October 2004

As E. B. White said, "good writing is rewriting." I didn't realize this when I was in school.

In writing, as in math and science, they only show you the finished product.

You don't see all the false starts.

This gives students a misleading view of how things get made.

Part of the reason it happens is that writers don't want people to see their mistakes.

But I'm willing to let people see an early draft if it will show how much you have to rewrite to beat an essay into shape.

Below is the oldest version I can find of The Age of the Essay [blocked] (probably the second or third day), with text that ultimately survived in red and text that later got deleted in gray.

There seem to be several categories of cuts: things I got wrong, things that seem like bragging, flames, digressions, stretches of awkward prose, and unnecessary words.

I discarded more from the beginning.

That's not surprising; it takes a while to hit your stride.

There are more digressions at the start, because I'm not sure where I'm heading.

The amount of cutting is about average.

I probably write three to four words for every one that appears in the final version of an essay.

(Before anyone gets mad at me for opinions expressed here, remember that anything you see here that's not in the final version is obviously something I chose not to publish, often because I disagree with it.)

As E. B. White said, "good writing is rewriting." But in writing, as in math and science, they show you only the finished product, not the false starts — a misleading view of how things get made.

Writers hide their mistakes, but I'll show an early draft of The Age of the Essay [blocked], survivors in red and cuts in gray. The cuts fall into categories: things I got wrong, bragging, flames, digressions, awkward prose, and unnecessary words.

As E. B. White said, good writing is rewriting. School shows you only finished products, never the false starts, which misleads students about how things get made.

Recently a friend said that what he liked about my essays was that they weren't written the way we'd been taught to write essays in school.

You remember: topic sentence, introductory paragraph, supporting paragraphs, conclusion.

It hadn't occurred to me till then that those horrible things we had to write in school were even connected to what I was doing now.

But sure enough, I thought, they did call them "essays," didn't they?

Well, they're not.

Those things you have to write in school are not only not essays, they're one of the most pointless of all the pointless hoops you have to jump through in school.

And I worry that they not only teach students the wrong things about writing, but put them off writing entirely.

So I'm going to give the other side of the story: what an essay really is, and how you write one.

Or at least, how I write one.

Students be forewarned: if you actually write the kind of essay I describe, you'll probably get bad grades.

But knowing how it's really done should at least help you to understand the feeling of futility you have when you're writing the things they tell you to.

A friend said he liked that my essays weren't written the school way: topic sentence, intro, supporting paragraphs, conclusion. It hadn't occurred to me those horrible things were connected to what I do now. But sure enough, they did call them "essays," didn't they?

Well, they're not. Those school exercises are one of the most pointless hoops you have to jump through, and they teach the wrong things about writing and put students off it entirely.

So I'll give the other side: what an essay really is, and how I write one. Students be forewarned — write the kind I describe and you'll probably get bad grades.

A friend noted my essays weren't written the way school taught us. Those school exercises aren't essays at all, but among the most pointless hoops in school.

The most obvious difference between real essays and the things one has to write in school is that real essays are not exclusively about English literature.

It's a fine thing for schools to teach students how to write.

But for some bizarre reason (actually, a very specific bizarre reason that I'll explain in a moment), the teaching of writing has gotten mixed together with the study of literature.

And so all over the country, students are writing not about how a baseball team with a small budget might compete with the Yankees, or the role of color in fashion, or what constitutes a good dessert, but about symbolism in Dickens.

With obvious results.

Only a few people really care about symbolism in Dickens.

The teacher doesn't.

The students don't.

Most of the people who've had to write PhD disserations about Dickens don't.

And certainly Dickens himself would be more interested in an essay about color or baseball.

How did things get this way?

To answer that we have to go back almost a thousand years.

Between about 500 and 1000, life was not very good in Europe.

The term "dark ages" is presently out of fashion as too judgemental (the period wasn't dark; it was just different), but if this label didn't already exist, it would seem an inspired metaphor.

What little original thought there was took place in lulls between constant wars and had something of the character of the thoughts of parents with a new baby.

The most amusing thing written during this period, Liudprand of Cremona's Embassy to Constantinople, is, I suspect, mostly inadvertantly so.

Around 1000 Europe began to catch its breath.

And once they had the luxury of curiosity, one of the first things they discovered was what we call "the classics."

