed for time. She has potentially already read dozens of pitches that day. One way to make your essay stand out among them is to make sure your copy is as clean and tight as possible.

After you feel pretty good about your draft, read it out-loud to yourself.

Ask yourself: Where can I condense this? Do I repeat myself anywhere? Are there any places I could turn a "telling" graph into a scene or dialogue, or otherwise give it more texture? Does anything sound like something I wouldn't really say or believe? Is my arc clear?

Of course, you'll also want to read for typos, style, and punctuation. I also suggest trying to break your paragraphs up as much as possible so that you're not sending huge walls of text to an editor's screen — once again, the experience of reading something online is not the same as in print. You're targeting an audience with a shorter attention span.

You can read more about all my tips for being a good self-editor here.

9. Have Someone Else Read It Before You Pitch

I can't emphasize enough how valuable it is to have a trusted friend, partner — whoever — as an editor. I'm lucky in that my partner is actually a professional editor, but even if he weren't, I'd show him my work before sending it off to pitch because he knows me. Even if your trusted person isn't a writer or editor, someone who knows you well will be able to tell you where something doesn't make sense, and perhaps, where you're not being as genuine as you could be.

Ask them to consider the same questions I asked in section six, and also add: What did you think the point of this was? How did it make you feel? If they aren't getting what you want the essay to communicate, or seem unaffected by it, you might want to keep tinkering before you send it off.

10. Know How To Pitch To The Site You're Emailing

Knowing how to pitch is extremely important. Each site is different, and you should tailor your pitch to their preferences. But no matter the site, I do think it's safe to assume that any editor is relatively pressed for time. You want to package your piece as clearly as possible. Don't write a huge introduction, and I suggest copying and pasting the essay in the body of the email to save them even more time, unless they specify otherwise.

These days, many sites like ours also require images of the author themselves for personal essays, so you could make your piece even more approval-ready by attaching a few relevant photos of yourself as well. My article on how to pitch to Bustle will break down the details of what you need to know even further, so check it out, no matter what you're pitching.

11. Stay In Shape

It isn't easy to get a personal essay accepted to Bustle. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't keep trying, or pitch a rejected essay elsewhere. If you have several pitches rejected in a row, don't get discouraged — but don't keep trying the same things either. This might be when you want to follow up with me or another editor and ask what you could do to improve.

Of course, it is also very important that you continue to read writers you admire and study the craft of the personal essay. You can't expect yourself to spew genius if you don't allow other writers to inform and inspire you. You should also read personal essays on the sites that you are pitching to; if you're not familiar with the publication's tone and general form, it will be apparent to the editor and will put you at a disadvantage.

Finally, as every writer knows, writing is a muscle, and the more you keep exercising, the better shape you'll be in. Make your routine targeted, regular, and tailored to you, and you'll be kicking ass in no time.

Images: Pexels; Giphy

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Guy who got into all 8 Ivy League schools explains how to nail a winning admissions essay

Kwasi Enin, then a high school senior, smiles after announcing he will attend Yale University during a press conference at William Floyd High School in Mastic Beach, New York April 30, 2014.REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton Reddit recently hosted an AMA, or Ask Me Anything, that featured Kwasi Enin answering questions about his incredible feat of being accepted into all eight Ivy League schools.

Enin, now a sophomore at Yale, provided really detailed answers about when to start writing your essay and how to craft a story that will catch the attention of admissions officers.

Somewhat surpisingly, he suggested having an English teacher edit your essay before sending it in.

Below is what he shared.

On when to start writing your essay:

I took my summer, starting in July before senior year, to craft my essay. I wrote mini-essays based on the Common App prompts from previous years. I looked at what was worthwhile out of those essays, and transferred those snippets into the prompt for the 2013-2014 year as soon as possible.

Then I added all the prompts for the colleges I would apply to. I made separate word documents for all of them and started writing an essay a day in August. When the school year came, I had a whole lot of editing to do with my teachers. But it sure made the application process simple!

On what to put in your essay:

Apply EA (early action)! If you can write a compelling essay, I am sure your application will be reviewed in a positive light. I suggest picking an essay topic that takes a small idea or event which occurred in your life, and detailing it's significance in a story that just screams "THIS IS WHO I AM!" Avoid cliches as much as possible, write it this month, and have it reviewed and worked by a close English teacher until you have to send it out!

I believe your essays (both your Common App one and the one in your choice college's supplement, are the best way to inject your personality into your application. The essay questions are always designed to give you a chance to showcase your writing style and your persona.

