Trying to Gather Moss

[georginasand]

“You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need" ~The Rolling Stones

I started this journal at the suggestion, nay dare, of a very good friend (Merry, I'm looking at you). She was leaving the country soon (by which I may or may not have meant months and months in the future at the time of the journal's inception, but it seemed all too soon.  Still does, actually) and this would be a good way to keep in touch. I had no idea what that journal was going to do, besides somehow bridge a eight time zone, two continent, and one large ocean sized gap.

Maybe I thought I'd start writing fiction again. This girl's been foisting x-files fanfic off on me since maybe the second day I'd known her, and more often then not they came in the form of links to livejournals. I'd always sort of wanted to be a fiction writer, I've made up stories in my head for when real life wasn't interesting enough since I was very little, probably since before I was old enough to realize the stories, real or otherwise, were all in my head. But fiction never really took, I never got the hang of “show, don’t tell.”

But despite the fact that fiction was, until recently, really the only way I understood non-academic writing, I keep accidentally telling people I am a writer, and it's because of this blooming' journal. (Merry? I'm still looking at you) I can tell people that I’m a history geek and once I rattle off enough random facts about the Founding Fathers they understand what I mean. I can tell people I am a ballet dancer, show them my feet, and they understand what I mean. I can tell people I am a thespian and after a detailed description and a “no, no, thespian…with a‘t’” they understand what I mean. But I tell them I’m a writer who doesn’t write stories and we are both a little lost.

Merry got it first, said it first, gave it a real name or at least a name more real than "someone who blathers about her life in hopes of saying something intelligent," in one of her early comments. And she called me an essayist.

But what exactly does it mean to be an essayist. The essay as we know was introduced by Michel de Montaigne in the 1500's. His work, published in a massive volume entitled Essaies, was characterized by a discursive style, a lively conversational tone, and the use of numerous quotations. Let’s see: discursive style? Check. Lively conversational style? Conversational, yes. I can't always promise lively. Use of numerous quotations? Check. Yep, definitely got that covered. He called his publication, and consequently his art, Essaies. From the French verb essayer, to try. An essay is a trying, an attempt, to explain something, to prove something, to make sense out of the world in which the essayist live.

Papers are what I write for school, essays are what I write here. It is astonishing how much these letters have helped me try to solidify and articulate how I see the world. It isn’t necessarily what I thought I wanted when I started this journal, but it’s what I needed.

 

I remain,

Georgie

Comments

[merrycaepa.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad we - or you, rather, because I've rather sucked at upholding my end of things - did this.
And I started foisting music on you the second day we met. I waited at least four days before I started in with the fanfic, I didn't want to scare you off yet.
So there.
*thppt*