Imagine if we were visited by aliens.

If they could even get here they'd presumably know a few things we don't.

Immediately Alien Studies would become the most dynamic field of scholarship: instead of painstakingly discovering things for ourselves, we could simply suck up everything they'd discovered.

So it was in Europe in 1200.

When classical texts began to circulate in Europe, they contained not just new answers, but new questions. (If anyone proved a theorem in christian Europe before 1200, for example, there is no record of it.)

The most obvious difference is that real essays aren't exclusively about English literature. For some bizarre reason the teaching of writing got mixed with the study of literature, so students write not about how a small-budget team might beat the Yankees, but about symbolism in Dickens.

With obvious results. Only a few people really care about symbolism in Dickens. The teacher doesn't. The students don't. Most who've had to write PhD dissertations about Dickens don't. And Dickens himself would be more interested in an essay about color or baseball.

How did things get this way? Go back almost a thousand years. Between 500 and 1000, life was not good in Europe; "dark ages" is out of fashion as too judgemental, but if it didn't exist it would seem an inspired metaphor.

Around 1000 Europe caught its breath and, with the luxury of curiosity, discovered "the classics." Imagine being visited by aliens: Alien Studies would instantly become the most dynamic field, since instead of discovering things ourselves we could suck up everything they knew. So it was in 1200, when classical texts brought not just new answers but new questions.

The most obvious difference: real essays aren't exclusively about English literature. To explain why writing got fused with literature, we go back almost a thousand years, to when Europe rediscovered the classics.

For a couple centuries, some of the most important work being done was intellectual archaelogy.

Those were also the centuries during which schools were first established.

And since reading ancient texts was the essence of what scholars did then, it became the basis of the curriculum.

By 1700, someone who wanted to learn about physics didn't need to start by mastering Greek in order to read Aristotle.

But schools change slower than scholarship: the study of ancient texts had such prestige that it remained the backbone of education until the late 19th century.

By then it was merely a tradition.

It did serve some purposes: reading a foreign language was difficult, and thus taught discipline, or at least, kept students busy; it introduced students to cultures quite different from their own; and its very uselessness made it function (like white gloves) as a social bulwark.

But it certainly wasn't true, and hadn't been true for centuries, that students were serving apprenticeships in the hottest area of scholarship.

Classical scholarship had also changed.

In the early era, philology actually mattered.

The texts that filtered into Europe were all corrupted to some degree by the errors of translators and copyists.

Scholars had to figure out what Aristotle said before they could figure out what he meant.

But by the modern era such questions were answered as well as they were ever going to be.

And so the study of ancient texts became less about ancientness and more about texts.

The time was then ripe for the question: if the study of ancient texts is a valid field for scholarship, why not modern texts?

The answer, of course, is that the raison d'etre of classical scholarship was a kind of intellectual archaelogy that does not need to be done in the case of contemporary authors.

But for obvious reasons no one wanted to give that answer.

The archaeological work being mostly done, it implied that the people studying the classics were, if not wasting their time, at least working on problems of minor importance.

And so began the study of modern literature.

There was some initial resistance, but it didn't last long.

The limiting reagent in the growth of university departments is what parents will let undergraduates study.

If parents will let their children major in x, the rest follows straightforwardly.

There will be jobs teaching x, and professors to fill them.

The professors will establish scholarly journals and publish one another's papers.

Universities with x departments will subscribe to the journals.

Graduate students who want jobs as professors of x will write dissertations about it.

It may take a good long while for the more prestigious universities to cave in and establish departments in cheesier xes, but at the other end of the scale there are so many universities competing to attract students that the mere establishment of a discipline requires little more than the desire to do it.

High schools imitate universities.

And so once university English departments were established in the late nineteenth century, the 'riting component of the 3 Rs was morphed into English.

With the bizarre consequence that high school students now had to write about English literature-- to write, without even realizing it, imitations of whatever English professors had been publishing in their journals a few decades before.

It's no wonder if this seems to the student a pointless exercise, because we're now three steps removed from real work: the students are imitating English professors, who are imitating classical scholars, who are merely the inheritors of a tradition growing out of what was, 700 years ago, fascinating and urgently needed work.

For a couple centuries the most important work was intellectual archaeology, and reading ancient texts became the curriculum. Schools change slower than scholarship: the prestige of ancient texts kept them the backbone of education until the late 19th century, long after it stopped being the hottest area of scholarship.

