{"id":1116,"date":"2014-03-26T12:30:16","date_gmt":"2014-03-26T20:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.writinghope.com\/?p=1116"},"modified":"2018-09-26T10:02:01","modified_gmt":"2018-09-26T18:02:01","slug":"essayez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/essayez\/","title":{"rendered":"Essayez."},"content":{"rendered":"

For a long time I had that word above the door in my writing room.<\/p>\n

It is a command. An urging: Try.<\/em><\/p>\n

The word essay,<\/em> that now makes most school kids cringe, started out as an experiment.\u00a0 The name is taken from the Old French word, essai,\u00a0<\/i>meaning \u2018trial.\u2019<\/p>\n

Gandalf, early in Lord of the Rings<\/span> mentions that many magic rings were made before ‘the one ring’ central to that story.<\/p>\n

“The lesser rings were only essays in the craft, before it was full-grown, and to the Elven-smiths they were but trifles– yet still to my mind dangerous for mortals.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I see essays the same way: They can be seen as empty or powerful– the same ones– by creator or reader. They are a snapshot of thought. An effort to capture they way a writer is thinking at that moment, and with that same immediacy affects each reader based on their own circumstances.<\/p>\n

Essays as a writing form are a fabulously flexible tool. Seeing them as “practice” is a really great start (no matter how long you’ve been doing it: Doctors after X-teen years of schooling and decades of employment are still said to be practicing<\/em> medicine).<\/p>\n

I can’t tell you how many blog posts I’ve hit publish<\/em> on in the last 8 years with the thought, ‘Good as I can make it. On to the next [diaper <\/a>change<\/a>\/read-aloud<\/a>\/meal <\/a>to make\/tragedy <\/a>to grieve].’<\/p>\n

This has been a tremendous help as I reach the end of a novel<\/a> or publish an official article <\/a>or column<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"footprints<\/a>Turns out as good as I can make it<\/em> can be pretty good. And the fact that I’m better later isn’t shaming, it’s the reminder I’m growing. I wouldn’t grow if I didn’t keep trying.<\/p>\n

This isn’t only about writing, it’s about everything we must stay with in order to see growth and the competency we crave.<\/p>\n

Essayez. Try. We only have time<\/a>. Don’t worry about “maximizing” it, just use it.<\/p>\n

Little things add up. It doesn’t matter how small the steps are if you’re pointed in the direction you want to go.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Little things add up. It doesn’t matter how small the steps are if you’re pointed in the direction you want to go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1117,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[32,4,3],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/footprints-in-sand.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s3TVXH-essayez","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1116"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1116"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120749,"href":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1116\/revisions\/120749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}