Essays, Dissertations, Theses, Short Stories etc
What writing do you do? Do you write for pleasure, for academic achievement, for furthering your business? I write for pleasure, I love it, it's not a chore. I just need the odd prod, and to get myself organised and motivated – then the muse is with me and off I go. Someone invited me to write (another) article on essays and off I went! Here's the result; I hope you enjoy it.
An essay is, to my understanding, a piece of (usually) prose used to promote an idea or to inform an audience—and that subject could be anything under the sun, or much further away for that matter. According to the ever-handy Wikipedia (and its reference to the author Monsieur Michel de Montaigne) the word essay comes from the French ‘to try’. M de Montaigne was attempting to put his thoughts into some order with pen and paper – actually probably quill on parchment or vellum, come to think of it. Since then essayists have been busy writing essays.
I love to write; it’s fun, challenging, interesting, time-consuming and it can involve research. I write short stories (since they are usually fictional they are not classed as essays, per se) and some factual stuff too. I write chapters (of books) and these can often be standalone works so they could be classed as essays. There is an overlap between essays, short stories and articles. The line seems very blurred, and blurry, to me.
As I mentioned in a previous article, I learnt about essays while at school from the deliciously readable Charles Lamb’s Dissertation upon Roast Pig. The word ‘dissertation’ is now mainly used for long, involved academic works written to assist with the earning of a PhD. I’m therefore led to believe that over the years the meaning has changed as Charles Lamb’s work is neither that lengthy, academic, nor was it, I’d hazard a guess, used to further his academic career. I also suspect that different cultures have varied the term over the years and that the cultural usage has changed since the nineteenth century.
The word ‘thesis’ is now used in the academic field for those wishing to propose an original point of view for their work, in the written form. (A thesis can also be oral—the proposition of a thought.) There is much angst and hair-pulling towards the end of academic years as students endeavour to pull these vitally important (to them and their lecturers) works together. One wonders how much of the work is reviewed thereafter and used for the benefit of us all. Someone I know wrote an interesting, lengthy and thoroughly researched thesis into effects of fire on timber: how long it took for charring to eliminate the threat of further combustion; how thick the beams of timber had to be to withstand what temperatures; what happens to the beams when charred (does it lose its strength etc). I am not sure that anyone took this research and knowledge any further—such a pity as it is innately valuable…
So go ahead, write your short stories and articles and, if you wish, call them essays. Write your books. If you wish to write your thesis that is highly commendable. You don’t have to be at an establishment of higher learning to research and write one, but it helps to be able to bounce the ideas, suppositions and the parameters off those in the know. Your dissertation will take you to exalted realms and you can then call yourself ‘Doctor’.
Good luck with your writing.
