Essay 1

Essay 1: An Essay on Essays

Since this site is a collection of my short essays, I felt it would be appropriate to explain what an essay is in simple terms before flooding the reader with endless examples.

The easiest way to understand what an essay is would be to compare it to a short story. Everybody knows what a short story is, and nearly everyone has read one at some point. However, if you asked a dozen people what a short story is, they would probably give you examples rather than a definition. If you pressed them for a definition, you would get a dozen different definitions. Some would define the short story in terms of its component parts such as theme, plot, characters, or setting. Some would define it by its length. This, btw, is a common conceptual sleight of hand. You define one undefinable thing (a short story) in terms of another undefinable thing (a story). After all, a short story is just a story that is short. OK, but what is a story? The point of this is to say that essays and stories are related. A short story is considered fiction whereas an essay is considered nonfiction. And both manifest themselves in a wide variety of ways making them difficult to define.

There are several kinds of essays but there is little agreement on the kinds. For my purposes, I prefer to see essays as being exploratory, informative, or persuasive. Exploratory essays allow the author to organize their thoughts on a given topic. Informative essays allow the author to inform the reader about things which the reader may or may not already know. And persuasive essays allow the author to attempt to persuade the reader of something. An example of an exploratory essay would be one in which you explore the question – Why do people always ask how you are before getting to what they really want to know? An example of an informative essay would be - How to make asparagus your favorite vegetable. And an example of a persuasive essay would be – Why you should stop reading this essay and do something useful with your life. There are many other kinds of essays, but I am not trying to be comprehensive. Personally, I prefer exploratory essays because I often write to organize my thoughts. I am not really interested in informing or persuading my readers although one could argue that every exploratory essay has elements of informing and persuading.

Like short stories, essays can vary greatly in length. Generally, they will range from 100 words to 10,000 words, while a short essay will be from 500 to 1000 words (this is about 1-2 handwritten pages). It would be an interesting challenge to ask writing students to write the shortest essay possible, and one might write – This is the dumbest assignment ever. Whether or not that would qualify as an essay is highly subjective. I prefer my essays to average around 500 words although I occasionally get dangerously close to 1000 words. But I want to keep them short so as to not tax the reader’s attention. And I try to leave the reader with something to think about. If I go on too long the reader will forget any points, I made earlier in the piece.

The term essay was coined by Michel De Montaigne in the 16th century and his use of the word could be translated as attempts. He was attempting to understand something by writing about it. I prefer to think of essays as a thought experiment where you write to understand what you think about something. So, the essays in the collection are my attempts to understand my thoughts on a particular topic. I usually just let the words flow and then organized them. Some essays may contradict what I have said in others. But the purpose is not to be consistent. It is to give you, the reader, something to think about.

This essay is a little over 650 words. And the recording is about 5 1/2 minutes long.

Send an email to me at drjohnartz@gmail.com if you have a comment on any of my essays. And please check out my website at DrJohnArtz.com to see other things I have written.