Classical scholarship had changed too. Early on, philology mattered: texts reaching Europe were corrupted by translators and copyists, so scholars had to figure out what Aristotle said before what he meant. But by the modern era those questions were answered, and the study became less about ancientness and more about texts.

The time was ripe for the question: if ancient texts are valid scholarship, why not modern ones? The honest answer is that classical scholarship's whole point was an archaeology contemporary authors don't need — but no one wanted to say it, since it implied the classicists were working on minor problems.

And so began the study of modern literature. The limiting reagent in university departments is what parents will let undergraduates study. Let children major in x, and the rest follows: jobs, professors, journals, dissertations.

High schools imitate universities, so once English departments arrived, the 'riting of the 3 Rs morphed into English — and high schoolers had to imitate what English professors had published decades before. No wonder it seems pointless: we're three steps removed, students imitating professors, who imitate classical scholars, who inherit a tradition urgent 700 years ago.

Reading ancient texts became the curriculum and outlived its purpose. Once the archaeology was done, scholars extended their method to modern texts, and the mechanism of university departments did the rest.

Perhaps high schools should drop English and just teach writing.

The valuable part of English classes is learning to write, and that could be taught better by itself.

Students learn better when they're interested in what they're doing, and it's hard to imagine a topic less interesting than symbolism in Dickens.

Most of the people who write about that sort of thing professionally are not really interested in it. (Though indeed, it's been a while since they were writing about symbolism; now they're writing about gender.)

I have no illusions about how eagerly this suggestion will be adopted.

Public schools probably couldn't stop teaching English even if they wanted to; they're probably required to by law.

But here's a related suggestion that goes with the grain instead of against it: that universities establish a writing major.

Many of the students who now major in English would major in writing if they could, and most would be better off.

It will be argued that it is a good thing for students to be exposed to their literary heritage.

Certainly.

But is that more important than that they learn to write well?

And are English classes even the place to do it?

After all, the average public high school student gets zero exposure to his artistic heritage.

No disaster results.

The people who are interested in art learn about it for themselves, and those who aren't don't.

I find that American adults are no better or worse informed about literature than art, despite the fact that they spent years studying literature in high school and no time at all studying art.

Which presumably means that what they're taught in school is rounding error compared to what they pick up on their own.

Indeed, English classes may even be harmful.

In my case they were effectively aversion therapy.

Want to make someone dislike a book?

Force him to read it and write an essay about it.

And make the topic so intellectually bogus that you could not, if asked, explain why one ought to write about it.

I love to read more than anything, but by the end of high school I never read the books we were assigned.

I was so disgusted with what we were doing that it became a point of honor with me to write nonsense at least as good at the other students' without having more than glanced over the book to learn the names of the characters and a few random events in it.

I hoped this might be fixed in college, but I found the same problem there.

It was not the teachers.

It was English.

We were supposed to read novels and write essays about them.

About what, and why?

That no one seemed to be able to explain.

Eventually by trial and error I found that what the teacher wanted us to do was pretend that the story had really taken place, and to analyze based on what the characters said and did (the subtler clues, the better) what their motives must have been.

One got extra credit for motives having to do with class, as I suspect one must now for those involving gender and sexuality.

I learned how to churn out such stuff well enough to get an A, but I never took another English class.

And the books we did these disgusting things to, like those we mishandled in high school, I find still have black marks against them in my mind.

The one saving grace was that English courses tend to favor pompous, dull writers like Henry James, who deserve black marks against their names anyway.

One of the principles the IRS uses in deciding whether to allow deductions is that, if something is fun, it isn't work.

Fields that are intellectually unsure of themselves rely on a similar principle.

Reading P.G.

Wodehouse or Evelyn Waugh or Raymond Chandler is too obviously pleasing to seem like serious work, as reading Shakespeare would have been before English evolved enough to make it an effort to understand him. [sh] And so good writers (just you wait and see who's still in print in 300 years) are less likely to have readers turned against them by clumsy, self-appointed tour guides.

Perhaps high schools should drop English and just teach writing. Students learn better when interested, and it's hard to imagine a topic less interesting than symbolism in Dickens — which most who write about it professionally aren't interested in either.