Basically, by the end of your essays, your admissions officer reviewer should have a wonderful image of you in their mind. This is really important, because when I visited UPenn, my own admissions officer met me randomly in a bustling crowd of Prefrosh and cited a line out of my own essay to me. Beyond the coolness of the moment, it was that connection that you hope to develop through your essays.

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Start Your Monday With These Angry Letters to the Editor Over Jian Ghomeshi's Comeback Essay

After Jian Ghomeshi published a cover story in the New York Review of Books October issue, which was awful not just in terms of its weepy, disingenuous plea for forgiveness and dual victimization but also because of its terrible writing, the NYRB had a serious mess to clean up. Editor Ian Buruma was fired as a result of the editorial, despite contributors' cries that it was due to hysterical public reaction. And now in an attempt to make up for its horrific misstep in publishing Ghomeshi's essay, the magazine is publishing many of the letters it received in response to the piece.

The letters include readers and women with stories to tell about being affected by Ghomeshi's behavior towards women. One reader Joanne O., who writes that she was "personally victimized" by Ghomeshi in 2013, asks specifically for space in the issue for her letter. She writes:

The choice to publish Ghomeshi's piece was also a choice to remind all of the women he has victimized that his story is worth more than ours. As I read of his woes—dipping into a savings account to pay for his legal fees and awkwardly meeting women while gallivanting around Europe—I thought about the thousands of dollars I've put on my credit card to pay for the counseling that has remained a constant over the past four years, because trauma changes you on a physiological level that feels impossible to understand. I thought about the days I missed work because I lay frozen in bed filled with a hollowness that can only be felt when your humanity is stripped from you by the (physical) hands of a man who manipulated you to establish dominance when he held the power from the start. I thought about the fear and frustration deep within my being, which fractured friendships and relationships and forced me into seclusion for nearly a year.

Another letter writer Linda Redgrave was a complainant in Ghomeshi's trial and echoes Joanne O's claims. "In the overwhelming response, it seems most will concur, this was a failed attempt to win back followers by playing the pity card," she writes. "Lay down your hand. It's time for some humble pie."

Many of the letters accuse the magazine, rightly, of fishing for rage-clicks, while others took issue with the factual claims in Ghomeshi's essay. One reader points out that in Canada the law doesn't convict for rape but rather a broad definition of "sexual assault," which makes Ian Buruma's claim that he wouldn't have published Ghomeshi if he were accused of rape extremely selective and ignorant of Canadian law. Another reader, Lisa Guenther, writes to the magazine with a run-down of the piece's lies and ends with a particularly great burn regarding a lack of fact-checking:

You have e-mail, so I have to imagine you have access to the Internet and know how to use it. Next time some artsy sociopath looking to redeem himself pitches you an essay, spend half an hour on Google first.

You can read all the letters here, but it's important to remember, as one Ohio State professor writes to the magazine, "Printing letters on your actions in your next issue does not absolve you."

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How to Write a College Essay

[unable to retrieve full-text content]A good time for students to begin working on their essays is the summer before senior year, experts say, when homework and extracurricular activities aren't taking up time and mental energy. Starting ...

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How to Get Your Homework Done Fast

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So much homework, so little time. Sound familiar? Every student knows what it is to be limited in time, every student needs more time in order to complete his or her task before the deadline. Unfortunately, the reason why most of the people struggle from the lack of time is that they do not know how to concentrate on one specific task and plan their time resources properly. We live in a multi-task age. We are used to doing several things at the same time, therefore, when it comes to academic assignments, we fail to concentrate our thinking on this task and remove everything that distracts us. Thus, a lot of people do not know how to do homework fast. Why? Because they have never asked such a question. Obviously, it is time to make amends.

Before you start improving your process of doing homework, it is vitally important to realize some basic reasons to do homework faster. What are the positive consequences of doing homework faster? Well, there are at least three of them. First of all, you will have considerably more time. Most of the students complain that they do not have enough time for personal life, or relaxation, or hobbies. Of course, if you spend long hours sitting at a desk, reading textbooks, making calculations, and staring at the computer screen, you will never find time to spend it as you want. If your life is nothing but instant cramming, you will never be satisfied with your school and university years. There are two options for those who cannot do their homework fast: whether they give up on studying, choosing to hang out instead; or they devote themselves to studying and cannot enjoy their existence. The best way to solve the problem is to learn how to do homework fast. Secondly, you will sleep more . Imagine a study nerd who spends all nights long reading and writing, doing his homework. He is so sleep deprived! But why? Because he cannot do his homework faster and, thus, sleep as much as necessary. Thirdly, you will get used to fighting procrastination in your life. Think about this: if you cannot overcome procrastination in your studying, you will bring this habit into your job and family life. Thus, every student should know how to do homework faster because it makes life better.

