The Mighty Essay

The Essay is a fundamental building block of writing. You put letters together to make words; word together to make sentences; sentences together to make paragraphs; and paragraphs together to make an Essay. Just like each of the preceding units is more than the component parts, an Essay is more than a collection of paragraphs. And, once we understand the unit of writing that the Essay represents, we can pivot to move ambitious forms of writing such as stories, journalism, creative nonfiction, and even novels. We will start with some basics about Essays in this post and circle back around to explore Essays in greater depth in subsequent posts.

Let's begin with a simple definition of an Essay which I found by Googling "essay definition". The definition that popped up provided three descriptions:

• a short piece of writing on a particular subject
• an attempt or effort
• attempt or try

While the first is the most common understanding, the second and third are more revealing. However, we will put that off for right now and focus on the first. If an Essay is  "a short piece of writing on a particular subject" one might ask - "what sorts of subjects", or "can you write an Essay about anything?"

It is customary to think of Essays as being one of four or five types. Again, from a Google search, we have:

• Expository - reporting on an event, occurrence or experience
• Descriptive - describing an occurrence or experience
• Narrative - embedding either of the previous two in a story
• Compare & Contrast - what's the difference?
• Persuasive/Argumentative - why should I believe that?

Clearly, a great deal more could be said about each of these beyond my brief descriptions. However, there is no end to the number of books on writing Essays that will drill down on that for you. What I wanted to do was to give you a sense of what common thinking on Essays entails and expand upon it a little bit. Here are some other kinds of Essays which I am coming up with off the top of my head:

• Exploratory - written to explore an idea
• Organizing - written to organize your thoughts on a given topic
• Venting - letting off steam about something
• Poor Little Me - invoking sympathy due to circumstances you have had to endure
• Unique Moments - capturing the feeling invoked by rare events such as how it feels to win the lottery

You could probably add more of your own, and indeed you should. However, if you are writing an Essay to accompany your submission of a college or job application, it would be best to stick to the common knowledge four or five. But, if you are writing an Essay to develop your writing skills, it would not hurt to be a little more creative. Here are some more creative ideas, again off the top of my head:

• Things I Think But Won't Say
• Things You Think But Won't Say
• Things I Think You Think That I Won't Say
• Things Everybody Thinks That Are Wrong
• Things Nobody Thinks But Everybody Should

Most people associate Essays with college admission applications. Thus, the idea of writing an Essay strikes fear in the heart of most people. This is unfortunate because Essays provide excellent writing practice. If you want to develop your writing skills, set aside 15-30 minutes everyday where you start with a blank piece of paper and a topic idea. Write one page of no more than 300 words. Save what you have written and periodically go back and read older Essays to see what you need to improve and what did improve over time. The only judge that matters here is you. In fairness I should point out that many people feel that they need to belong to a writers group where members of the group provide feedback to improve the writing of the other members. That is fine to start out. But, I would point out two concerns to think about. First, how do you know that the feedback from other members is any good? And, second, unless the group is going to write your book, essays or stories for you, you will eventually have to figure out how to critique your own writing. What I would suggest, as an alternative, is that you find some authors that you like, read their works carefully, and see what you can learn from them. 

As far as topics go, write about anything that you think might be fun to write about. Here are some ideas (yes, again, off the top of my head):

• Why Your Cat Really Hates You
• Would the World Really Be Better If Evey One Really Did Get Along?
• Why I Think That the Earth is a Day Care Center and I Was Dropped Off Here by Aliens
• What Does My Dream Date Look Like?
• Why Writing Essays Will Make Me Super Smart

Once you start writing Essays every day, new ideas will pop into your head at an alarming rate. Jot them down in a notebook and when you need an idea pick one that looks like fun. I am a big proponent of making it fun. There are certainly times when writing can be extremely arduous. But, there is no need to make it any more difficult than it has to be. On that point of making it fun, I must add that you should feel free to ignore any of my recommendations about time spent writing, number of words and so on. You may prefer to write for longer or shorter times. You might prefer to write more or less words. You might want to start an essay one day and finish it another day. This is all fine. Anything that makes you look forward to picking up your paper and pencil in order to write something is a good thing. 

I would like to close with a slightly different definition of an Essay. An Essay is a complete thought or as complete as it can be given the constraints of time, perseverance, writing skills, and understanding of the topic. It is about a specific topic written for a specific purpose or at least as specific as the focus of the writer will allow.