The Meaning of Life

Finally! My first Kindle book The Meaning of Life is available on Amazon. It took a lot longer than I expected that it would (as I grumbled about in the last post). I hit some further snags, and still have a few to get past. None the less it is done and the next one will be easier. I still have to create a paperback version which is snagged at the moment. And I plan to read it myself (and edit the audio) for the Audible version. No doubt more snags are awaiting there. Grumbling aside, this is a lot of fun and will be more fun as I figure out what I am doing.

I should also point out that I did the cover art myself (in case that isn't obvious) for a reason. I plan to publish several books and thought the sketched cover art would allow me to express ideas that might be more difficult to express through a real graphics artist. Further, I thought the unprofessional looking sketch would be a signature element of all upcoming covers. And, I thought it would stand out on Amazon, which it does. We will see if that was a good idea or not.

Bumps Along the Way

When I made my plan for the year, I had originally expected to publish my first Kindle book in February 2020. After all, the first draft of the book was completed by the end of Summer 2019. All I needed to do was to edit the first draft, convert it to Kindle format, and - on with the show. Not so fast! Since this was my first one, there were things I hadn't anticipated.

First, the draft was handwritten which meant that I had to get it into electronic form to do anything with it. One could argue that I should have typed the first draft into a word processor. But, one would be arguing pointlessly if they did. I enjoy writing by hand. I also enjoy writing at the computer. And it would be too complicated to explain which I prefer for any given project. Nonetheless, I had to get some voice recognition software so I could read the essays into the computer.

The voice recognition software I got was quite good and easy to use, but my handwriting was horrid. In my defense, I would point out that I was in dire need of cataract surgery so I couldn't see that well. And my limited vision was reflected in my handwriting. Still, I managed to read all the essays into a Word document, printed it out, and then had to face my next shock. You need to develop a new skill in order to read a document into voice recognition software. If you mumble, belch, speak incoherently, or make parenthetical remarks to yourself, it all shows up in the document. So, my first pass at editing the document was to make the transcribed version intelligible.

This was more difficult than it might seem. In some extreme cases, I had to look at the garbled words in the document, then at the unreadable handwritten scrawl and try to figure out what I was trying to say. It was like trying to Spackle the bark on a pine tree. It took persistence, patience and modest expectations. Persistence I am good at. They other two are not my strong suits. Nonetheless, I got a workable draft done by early February and thought I might still make the February deadline. But, sadly, it was not to be.

As I reread the intelligible draft, editing it for content, I realized that something was missing. I would read a line and realize that I could have used different words, or conveyed a slightly different sense, or even expressed the thought entirely differently. What was missing was that I had not yet fully developed my voice for writing essays. You develop your voice by writing, writing, writing until you fall into a comfortable pattern of how you express yourself.

For example, I have written over 150 book and article reviews. So, when I review something, I don't think about my voice. I just write, edit and rewrite. I have a review voice for reviewing books, a scholarly voice for academic articles and a blogger voice for blogging. All are fairly well developed. I have more than a half dozen other blogs I have created (and usually abandoned) over the years. If you are interested, check out Dr Artz Ranting and Reflecting for some grumbling about being an academic.This blog legocogitoscribo.blogspot.com/, which you are currently reading is written in that comfortable blogger voice. But, essays are different and although I have written hundreds so far, they are all first drafts and my voice has not yet emerged.

This last  bump prompted me to think a little more deeply about the writing process and explore three almost mystic aspects of writing: voice, style, and muse. People often ask writers where their ideas come from and writers will hem and haw unable to answer that fairly straightforward question. But, an even more important question, which is never asked is "once you have an idea, where do the words come from?" And we can take that a step further and ask "once you have the words how do you organize and/or modify them to represent what you want to say most clearly". Those are the tough questions. Let me tip toe into this with a simple example.