Where should you start? Before anything else, you should realize that it is absolutely possible to do homework faster. If you somehow believe that it is okay to spend hours doing homework, you will never succeed. Convince yourself that you are not a slave of your homework and, thus, it should not steal your priceless time. Further, get rid of various distractions, remove such things as social-media, smartphone, laptop, and many other things while you working on your assignments. Respect yourself and your time! Imagine that all of these distractions are dishonest enemies and thieves who came to steal your time and make your life worse. Be radical in your decision to get remove distractions. There are two types of distractions: internal and external. While sometimes we cannot control our thoughts which confuse (internal distractions), we can turn off our gadgets (external distractions) in order to focus our attention on homework. Or, our friends and parents could become such distrac tions when they ask us to do something or to go somewhere. Ask your relatives and friends not to disturb you while you are doing your homework. They will understand such a request because everyone was in your shoes, they know how important it is to do homework fast. Therefore, the first step towards doing homework faster is removing of destructions.

Nevertheless, removing destruction is only a negative aspect of your task. The positive one is to plan your time. Planning is what you have to do before approaching your homework. For example, time how long it takes you to read a page. Then, calculate how long will it take to read all articles or chapters which are necessary for your homework. Thus, you will know that to do the homework you need, for instance, two hours. Separate these two hours, make them untouchable, dedicate this time only for reading articles which were assigned to you. Further, write an outline of your work. Take a sheet of paper and write the consequence of your actions. For instance: first, read articles; second, write a review; third, answer questions. You will see that an outline can provide you with both motivation and a plan of actions. Therefore, consider planning your time and actions before doing your homework. This will prevent you from the meaningless activity. And do not forget that on the Interne t you will find a lot of useful materials, for example, essay writing service or math apps.

In conclusion, it is obvious that every student should know how to do his or her homework faster because it can improve one's life. First and foremost, it takes more time for leisure and sleep. Those who really want to study faster should remove distractions and plan their time. Remember, it is absolutely possible to be a good student who has free time just for living.

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This content is sponsored by Matthew Finnighan.

Photo: Shutterstock

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How Jeff Bezos Went to Hollywood and Lost Control

Jeff Bezos amassed the world’s greatest fortune by relying on what he has called a “regret minimization framework.” He built an $800 billion company with 14 codified principles and a brutally exacting culture. His annual salary of $81,840 has not budged since 1998.

But then Mr. Bezos went to Hollywood.

In the weeks since the Amazon founder tweeted that he and his wife of 25 years were divorcing, he has gone to war with a grocery store tabloid and escalated a conflict with the president of the United States. And he has essentially ceded control of his own narrative to two rogue characters: a swashbuckling A-list security consultant, Gavin de Becker, and his girlfriend’s fame-hungry brother-manager, Michael Sanchez. Locked in a feud, the two are prolonging the scandal’s news value almost daily.

Mr. Bezos is at the center of an honest-to-God melodrama, full of salacious revelations, family betrayals and international intrigue. In Seattle, Amazon’s senior vice president for global corporate affairs, the former White House press secretary Jay Carney, has recently tried to get the story back under control. But in Hollywood, the swirl around Mr. Bezos’s love life refuses to be contained, churning through an ecosystem of gossip and favors, where dish on the rich and powerful is currency.

Amazon executives were blindsided by a sequence of events that began in early January: the announcement by Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos of their divorce; the 11-page National Enquirer exposé that Mr. Bezos was romantically involved with Lauren Sanchez, a former Los Angeles TV anchor; a sensational blog post by Mr. Bezos accusing the head of the tabloid, an ally of President Trump, of attempting to extort him over a “below-the-belt selfie” and other sexts.

It has not helped matters that the intimate details of Mr. Bezos’s personal life emerged around the same time that the company abruptly canceled its plans to build a new headquarters in New York, after fighting with lawmakers and activists. People who have worked closely with Mr. Bezos have watched dumbfounded that a man famous for being a vault of discretion could end up, as one of them put it, in the middle of such a “clown show.”

For advice on the crisis, Mr. Bezos has relied almost entirely on Mr. de Becker, who in addition to providing security to stars is something of a celebrity himself. He once protected Cher, and he delivered a eulogy at the memorial of his friend Carrie Fisher. His book, “The Gift of Fear,” was a megahit â€" Oprah Winfrey backed it â€" and reads like a TED Talk for the rich and afraid.