Public schools probably couldn't stop teaching English if they wanted to. But here's a suggestion that goes with the grain: universities should establish a writing major. Many who now major in English would major in writing if they could, and most would be better off.

Students should know their literary heritage, it's argued. But is that more important than learning to write? Adults are no better informed about literature than art, despite years on one and none on the other — so school is rounding error compared to what they pick up on their own.

Indeed, English classes may even be harmful — in my case, aversion therapy. Want to make someone dislike a book? Force him to write an essay on a topic so bogus you couldn't explain why one ought to write it. By the end of high school I never read the assigned books; it became a point of honor to write nonsense as good as the others' without more than glancing at them.

College had the same problem. It wasn't the teachers; it was English. We read novels and wrote essays — about what, and why, no one could explain. The teacher wanted us to pretend the story happened and analyze the characters' motives. I churned out such stuff well enough to get an A, then never took another English class.

The books we mishandled still have black marks against them in my mind. The saving grace is that English favors pompous writers like Henry James, who deserve them anyway. One IRS principle: if something is fun, it isn't work — and insecure fields rely on a similar rule. Reading Wodehouse or Chandler is too obviously pleasing to seem serious, so good writers are spared readers turned against them by clumsy, self-appointed tour guides.

The valuable part of English class is learning to write, which could be taught better by itself. English classes may even be harmful: in my case they were aversion therapy, and the books survive with black marks against them.

The other big difference between a real essay and the things they make you write in school is that a real essay doesn't take a position and then defend it.

That principle, like the idea that we ought to be writing about literature, turns out to be another intellectual hangover of long forgotten origins.

It's often mistakenly believed that medieval universities were mostly seminaries.

In fact they were more law schools.

And at least in our tradition lawyers are advocates: they are trained to be able to take either side of an argument and make as good a case for it as they can.

Whether or not this is a good idea (in the case of prosecutors, it probably isn't), it tended to pervade the atmosphere of early universities.

After the lecture the most common form of discussion was the disputation.

This idea is at least nominally preserved in our present-day thesis defense-- indeed, in the very word thesis.

Most people treat the words thesis and dissertation as interchangeable, but originally, at least, a thesis was a position one took and the dissertation was the argument by which one defended it.

I'm not complaining that we blur these two words together.

As far as I'm concerned, the sooner we lose the original sense of the word thesis, the better.

For many, perhaps most, graduate students, it is stuffing a square peg into a round hole to try to recast one's work as a single thesis.

And as for the disputation, that seems clearly a net lose.

Arguing two sides of a case may be a necessary evil in a legal dispute, but it's not the best way to get at the truth, as I think lawyers would be the first to admit.

And yet this principle is built into the very structure of the essays they teach you to write in high school.

The topic sentence is your thesis, chosen in advance, the supporting paragraphs the blows you strike in the conflict, and the conclusion--- uh, what it the conclusion?

I was never sure about that in high school.

If your thesis was well expressed, what need was there to restate it?

In theory it seemed that the conclusion of a really good essay ought not to need to say any more than QED.

But when you understand the origins of this sort of "essay", you can see where the conclusion comes from.

It's the concluding remarks to the jury.

The other big difference is that a real essay doesn't take a position and then defend it — another intellectual hangover of forgotten origins. Medieval universities weren't seminaries but law schools, and in our tradition lawyers are advocates, trained to take either side of an argument and make the best case for it.

This pervaded early universities, where the common discussion after a lecture was the disputation. It survives in the thesis defense — and the word thesis. Originally a thesis was the position you took and the dissertation the argument defending it.

Arguing two sides may be a necessary evil in court, but it's not the best way to get at the truth, as lawyers would be the first to admit.

And yet this is built into school essays. The topic sentence is your thesis, the supporting paragraphs the blows you strike, and the conclusion — what is the conclusion? If your thesis was well expressed, why restate it? But once you know the origins, you see where it comes from: the concluding remarks to the jury.

The other big difference: a real essay doesn't take a position and defend it. That habit is a hangover from medieval universities, which were less seminaries than law schools, where lawyers learn to argue either side.

What other alternative is there?

To answer that we have to reach back into history again, though this time not so far.

To Michel de Montaigne, inventor of the essay.

He was doing something quite different from what a lawyer does, and the difference is embodied in the name.

