By Ratika Deshpande
The essay is a form that can take diverse appearances: travelogues, memoirs, lists, drabbles. As exciting as its variety feels, I’ve also found it frustrating that there are hardly any guides detailing how to work with the form. The following is a sort of beginner’s guide I wish I’d had when I first fell in love with the form a couple of years ago, based on my reading and experiments on the page:
Read a lot of essays, of different kinds
The more essay you’ll read, the more your brain will internalise their structures, rhythms and methods of enquiry, the latter being the core of an essay—an attempt to answer some question. Some essays provide answers, some are almost get there, and some consist only of questions. Each of them offers value to the reader.
You won’t like every topic or approach to the essay. As you’ll discover what you like in an essay and what you don’t, your own writing will take shape. And since everyone will have a different reading history, the pieces they produce will have something that’s unique to them, born from their takes on others’ writing styles.
For those working in English, here’s a small list of publications you can explore essays on:
Why do you want to be an essayist—and what kind?
Every time I consider this question, my response shifts a little as I go through life. The essay can do so many things: express, describe, record, argue, negotiate, annotate, criticise, reflect. I can essay as a writer, but I can also essay as a student of Education, writing about issues the schools in my country face or describing philosophical approaches to early childhood education. I can write as a traveller, as a citizen, as a daughter, as a bookworm.
Each time, not only the content, but the perspective, voice, and details will differ. One can have multiple purposes for writing essays, but I find it helpful to focus on any one kind at a given time—such as doing deep dives into my favourite books.
The more, varied things I try to do, the more I tend to feed the Demon of Perfectionism. So it helps to regularly ask why I am essaying, and what kind of essays would be most suitable for a given purpose. I then plan, read, and write accordingly, and don’t feel as distracted by all the other kind of essays I could be writing.
Start with one central feeling or idea and even if you don’t know the destination
Essays, like fiction, can be plotted beforehand or written on the fly. But as with fiction, if I already know what’s going to happen, I don’t feel the need to write—there’s nothing left to discover. One of the major joys of writing essays is that one is working in the dark. Finding an answer has the same satisfaction as unravelling a tangled ball of wool. And so it’s okay if you don’t have an answer when you begin; it’s ideal, even. What you need is an idea or a feeling that can be framed as a question that you can respond to:
- Why is it so difficult to deal with jealousy even when you can think rationally about it?
- Is the sparrow in my balcony as curious about humans as I am about it?
- How can one do good in the world?
- Does my writing matter?
These are just some questions that I’ve noted recently. I could respond to them with lists, anecdotes, academic and data-based arguments, personal stories, philosophical musings, or through the lens of my favourite books and movies. I don’t know the answer to any of them; some are questions that I’ll keep coming back to, each time writing my way to a new understanding. No one approach is more or less valid than the other.
In the essay, of all forms, I think, the journey is more important than the destination. So don’t worry about where you’re going. Pick a topic and start exploring, one sentence at a time.
Learn to create your own questions—think about hows and whys
How do you turn a topic or feeling into an inquiry you can explore? Think about the how and why questions you can ask about it.
Here’s a small exercise: set a timer for 10 minutes and try to generate a list of questions about something you’re interested in. Start each question with how or why.
- How does jealousy impact the body? Why do we get jealous? How do we deal with jealousy?
- How can one do good in the world? Why does it matter to me that I must do good? How will I know if my actions have actually helped someone?
As you brainstorm, your brain will supply you with other questions: Do I have to do good? Do I have to do it every single day?
Don’t discard them just because they don’t begin with how or why. The key to effective brainstorming is quantity first, quality later. The more questions you generate, the more unique ones you’ll be able to ask and turn into an essay.
Write until you reach a finish line
Any query can have multiple solutions. If you try to explore them all, your essay will always be incomplete. (Technically, all essays are like that, but that’s a philosophical digression best reserved for an essay of its own.) As you write, you’ll be presented with different branches to climb. You’ll have to keep choosing until you come to some answer. It may or may not be the best one. But whatever branch you choose, follow it to the end. It’s easier to work with a finished essay, even if you end up trashing it later. Focus on completion so that you can write more pieces. As Ray Bradbury said, “Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you’re doomed.”
Pick a medium and a form
Once you’ve chosen a (few) question(s), pick a medium and a form. Will you type your essay (which I prefer to do because my fingers are able to keep up with my ideas) or write it by hand? Will you write it in simple sentences from beginning to end, or will you write it as a list, as a braided essay, as a collection of anecdotes, as a letter? You don’t always have to make so many decisions. But if you work with a few constraints, you’ll feel less scattered and will be able to get started easily, rather than worrying about the best approach to take and never writing.
Make lists
This one’s inspired by Bradbury, too. Make lists of things you love, things you hate, things you own, things you wish you owned, things you’ve done, things you’ve wanted to do, things you wanted to do but now don’t want to, things you’ve done but wish you hadn’t. And that’s just doing. We eat, travel, read, write, speak, search, remember, experiment, fight, convince, deny.
Start with a list of verbs like the one above. Then write lists spinning off from those verbs. You’ll eventually have an inventory of your mind (which in itself can be a book-length essay or an autobiography). You’ll notice patterns in the lists and across them. Turns these lists into essays, or ask questions about the patterns.
I used to lament that I couldn’t be an essayist until I’d lived for at least 3-4 decades. The more lists I made, the more I was convinced that each of us has a rich life we can write about. We just need the right tool—in this case, a list—to recognize that.
Read more essays than you read about writing essays
Finally, as you explore and experiment, make sure to spend more time reading and writing essays than reading about writing essays. Improvement comes only through practice. It’s a perfectionistic fear, or perhaps imposter syndrome, that drives us to learning instead of doing. The essay is the best place to do both simultaneously, for it’s inherently about trying. And how else does one get better if not through trying?
Recommended Reading:
- “Finding Awe Amid Everyday Splendor” by Henry Wismayer
- “In This Essay I Will: On Distraction” by David Schurman Wallace
- “Falling Half in Love with Strangers” by Quinn
- “The Tail End” by Tim Urban
- “Approaches to What?” by Georges Perec
- “I work in the environmental movement. I don’t care if you recycle.” by Mary Annaïse Heglar
- “Absolute English” by Michael D Gordin
- “The Best Essay” by Paul Graham
Bio: Ratika Deshpande (she/her), writes, rambles, and rants on her blog at chavanniclass.wordpress.com