Mr. de Becker is employed by Mr. Bezos, not Amazon, an d appears to be hardly in touch with strategists at the company. Adding to the cast, Mr. de Becker has enlisted the famed law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, as well as Marty Singer, a notorious Los Angeles litigator who has represented John Travolta and Sharon Stone, to work the media.

Ms. Sanchez has consulted the Los Angeles divorce maestro Laura Wasser, who has counted Kim Kardashian West and Angelina Jolie as clients. Also in the mix is Ms. Sanchez’s estranged husband, Patrick Whitesell, who as the executive chairman of Endeavor is one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood. His business partner at the agency is the operatically colorful macher Ari Emanuel, and they know more than almost anyone about how to use tabloid ink to boost a client or break a competitor.

After the affair broke into the open, it didn’t take long for Mr. Whitesell to be spotted by TMZ leaving a nightclub with a 20-something m odel. Her surname? Alexa.

An expanding cast of only-in-L.A. characters

The loosest cannon of them all may be Michael Sanchez. Ms. Sanchez’s brother is a scrappy agent to a roster of reality TV personalities and an incorrigible gossip even in a town full of them. He is also a supporter of Mr. Trump, and has relationships with some of his operatives, including Roger Stone and Carter Page. Mr. Sanchez is in regular touch with an expanding list of reporters around the country, and is constantly supplying them with fresh innuendo on the Bezos drama.

Mr. Sanchez alleges that Mr. de Becker is trying to keep his sister away from Mr. Bezos, in hopes of keeping the Bezos marriage intact. “Gavin has brilliantly set you and I up with the clear goal of destroying your love for my sister,” Mr. Sanchez wrote in an email to Mr. Bezos on Valentine’s Day, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times. “ I know the truth about your love for Lauren and her love for you.”

Four people with direct knowledge of the siblings’ relationship said that Ms. Sanchez is no longer speaking to her brother. Mr. Sanchez disputed this, and Ms. Sanchez declined to comment.

In February, The Daily Beast reported that Mr. de Becker had completed an investigation into who initially leaked the texts, and that Mr. Sanchez provided The Enquirer with its exclusive on Mr. Bezos’s affair. In an interview, Mr. Sanchez told me he did talk to the tabloid about his sister’s relationship (in an effort to help her), but denied sending it Mr. Bezos’s sexts, which he said he didn’t have access to. He theorized that The Enquirer had obtained the images via a Beverly Hills socialite who had gotten them directly from his sister.

I explained to two people with direct knowledge of The Enquir er’s reporting what Mr. Sanchez told me: that he’d provided some details of the affair to the tabloid, but not the sexts. These people, who would talk only about private conversations without attribution, emphasized that everything The Enquirer received on the Bezos affair, including the “below-the-belt selfie,” came from a single source.

These people added that the source was compensated by The Enquirer. How much? An amount well above the $150,000 that the tabloid paid the former Playboy model Karen McDougal to keep quiet about her alleged affair with Mr. Trump ahead of the 2016 election, they said.

Mr. Bezos changes Hollywood â€" and vice versa

For years, Mr. Bezos did not seem like the kind of chief executive who craved rock-star status. He didn’t employ a personal publicist to help bolster the Bezos myth, because he didn’t need to. The sheer reach of his company did the mythmaki ng for him: Amazon has transformed the way we read, shop and watch TV, and through its cloud services division runs an astonishingly large portion of the internet. Even as the company’s power grew, Mr. Bezos made a point of directing focus to the customer, who he said occupied “the empty chair” in every meeting.

Mr. Bezos bought a home in Beverly Hills in 2007, as Amazon was beginning to expand into entertainment. The company does not break out the financials of its Hollywood business, but it has been spending furiously to build a TV and film portfolio that enriches its Prime offering. Subscription services brought in more than $14 billion last year. To Hollywood insiders, the gusher of cash turned Mr. Bezos into the object of fascination and fear.

As Amazon bulldozed its way into the industry, Mr. Bezos transformed from a low-key, geeky Seattle dad to a chiseled presence on the red carpet. He has n ever seemed to be enthralled with the filmmaking process â€" he leaves day-to-day management to the Amazon Studios chief Jennifer Salke â€" but like Howard Hughes and other outsider tycoons before him, Mr. Bezos has unmistakably embraced the industry’s trappings.