Essayer is the French verb meaning "to try" (the cousin of our word assay), and an "essai" is an effort.

An essay is something you write in order to figure something out.

Figure out what?

You don't know yet.

And so you can't begin with a thesis, because you don't have one, and may never have one.

An essay doesn't begin with a statement, but with a question.

In a real essay, you don't take a position and defend it.

You see a door that's ajar, and you open it and walk in to see what's inside.

If all you want to do is figure things out, why do you need to write anything, though?

Why not just sit and think?

Well, there precisely is Montaigne's great discovery.

Expressing ideas helps to form them.

Indeed, helps is far too weak a word.

90% of what ends up in my essays was stuff I only thought of when I sat down to write them.

That's why I write them.

So there's another difference between essays and the things you have to write in school.

In school you are, in theory, explaining yourself to someone else.

In the best case---if you're really organized---you're just writing it down. In a real essay you're writing for yourself.

You're thinking out loud.

What's the alternative? Michel de Montaigne, inventor of the essay, was doing something different from a lawyer, and the difference is in the name: essayer is French for "to try." An essay is something you write in order to figure something out.

Figure out what? You don't know yet. So you can't begin with a thesis, because you don't have one and may never have one. An essay begins not with a statement but a question. You don't take a position and defend it. You see a door that's ajar, and you open it and walk in to see what's inside.

If all you want is to figure things out, why write at all? There precisely is Montaigne's great discovery: expressing ideas helps to form them — and helps is far too weak a word. 90% of what ends up in my essays was stuff I only thought of when I sat down to write them.

In school you're explaining yourself to someone else; at best you're just writing it down. In a real essay you're writing for yourself. You're thinking out loud.

The alternative comes from Montaigne, inventor of the essay. Essayer means "to try"; an essay is something you write to figure something out — which is why it begins with a question, not a thesis. And expressing ideas is how you form them.

But not quite.

Just as inviting people over forces you to clean up your apartment, writing something that you know other people will read forces you to think well.

So it does matter to have an audience.

The things I've written just for myself are no good.

Indeed, they're bad in a particular way: they tend to peter out.

When I run into difficulties, I notice that I tend to conclude with a few vague questions and then drift off to get a cup of tea.

This seems a common problem.

It's practically the standard ending in blog entries--- with the addition of a "heh" or an emoticon, prompted by the all too accurate sense that something is missing.

And indeed, a lot of published essays peter out in this same way.

Particularly the sort written by the staff writers of newsmagazines.

Outside writers tend to supply editorials of the defend-a-position variety, which make a beeline toward a rousing (and foreordained) conclusion.

But the staff writers feel obliged to write something more balanced, which in practice ends up meaning blurry.

Since they're writing for a popular magazine, they start with the most radioactively controversial questions, from which (because they're writing for a popular magazine) they then proceed to recoil from in terror.

Gay marriage, for or against?

This group says one thing.

That group says another.

One thing is certain: the question is a complex one. (But don't get mad at us.

We didn't draw any conclusions.)

But not quite. Just as inviting people over forces you to clean your apartment, writing for others forces you to think well. The things I've written just for myself are no good, and bad in a particular way: they peter out, concluding with a few vague questions before I drift off to get a cup of tea.

This seems a common problem. It's practically the standard ending in blog entries — with the addition of a "heh" or an emoticon, prompted by the all too accurate sense that something is missing.

Published essays peter out the same way, especially newsmagazine staff writers. Outside writers supply defend-a-position editorials beelining toward a foreordained conclusion, but staff writers feel obliged to be balanced, which means blurry. They start with radioactively controversial questions, then recoil in terror: Gay marriage, for or against? One thing is certain: the question is a complex one. (But don't get mad at us. We didn't draw any conclusions.)

But not quite for yourself: an audience forces you to think well. Without one, essays peter out — the standard ending in blogs and in the balanced-to-the-point-of-blurry pieces of newsmagazine staff writers.

Questions aren't enough.

An essay has to come up with answers.

They don't always, of course.

Sometimes you start with a promising question and get nowhere.

But those you don't publish.

Those are like experiments that get inconclusive results.

Something you publish ought to tell the reader something he didn't already know.

But what you tell him doesn't matter, so long as it's interesting.

I'm sometimes accused of meandering.

In defend-a-position writing that would be a flaw.

