It’s my blog anniversary, I’ve crafted 250 essays, hurray! Time to reflect.
Why would a plain working-world guy like me write essays? And why do university student write them? In this exciting new decade, why wouldn’t we all just use Artificial “Intelligence” to write things for us?
A retired professor’s blog, Orange Crate Art, offers this answer:
QUOTE
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2024
ChatGPT and a forklift
From Ted Chiang’s essay “Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art” (The New Yorker ). If I were teaching, I’d share this passage with my students:
As the linguist Emily M. Bender has noted, teachers don’t ask students to write essays because the world needs more student essays.
The point of writing essays is to strengthen students’ critical-thinking skills; in the same way that lifting weights is useful no matter what sport an athlete plays, writing essays develops skills necessary for whatever job a college student will eventually get.
Using ChatGPT to complete assignments is like bringing a forklift into the weight room; you will never improve your cognitive fitness that way.
UNQUOTE
Makes sense.
Meanwhile, my favourite web essayist is a fellow long out of school and independently wealthy. Despite his being filthy rich enough to “just hang out” for the rest of his life, Paul Graham wrestles with essays because he likes to think things through. He finds that even talking things over with somebody—he means a keen fellow nerd—is no substitute for writing, concluding that if you don’t write about a thing, then you don’t really know that thing.
In my old blog, which ran for a decade, I kept faith with readers and myself by putting out a polished essay every week. Like how Sting’s old house band would faithfully polish and perform one new song every weekend, to play among their “same-old, same-old” songs. This delighted his regular patrons, and made Sting into a “real songwriter.” (Note: For the music of his band The Police, to the chagrin of his bandmates, he now gets paid twice: Band royalties, plus songwriter royalties)
Let’s hope I’m now a “real essayist.” For my current blog, I have been doing no more than three and a half pages, 900 words, every five days. But not now—What? Am I saying I’m all done with learning critical thinking? No, but maybe my readers are.
To explain: George Orwell, in an essay before the British Empire transformed into a voluntary Commonwealth, said the ideals of imperialism could be justified, but only by arguments that most people could not face. To quote a character in a stage play that became a movie with Tom Cruise, “You can’t handle the truth!” At a weekend conference for “readers, writers and publishers,” I sat up straight when someone said, “Most people can’t handle truths in an essay, so you have to stealth deliver truth by sliding it into fiction.”
Actually, I’ve been enjoying “pushing the envelope” to see how much truth my essays could gently lead up to before people squinted and closed their eyes.
Right now, despite typing the above paragraphs, while trying to tell myself my essays are meaningful… I’m downsizing that old part of my life. Instead, I’ll do fiction. Right now I am keeping faith by putting out, weekly, 1,500 words—or as bankers would say, 1500 words—which amounts to six pages double spaced. Keeping faith, that is, with a support group of only six of us—no more than in the old Star Trek transporter room—amidst faith that I can consistently crank out that much. Writing not for college, not for a living, but for fun and publication.
The group is at my level of writing, so that works fine. Right now, being already good wordsmiths, we are learning together about fiction skills. And since this weekly group is capped at six, I started a second group for folks I know who couldn’t get in: also capped at transporter-room size. This new group has a word cap of only three pages (750 words), and we mostly “line edit” because we are happy enough just to be writing, let alone looking at new fiction skills.
This autumn, for composing nonfiction essays, I’m happily continuing in a group that meets fortnightly (monthly over summer). How I love being edited! Humbling, but useful. Which means I will still blog essays.
If I continue to compose fresh essays then it will be because, like Paul Graham, I am keeping my youthful interest in the world. This week, as a senior citizen, I’ve been looking back on the changing models for management—organization charts that worked fine for Caesar and the Pope work no longer—so maybe that will be my next piece.
I’m semi-retired, but the new exciting world is still out there.
… …
… …
Sean Crawford
On the great plains,
September
2024
My “writer’s garret,” by definition, gets lonely, and so I sure appreciate any comments, even from young whippersnappers.
Footnote: Here’s what I said after my 200th essay: https://seanessay.com/achieving-200-new-exciting-delicious-essays/
Happy Anniversary Sean! I continue to enjoy your essays but I also love your fiction pieces.
Thank you kiddo!
Say, I recently sent a piece off to an anthology, but now the reality gear has kicked in and I suddenly feel foolish: although I haven’t been officially rejected yet, I just know it was too skeletal, too gimmicky—I really must stop being so whimsical. But hey, I’m very glad I wrote it.