His true Hollywood coming out was in 2016, when he gave a party â€" lavish even in the context of awards season â€" to celebrate the Oscar favorite “Manchester by the Sea,” an Amazon Studios production. Matt Damon was the co-host. It was held in a temporary edifice (only in Beverly Hills could it be called a “tent”) perched at the end of the long, pebbled driveway at Mr. Bezos’s mansion, high above Sunset Boulevard. The evening appears to be the first time that he and Ms. Sanchez were publicly photographed together.

They had met the previous year. As Amazon pushed into entertainment, it often worked with Endeavor, and Mr. Whitesell and Ms. Sanchez started socializing with the Bezoses. Their children played together at the Bezos family’s 29,000-square-foot compound outside Seattle, sprinting around a room decorated with NASA memorabilia and a chair in which J.K. Rowling wrote parts of the “Harry Potter” books. (It sold at auction for $394,000.)

Ms. Sanchez, an aviation enthusiast with a helicopter license, talked shop with Mr. Bezos, who spends much of his time building Blue Origin, his space exploration company. The two went flying together â€" encouraged by Mr. Whitesell, who saw the socializing as good for his wife’s aerial film and production company, Black Ops Aviation.

By last year, they were having an affair. Three people in Ms. Sanchez’s extended social circle said she was giddy and in love, showing amorous texts to a number of Brentwood and Beverly Hills moms.

‘Intensely focused� �€™

At Amazon, Mr. Bezos has long implemented an idiosyncratic meeting structure. Executives sit in silence, reading a six-page memo on the topic at hand. Bullet points are frowned upon; the document must be a cogent narrative. Only once everyone has digested the “six-pager” do discussions begin.

That process may have been what Mr. Bezos was channeling when â€" without consulting Amazon brass â€" he published an explosive Medium essay on Feb. 7 accusing The Enquirer of extortion and blackmail. The tabloid was threatening to publish photos it had obtained, including one of Mr. Bezos’s “semi-erect manhood,” unless he met their conditions.

Mr. Bezos called out David Pecker, the chief executive of The Enquirer’s parent company, American Media, who has been known to wield his influence to benefit Mr. Trump. (Last year, federal prosecutors determined t hat American Media had made illegal payments to silence women who said they had had affairs with Mr. Trump.)

Mr. Bezos added that he had asked Mr. de Becker to conduct an investigation into how the tabloid had gotten his texts and photos. He implied that Mr. Trump and the Saudi royal family’s displeasure with The Washington Post, which he owns, were behind The Enquirer’s actions.

When Mr. Bezos published his essay, commentators were nearly unanimous in hailing it as a public relations masterstroke: Somehow, the world’s richest man, caught cheating on his wife, was now a victim.

But since then, more than three weeks have elapsed, and while Mr. de Becker has told The Washington Post that the Enquirer piece was “politically motivated,” direct proof of the Trump or Saudi links has not yet emerged. Asked repeatedly for such evidence, Mr. de Becker, who was tra veling in Fiji, declined to comment on the record.

A person in Mr. Bezos’s camp, who was not authorized to speak on the record, said the investigation into the Enquirer story had moved beyond Mr. Sanchez, and to some extent was out of Mr. de Becker’s hands, now that evidence was with law enforcement.

Mr. Bezos and Ms. Sanchez remain together. On Feb. 19, Mr. Bezos spoke at the Yale Club in New York about his plan to populate the solar system with one trillion people through Blue Origin. “I try to organize my personal time so that I live mostly about two to three years out,” Mr. Bezos said, according to a transcript published on Business Insider. The New York Post elected to ignore the space-travel angle, reporting instead that he and Ms. Sanchez had been holed up in a Park Avenue “luxe love nest.”

So far, investors haven’t minded the messiness o f Mr. Bezos’s personal life and his pull toward Hollywood. Amazon’s share price is up since the start of the year, and the company said that Mr. Bezos had not been distracted by the scandal. “Jeff remains as intensely focused on Amazon’s various businesses as ever, running daylong meetings of the S-Team (our leadership team) and daily forwarding emails he receives from customers to business leaders,” Mr. Carney wrote in an email.

Still, the incidents have left many adherents to the Bezos Way â€" who are legion â€" confused about what the events of the past several weeks say about Mr. Bezos’s judgment.

One former Amazon executive, who signed a nondisclosure agreement and could only discuss the company anonymously, wondered how Mr. Bezos’s behavior squared with a recent letter he sent to shareholders, in which he talked about irrevocable decisions, or what he called “one -way doors.”

“These decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly and with great deliberation and consultation,” Mr. Bezos said. “If you walk through and don’t like what you see on the other side, you can’t get back to where you were before.”

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