There you're not concerned with truth.

You already know where you're going, and you want to go straight there, blustering through obstacles, and hand-waving your way across swampy ground.

But that's not what you're trying to do in an essay.

An essay is supposed to be a search for truth.

It would be suspicious if it didn't meander.

The Meander is a river in Asia Minor (aka Turkey).

As you might expect, it winds all over the place.

But does it do this out of frivolity?

Quite the opposite.

Like all rivers, it's rigorously following the laws of physics.

The path it has discovered, winding as it is, represents the most economical route to the sea.

The river's algorithm is simple.

At each step, flow down.

For the essayist this translates to: flow interesting.

Of all the places to go next, choose whichever seems most interesting.

I'm pushing this metaphor a bit.

An essayist can't have quite as little foresight as a river.

In fact what you do (or what I do) is somewhere between a river and a roman road-builder.

I have a general idea of the direction I want to go in, and I choose the next topic with that in mind.

This essay is about writing, so I do occasionally yank it back in that direction, but it is not all the sort of essay I thought I was going to write about writing.

Note too that hill-climbing (which is what this algorithm is called) can get you in trouble.

Sometimes, just like a river, you run up against a blank wall.

What I do then is just what the river does: backtrack.

At one point in this essay I found that after following a certain thread I ran out of ideas.

I had to go back n paragraphs and start over in another direction.

For illustrative purposes I've left the abandoned branch as a footnote.

Err on the side of the river.

An essay is not a reference work.

It's not something you read looking for a specific answer, and feel cheated if you don't find it.

I'd much rather read an essay that went off in an unexpected but interesting direction than one that plodded dutifully along a prescribed course.

Questions aren't enough; an essay has to come up with answers. Not always — sometimes you get nowhere, but those you don't publish, like experiments with inconclusive results. What you publish ought to tell the reader something he didn't already know.

But what you tell him doesn't matter, so long as it's interesting. I'm sometimes accused of meandering. In defend-a-position writing that's a flaw, since you already know where you're going. But an essay is a search for truth. It would be suspicious if it didn't meander.

The Meander is a river in Asia Minor that winds all over the place. But does it do this out of frivolity? Quite the opposite. Like all rivers it rigorously follows the laws of physics, and its winding path is the most economical route to the sea.

The river's algorithm is simple: at each step, flow down. For the essayist this translates to: flow interesting. Of all the places to go next, choose whichever seems most interesting.

Hill-climbing can get you in trouble: sometimes you run up against a blank wall. What I do then is what the river does — backtrack. At one point I ran out of ideas and went back several paragraphs, leaving the abandoned branch as a footnote.

Err on the side of the river. An essay is not a reference work you read for a specific answer. I'd much rather read one that went off in an unexpected but interesting direction than one that plodded along a prescribed course.

Questions aren't enough; an essay has to come up with answers, and what it tells you doesn't matter so long as it's interesting. Like the Meander river, meandering isn't frivolity — it's the most economical route, flowing toward whatever seems most interesting.

So what's interesting?

For me, interesting means surprise.

Design, as Matz has said, should follow the principle of least surprise.

A button that looks like it will make a machine stop should make it stop, not speed up.

Essays should do the opposite.

Essays should aim for maximum surprise.

I was afraid of flying for a long time and could only travel vicariously.

When friends came back from faraway places, it wasn't just out of politeness that I asked them about their trip.

I really wanted to know.

And I found that the best way to get information out of them was to ask what surprised them.

How was the place different from what they expected?

This is an extremely useful question.

You can ask it of even the most unobservant people, and it will extract information they didn't even know they were recording.

Indeed, you can ask it in real time.

Now when I go somewhere new, I make a note of what surprises me about it.

Sometimes I even make a conscious effort to visualize the place beforehand, so I'll have a detailed image to diff with reality.

Surprises are facts you didn't already know.

But they're more than that.

They're facts that contradict things you thought you knew.

And so they're the most valuable sort of fact you can get.

They're like a food that's not merely healthy, but counteracts the unhealthy effects of things you've already eaten.

How do you find surprises?

Well, therein lies half the work of essay writing. (The other half is expressing yourself well.)

You can at least use yourself as a proxy for the reader.

You should only write about things you've thought about a lot.

And anything you come across that surprises you, who've thought about the topic a lot, will probably surprise most readers.

