I don't know what an online essay is anymore
Feb 10, 2024I think I’ve written just about enough that I’ve hit the Dunning Kruger dip where I feel like I know absolutely nothing about writing anymore.
Like what even is an online essay? What format is writing online?
Seth Godin writes pithy, almost tweet-like blogs
PG writes these very-terse-elucidate-idea essays
A NYT column like this one by Michael Pollan is this slightly more meandering, link-to-many-things and have references and quotes kinda literary experience.
A smart thing to do would be stick to a classic three paragraph essay with an intro and conclusion, but those never feel like they actually get to anything. Also they give me flashbacks of writing useless arbitrary shit for High School and make me want to throw up.
The way I write is to throw a giant thought dump at a Google Doc, because I only really know what I’m trying to get at after I say a lot of it. But then I need to rewrite, then get the true outline, then rewrite, then get the correct idea flow, and then rewrite again after leaving it for a while to get my voice back (I didn't do this last step for the return essay and it shows). This is the only point at which I’m ever satisfied, but it’s so much work.
I think the issue with online essays is that there is no format. You can write literally anything, however you want. I suppose that applies for all writing, really. And all art too. And so you can see my dilemma. Everything doesn’t make sense anymore, and I decided that actually I’m going to write my way through it.
You see a bit of every director (the good ones at least) in the movies they make. Miyazaki is obsessed with nature and aviation. And so a bit of nature and aviation seems to creep into just about everything he touches. (Do you know he studied the history of planes to understand how to properly animate them?). And I’m sure the deeper you look, there’s subconscious themes that percolate through it all.
A sketch by Miyazaki. From the book “Starting Point”
I think the reason why is because we can’t help but return to ourselves at every level of our being. What we’re interested in touches the content of everything we make, think about and act. But I think it also affects the form.
The way PG writes his essays matches the style in which his favourite programming language is written. LISP is naturally very terse and beautiful. And so are his essays. And the right programming languages are said to be able to make you think new thoughts. And so I wonder if the right writing form can help you output better.
Or let me put it differently. The medium affects the message, yes, but the message you output affects how you shape the medium you output it in.
Casey makes these fast cut narrative videos, usually about himself. And it seems like he’s a very driven fast paced person who has a healthy amount of ego to push himself to do cool things. The message in many of his videos (do more, do what you can’t, etc) matches the form in which he presents them (fast cut, motivational, hypey)
Ghibli movies are often slow, reflective, put you in some sort of existential dread, yet leave you with a sense of soft optimism. Miyazaki seems to be a deeply reflective person who thinks a lot about the world who’s grown into an old curmudgeon, who somehow still carries a flame of optimism and just keeps going.
And if you find the medium that resonates with who you are, it unlocks output. Like Casey starting daily vlogs unleashed his creativity. I don’t think he’d do so well at making a feature film, for example.
So I guess I’ve been trying to figure out what my form is.
The first thing They all say is to know your audience. Okay but who am I even writing for? Who should I write for. So much writing advice says to think about the reader, and make things clear for them. But then someone like Rick Rubin says not too care about the audience and make something truly for yourself, a diary entry, one that you’re satisfied by, and then move on to the next thing once you’re done.
Maybe the fear is that if I write only for myself no one will read it. But who cares, that mistake costs nothing. This, by the way, is what differentiates disciplines where you can move fast and break things and those where you can’t. If the cost of failure is low, it makes sense to fail and iterate constantly. You don’t necessarily need formal schooling and being overly careful. But if you want to become a lawyer, or a doctor, you absolutely should not be moving fast and breaking things. That, by the way, means a lot of lost lives and dead people.
To be honest, I haven’t “made things for other people” for a while. It actually meant not making at all for a bit, and now I can feel myself slowly ramping back up but for myself and not for the views/claps/likes. But the thing that scares me the most is how creating on the internet can seem like such a black hole.
It feels like creators can’t allow themselves to stop. (Fun quote from a friend - “art is about having something to say and content is having to say something”). If you take a break for a year all your stats go down, it feels like failure. But on a TV show, for example, the break is expected. You don’t say “ha! This show’s viewership went down 100%!” you say “hey the next season is coming in 3 months!”
Do you see the weird juxtaposition? TV shows are seasonal despite the fact that they have huge teams behind them. But an individual on the internet needs to create constantly as a one man team. And as the quality expected of content online has increased, the effort required has become untenably high. It’s no wonder Casey now talks about how much daily vlogs took up the oxygen from other parts of his life.
And here I see a solution to making for others vs for oneself. The high production value stuff should be done in seasons and the personal stuff should be done in drips.
High effort stuff usually has more audience in mind because you want more of a return on all that effort. This doesn’t mean it’s purely about the audience, I’d say some of the best movies were both commercially and artistically successful. And so to avoid burnout and to maintain quality, they necessarily need to be done in seasons.
Low effort personal stuff can happen at a more frequent cadence because being completely oneself, unedited or less-edited is easier. But the caveat here is that people who become zoo animals (the influencers of the world) are disgusting to me. It just seems so exhausting to constantly curate your life. After a point, what’s really your life and what’s a performance? And so I suppose it’s about finding the balance.
I think the core thing that strikes through every aspect of my being is multitudinality. Maybe this is just me justifying distractibility but hey, I think it’s true. I realised this after making a Figjam board for my life. There’s everything on this board. Beautifully designed consumer electronics, frames from movies, modular things, cool rooms. And on this board, which is itself a mishmash of so many things, I realised that so many of the things I loved were themselves a mishmash of many things.
I like rooms that fuse technology and wiring and nature and plants and books and light. I grew up in Singapore, a country that’s a fusion of so many cultures and values, both eastern and western. I like stories for children that have a dark element to them. I like stories for adults that have a childlike enthusiasm. I personally feel like such a mix of cultures, both my Indian heritage but also Western vibes and aspiration.
This is what I want to get at in my essays and videos and general creative output. To elegantly mix a shit ton of ideas and show people how so many different things are linked and bring them to an epiphany.
A friend recently told me that I’m bad with dealing with uncertainty- that I need a comprehensive picture of everything to process it. And that’s true. I want something I write to feel like it perfectly fits together in my head before I publish it. I don’t know what about the uncertainty is so scary exactly. It’s like I need to know something will work out to do it.
There’s so much out there saying think, don’t do, be like water, don’t try. And I’ve recently slipped into that a bit and it’s scary. Not being in control feels like this sudden drop in my chest. Water can’t control where it flows. It doesn’t know where it ends up. But it’s also kind of… thrilling?
I suppose the only way of getting over it is doing things even if I’m uncertain. Action deficits are often just courage deficits, after all. It means not worrying so much, not bouncing around in my head and just spilling it all out.
It could be by just sending it more often. It could be, for example, just sitting down and writing something in one go, something that links the structure of online writing, how personality affects content, how to deal with creativity and the internet, and a healthy dose of overthinking in the same place. It could be, I suppose, by writing something like this.