A Reflective Essay.
ON BEGINNING
By J. B. Priestley (abridged)
How difficult it is to make a beginning.
I speak of essay-writing, like analytical essay writing on customwriting.com, an essentially virtuous practice, and not of
breaking the ten commandments. It is much easier to begin, say, a review
or an article than it is to begin an essay, for with the former you
attach yourself to something outside yourself, you have an excuse for
writing and therefore have more courage. If it is a review that has to
be written, well, there, waiting for you, inviting your comment, is the
book. Similarly with an article, you have your subject, something that
everybody is excited about, and thus you know what is expected of you
and you can take up your pen with a light heart.
But to have nothing to
cling hold of, to have no excuse for writing at all, to be compelled to
spin everything out of oneself, to stand naked and shivering in the
very first sentence one puts down, is clearly a" very different matter,
and this is the melancholy situation in which the essayist always finds
himself. It is true that he need not always be melancholy; if he is full
of himself, brimming over with bright talk, in a mood to take the whole
world into his confidence, the essayist will find his task a very
pleasant one indeed, never to be exchanged for such drudge's work as
reviews and articles; and he will step briskly on to the stage and
posture in the limelight without a tremor. But such moments are rare,
and the essayist at ordinary times, though he would eagerly undertake to
defend his craft, cannot quite rid himself of the feeling that there is
something both absurd and decidedly impudent in this business of
talking about oneself for money; this feeling haunts the back of his
mind like some gibbering spectre, and it generally produces one of three
effects. According to his temperament, it will prevent him from doing
anything at all that particular day or perhaps any other day, or it will
allow him to write a few brilliant opening sentences and then shut up,
or it will keep him from making a start until the last possible moment.
For my own part , I am
one of those who find it difficult to begin; I si and on the brink for
hours, hesitating to make the plunge; 1 will do anything but the work in
hand. This habit is certainly a nuisance, but perhaps it is not quite
so intolerable as that of some other persons, men of my acquaintance,
who fall into the second category mentioned above and always find
themselves making dashing openings and then coming to a stop. They will
stare at what they have written, well pleased with it as an opening, and
then discover that the flow has ceased, and horrible hours will pass,
and perhaps many more dashing openings will have been made, before any
real progress will have come about and their essay taken some sort of
shape. Such writers seem to me even more unfortunate than I am, for I do
at least go forward once I have made a beginning; as soon as I have
summoned up courage to ring the bell 1 am at least admitted into the
house of my choice, and am not, like these others, left kicking my heels
in the vestibules of half a dozen houses perhaps without ever seeing
the interior of any of them.
COMMENTS
The passage is an example of a
reflective essay. Such essays, as we have shown, are developed through
analysis, that is, one starts by breaking down the subject into parts,
then groups the various ideas together and finally arranges them in an
order best suited for one's purposes. Let us briefly examine how the
model essay is built up. Judging by the passage, the following sets of
ideas occured to the writer.
1. It is particularly difficult to make a
beginning when one has to write an essay. It is easier to do this when
one has to write something else, for instance an article or review.
2. There are specific difficulties connected with essay writing.
3. Essayists have different temperaments, so each approaches the task in his own way.
4. How I feel and behave when I set about writing an essay.
We have listed the items in the order in
which they are dealt with in the text. From this list we can see that
in the arrangement of his ideas the author worked from the general lo
the particular and from the impersonal to the personal.
He begins by stating the subject of his essay. This is done in the first two sentences: "How difficult it is to
make a beginning. I speak of essay-writing, an essentially virtuous
practice, and not of breaking the ten commandments." These sentences
provide the essay's organizing centre. Now clearly the author must
explain what are the difficulties an essayist has to face when he sets
himself the task of writing an essay. Here a comparison with other
literary genres is essential to justify the choice of the subject.
In an essay of the type we are
discussing, the greatest amount of space is generally alloted to
descriptions of the author's own thoughts, feelings, behaviour, etc.,
but in this case a purely subjective approach would have made the essay
less convincing, and also less interesting. So the author first speaks
of essayists in general, showing various reactions to the task,
reactions which vary from person to person and to some extent depends on
the writer's mood. This passage also helps to make a smooth transition
to the personal part of the essay (not included here).
If you compare this essay with First
Snow (p. ), you will find that they have much in common, both in the
arrangement of the material and in the manner of the exposition. Here,
too, the author aims at creating pictures in the reader's mind. To a
great extent this is achieved through the use of metaphor based on
concrete images: "to stand naked shivering and shaking in the very
first sentence one puts down", "like some gibbering spectre .. .".
Abstract nouns are used sparingly, words expressing very general ideas
are avoided. The sentence structure is here more complex than in First
Snow, as befits the subject. The sentences are varied in length and
structure, those which state the most important ideas being short (for
example, the opening sentence). Thus the author produces a vivid and
imaginative piece of writing, with humorous touches, mainly in the form
of metaphors.