Let's say that you go out to the end of your driveway one morning to pick up the paper. You see your neighbor doing the same thing so you ask how they are and then ask if they had heard about some event that was dominating the news. Asking how they are is a mere  pleasantry. You probably don't really care. But, the question about the news is a little more novel. Where did that question come from? For purposes of this example, we are going to call that your muse. What they hear is your voice. If you sounded like somebody else, (like on that State Farm commercial) it would be really weird. But, your voice not only has a unique sound but a unique style. You may have an accent for example. Or a unique tone such as judgemental or reassuring. While you are talking to your neighbor, you do not pause to wonder how all that is happening. How do you turn thoughts into words? How do they turn sound waves into words and words back into thoughts again. If somebody were to ask you where your sentences come from you would be a loss and would probably think it was a silly question. This is how a writer feels when asked where his or her ideas come from.

For now, we will say that a writer's voice is how you sound to the reader. It is also that voice in your head that tells you when you have really nailed an idea or when you need to work on it some more. Your style is how you organize your voice to express an idea in terms pattern, tempo, emphasis, word choice, inflection and so on. And your muse is that mystical generative part of your brain that produces thoughts and words for you to express an idea. As you write more and more, the distinction between these three becomes less clear. But, for now, I am going to treat them as separate entities in the next few posts so we can understand each one better and consider ways in which you might develop them.

(n.b. As I post this blog entry, I am struggling to convert my final word document into a Kindle book using Kindle Create. It is another unanticipated hurdle to get over. Musings may produce interesting questions like "what is the difference between voice and style" but they do not produce final products. Back to work!)

Accessible Essays

After that deep dive into philosophy on the last post, we need to come back up for air. So, I thought I would do that by talking about a few writers who write extremely accessible essays. In simple terms, this means easy to read and understand. However, after being an academic for over two decades, I find it difficult to use language that normal people can understand.

You may have heard of Robert Fulghum's All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things . It first came out over three decades ago and is still relevant and continues to sell today. In addition, if you like it, he has written several follow up collections. The beauty of this book is that Fulghum manages to find comfortable simplicity in the agonizing complexity of life and in doing so provides perspectives that we need to be reminded of. In addition, as an aspiring writer his folksy accessible style makes you believe that you could have written those essays just as well. I have to acknowledge that Fulghum has a gift and what he does is a lot more difficult than it may seem on the surface. Nonetheless, anything that emboldens you to sit down and write something is a good thing. Pick an essay from one of Fulghum's books, rewrite it from your own perspective or in your own voice and you are on your way.

If you enjoyed Fulghum's essays and want to continue in that direction, you can try something by Dinty W. Moore. Yes, when I first heard that name, I thought of the beef stew too. However, I have since discovered that both the author and the stew derived their names from a 1920's cartoon character. Nonetheless, Moore has written a couple of accessible collections of essays for people who want to write essays. They are The Truth of the Matter: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction and Crafting The Personal Essay: A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Non-Fiction .

At the risk of going off the deep end again with philosophical observations, I have to point out a couple of phrases in the title of Moore's book and tie them in with the previous post. First, we have the phrase "personal essay" which acknowledges that there is no objective reality, only difference subjective impressions of it. I express my experience or reactions. You express your experience or reactions. Hopefully, there is some overlap. Second, we have the phrase "creative nonfiction". Isn't fiction supposed to be creative and nonfiction is supposed to be objective. Not so fast. If there is no single objective reality then one might resort to more creative techniques to express a reality as they perceive or experience it.

But, fear not. I may go off the deep end from time to time, and you are welcome to ignore me when I do. But, Moore stays at a level where you can easily understand him. So, you are safe trying his works. You can also pick one of Moore's essays and rewrite it in your voice to see how that goes. And, if you are looking for more ideas for your daily writing, just Google 'personal essay prompts' and you will find more suggestions that you can possibly imagine. 

Finally, if you have gotten on a roll with these two and want to keep rolling I would suggest Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem. First of all, Joan Didion is a wonderful, deceptively accessible writer. By that I mean that her writing is easy to understand and yet there is more to it than is seen on the surface. You can read an essay once and enjoy it, then read it again and realize that there were things you missed the first time around.

The essay from which the books gets its name describes some of Didion's experiences in California during the 1960's, a time when many people found it difficult make sense out of what was going on, especially in California. In fact, a lot of people thought the world was falling apart. Perhaps it was. The title Slouching Towards Bethlehem is borrowed from a line in a poem The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats which says (heavily edited for emphasis):

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

There is an obvious religious interpretation to these lines. But, that is far from the only interpretation. Many people who lived through the 1960's felt that the world was tearing itself apart; that the center may not hold. But, wait, don't a lot of people today feel that the world is tearing itself apart; that the center many not hold? Can we learning anything from the turbulence of the 1960's that would be useful to help us understand what is going on today? What if we go back further? Weren't the 1920's turbulent as well? Did the world tear itself apart or did the center hold? Is there a pattern here? Can we use that pattern to gain some perspective?

