Recently started studying essays, and it's really fascinating to understand their origin and philosophy. Essays have been viewed as a process of discovery and investigation rather than the pursuit of a perfect final product. The literal meaning of an essay is to try, to explore, and to understand.
The very act of writing is an ongoing investigation into a topic. Thinkers like Michel de Montaigne used (and created) this tool, the essay, to explore himself and human nature. He used it as a process of striving and learning during the writing itself. That's the beautiful part.
A week before writing this, I had no idea about the origin of essays until a few days ago. As I studied it and wrote this, it gave me a different perspective on this topic.
It externalizes scattered, vague thoughts and forces you to explain concepts in your own words. They say that if you cannot do that, you have not yet truly understood the subject. Writing basically acts as a mirror for thinking.
Today we see that most tools out there are coming out in a way that could help us do things more productively, faster, and with more efficiency. There are a lot of writing/AI tools as well, which are helping a lot of us to write. If we take a moment and think about it, are we really making use of our own thinking? Are we doing something that could help us get better at how we think about things?
Historically, essays were one of those ways that even great minds like Isaac Newton, George Orwell, and many other people used as a tool to enhance their thinking and put down their thoughts on particular subjects.
For example, Isaac Newton used long-form treatises and queries to share ideas that transformed our understanding of the universe. He believed that natural philosophy was ultimately a tool to understand God through observable phenomena. It is complex to understand, but the way he used this tool to communicate his perspective to the right people is what makes it work as a great knowledge base.
I started writing long-form recently this year. When I went live with this site, I had very little idea what I would write about in the long format because I was mostly used to writing short-form on LinkedIn and other platforms. This gave me an opportunity to explore long-format writing.
If you read my first few writings, you may not see them as well-structured essays or very concrete short essays. Initially, it was started by getting used to this habit by writing.
Before writing, it is also very important to surround yourself with the right resources: resources that feed the algorithm and feed you what you are actually fascinated about.
It may be as simple/stupid as why fish can't live outside water, but it might fascinate you. The point is that once you find that fascinating topic, stretch your thinking on it, and find different POVs to look at it, there are different people saying different things about it, which should be noted, studied deeply, and written about in your essay.
That is exactly what I am doing right now. The whole point of writing an essay is not that you have to structure it a certain way, say things a certain way, or conclude it a certain way. Most of the resources I have read also say that essays should not include intros, outros, or conclusions, so that is another fascinating fact to study.
There are a few ways you can start writing more essays.
If you are a pen-and-paper person, you can start writing on paper with your favorite pen. That is also the most recommended way to do it. If you are like me, you could use some digital tools. I use Obsidian to write down things that interest me.
I do not believe, in today's world, any media or algorithm alone can help you do the same thing that essaying can do.