“That doesn’t mean that there isn’t art and artifice involved in the writing of an essay. But it does mean that the art is in revealing the voice of the writer, as opposed to trying to suit the requirements of a fictional character or narrator. Essay writing is about transforming the often convoluted process of thought, leaving your own brand of bread crumbs in the forest so that those who want to can find their way to your door.”-Lauren Slater in “Why essays confuse people”
Slater’s vision of the relationship of art and essays is a very respectable one in my eyes. The word ‘essay’ is often thrown around when the speaker actually means ‘article.’ Slater, coming to the rescue of the essayist, points out that there are fundamental differences between the two.
Articles are projects written principally for the short cut information that comprises them. The author of an article will not ‘bother’ his audience with ‘burdensome’ style and artistic expression in his writing. In this particular style, there is no time for frivolities. Rather, he will choose to trim the fat and flavor off of his writing and give all the clean-cut information that the reader will want if they are reading the paper at seven o’clock in the morning for their news or checking 40 high school papers at 11 o’clock at night. The article is a project that delivers information; it is all about what is said.
Essays, however, are projects that intertwine relevant information with a stylized technique. In the passage before the one that I quoted above, the author mentions that she is trying to bring order to the pieces of thought floating around in her mind. This is where an essay is similar to an article, in that one objective is to organize significant information from its original randomized state into a form that is comprehensible to the reader. However, there is more, personality is instilled into an essay. Personally, the best way I could describe an essay is as the result of a collision of an article and poetry. It has the hard information backing it up that is carried in an article, but says it with the feeling that is conveyed in a poem. As is said by Slater in not so many words, when writing an essay, one has to express information that is relevant to the established topic while using their own style and methods to keep it fluid and interesting. Its not only what is said, but how it is said.