I will leave that there and make one more point before closing. There is another book, that I know of, that also borrows its title from that poem. It is Does the Center Hold? An Introduction to Western Philosophy by Donald Palmer. It is a truly delightful and extremely accessible introductory book on Western Philosophy. But, the point I wanted to make was that these two books are connected by a hundred year old poem which suggests that the turbulence we experience is not new. It has been going on a long, long time.

There is a tried old joke about a person who groks the interconnections between everything and says "everything is connected" while blowing out a cloud of pot smoke. Whether that person is experiencing a cosmic epiphany or a cannabis rush is not for me to say. But, things are a lot more connected than most people realize. Somebody does something that influences somebody else. They in turn do something that influences yet another person. This happens in art, literature, philosophy, music and even science. In fact, it would be hard to find any creative effort where this does not occur. Digging down a little more deeply and finding connections between things often puts the world in a different, more satisfying and more meaningful perspective.

Who Wrote the First Essay?

Believe it or not, we actually do know who wrote the first essay. It was Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) who invented the form and also coined the term "essay". How he came up with the term is worthy of exploring as well. The word "essay" is related to another word that may already be familiar to you and that is the word "assay". Assay is a term used in mining and metallurgy meaning "the testing of a metal or ore to determine its ingredients and quality" (yes, another Googled definition). You may have heard the term in a movie about the Old West when somebody panning for gold took the gold into town to have it assayed, or tested for purity. To assay the gold is to test it in an attempt to determine its quality. Now we can see why lessor used meanings of the word "essay" include test and attempt.

But, what kind of  test or attempt is an essay? It is an attempt to get your thoughts, feeling or musings down on paper in a coherent fashion. Montaigne wrote essays on a very wide variety of his thoughts or musings and these essays are available today on Amazon as Michel de Montaigne - The Complete Essays . Before you rush to Amazon to buy it, I should warn you -it is over 1200 pages. The modern essay form was yet to evolve. In fact, it would be another four centuries before we developed our modern appreciation for brevity. And, Montaigne wrestled verbosely with a lot of issues that were arising in the transition from the Middle Ages to a more Modern Worldview.

Nonetheless, Montaigne is good to know about as he did write the first essay (and, in fact, invented the word and the form). In addition, he influenced many great names including:

Rene Descartes (Father of modern Philosophy)
Francis Bacon (Father of Modern Empirical Science)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (Essayist, Transcendentalist and Advocate for Free Public Education)
Friedrich Nietzsche (Impossible to Describe Briefly) 

I am going to get philosophical in order to put Montaigne and the Essay into perspective. So, if you do not have any interest in philosophy, you might want to skip the rest of this post. 

You have almost certainly heard of Rene Descartes in connection with his famous pithy line Cogito Ergo Sum or its English version I Think Therefore I Am. This represents, in the minds of many, the beginning of modern philosophy. There are heated debates on the value contributed or the harm done by Descartes which I am simply going to ignore in order to make a lessor but still important point. Prior to Descartes, philosophy focused on the material world or the world external to the individual. The early Existentialist began considering their internal subjective experiences as a legitimate focus for philosophy and this view grew until the height of Existentialism in the mid 20th century. I would argue, with great hubris, that Descartes' observation was more properly - I can feel the internal subjective experience of thinking, therefore I must exist. However, that would be a little more difficult to get on a coffee cup, poster or T-shirt. More simply, I would reword it as I Feel Therefore I Am. This obsession would eventually lead to Post Modernism which asserts that there is no objective reality only internal subjective realities which vary from one person to the next. And this, I believe, has its roots in the ruminations of Montaigne. Yes, we can blame the Might Essay for the mess we are in. But, we might also be able to use it to find our way out of the mess.

Whew! Enough philosophy! But, take heart, deeper dives such as this will not be commonplace in this blog.

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.