For example, in a recent essay I pointed out that because you can only judge computer programmers by working with them, no one knows in programming who the heroes should be.

I certainly didn't realize this when I started writing the essay, and even now I find it kind of weird.

That's what you're looking for.

So if you want to write essays, you need two ingredients: you need a few topics that you think about a lot, and you need some ability to ferret out the unexpected.

What should you think about?

My guess is that it doesn't matter.

Almost everything is interesting if you get deeply enough into it.

The one possible exception are things like working in fast food, which have deliberately had all the variation sucked out of them.

In retrospect, was there anything interesting about working in Baskin-Robbins?

Well, it was interesting to notice how important color was to the customers.

Kids a certain age would point into the case and say that they wanted yellow.

Did they want French Vanilla or Lemon?

They would just look at you blankly.

They wanted yellow.

And then there was the mystery of why the perennial favorite Pralines n' Cream was so appealing.

I'm inclined now to think it was the salt.

And the mystery of why Passion Fruit tasted so disgusting.

People would order it because of the name, and were always disappointed.

It should have been called In-sink-erator Fruit.

And there was the difference in the way fathers and mothers bought ice cream for their kids.

Fathers tended to adopt the attitude of benevolent kings bestowing largesse, and mothers that of harried bureaucrats, giving in to pressure against their better judgement.

So, yes, there does seem to be material, even in fast food.

What about the other half, ferreting out the unexpected?

That may require some natural ability.

I've noticed for a long time that I'm pathologically observant. ....

[That was as far as I'd gotten at the time.]

So what's interesting? For me, interesting means surprise. Design, as Matz said, should follow the principle of least surprise: a button that looks like it stops a machine should stop it, not speed it up. Essays should do the opposite. Essays should aim for maximum surprise.

Afraid of flying, I traveled vicariously. When friends came back from faraway places, I found the best way to get information was to ask what surprised them. It's extremely useful: you can ask even the most unobservant people, and it extracts information they didn't know they were recording.

Surprises are facts you didn't already know. But more: they're facts that contradict things you thought you knew, and so the most valuable sort of fact you can get. They're like a food that's not merely healthy, but counteracts the unhealthy effects of what you've already eaten.

How do you find surprises? Therein lies half the work (the other half is expressing yourself well). Use yourself as a proxy for the reader: write only about things you've thought about a lot, and anything that surprises you will probably surprise most readers.

For example, I recently noted that because you can only judge programmers by working with them, no one knows who the heroes of programming should be. That's what you're looking for. So you need two ingredients: topics you think about a lot, and the ability to ferret out the unexpected.

What should you think about? It probably doesn't matter — almost everything is interesting if you get deeply enough into it, except things like fast food, which have had the variation deliberately sucked out. Yet even Baskin-Robbins had material: kids who demanded yellow, not French Vanilla or Lemon; fathers bestowing largesse like kings, mothers giving in like harried bureaucrats.

What about the other half, ferreting out the unexpected? That may require some natural ability. I've noticed for a long time that I'm pathologically observant. ....

Interesting means surprise. Where design follows the principle of least surprise, essays should aim for maximum surprise — the most valuable facts being the ones that contradict what you thought you knew. So write about what you've thought about a lot, and ferret out the unexpected.

Notes

[sh] In Shakespeare's own time, serious writing meant theological discourses, not the bawdy plays acted over on the other side of the river among the bear gardens and whorehouses.

The other extreme, the work that seems formidable from the moment it's created (indeed, is deliberately intended to be) is represented by Milton.

Like the Aeneid, Paradise Lost is a rock imitating a butterfly that happened to get fossilized.

Even Samuel Johnson seems to have balked at this, on the one hand paying Milton the compliment of an extensive biography, and on the other writing of Paradise Lost that "none who read it ever wished it longer."

In Shakespeare's own time, serious writing meant theological discourses, not the bawdy plays acted across the river among the bear gardens and whorehouses.

The other extreme — work formidable from the moment it's created — is Milton. Like the Aeneid, Paradise Lost is a rock imitating a butterfly that happened to get fossilized; even Samuel Johnson balked, writing that "none who read it ever wished it longer."

Two notes on writers at the extremes — Shakespeare's plays as once-disreputable entertainment, and Milton as the deliberately formidable opposite.