Working Notes

Rough working notes – taken from my own thinking about what I’m trying to do – what boundaries I am trying to observe/maintain – when I construct an essay.
Organized without structure or significance.

The Fundamental Move

The essay begins with a tension.
Not necessarily a conflict. Sometimes an anomaly, contradiction, unease, discontinuity, or something that does not quite fit.
I am not seeking to resolve the tension.
I inhabit the tension long enough to understand the field from which it emerges.

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The Field

The word field is preferred because it suggests more than:

• landscape
• environment
• climate
• context

A field contains influences, relationships, assumptions, values and possibilities, many of which may not be directly observable.
The field may never be fully knowable.
The tension offers entry into the field.

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Structures of Influence

A useful phrase.
Avoids requiring readers to adopt complex ontological language.
Readers already understand influence.

Examples:

• family
• culture
• profession
• education
• geography
• history
• institutions
• assumptions
• habits

The essay explores the structures of influence that help create or sustain the tension.

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Ontology

Inevitably I write from an ontology.
Not merely a set of beliefs.
More fundamentally:

How do I organise significance?
The essay reveals my organisation of significance.
Not by declaration.
By the path taken through the tension.

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A Key Discovery

The essay is not simply about the subject.
The essay is also about the observer.
The tension acts as a vehicle through which the essayist reveals:

• what matters
• why it matters
• how significance is weighted

The essay teaches ontology indirectly.

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Attention

The activist and the essayist may meet in attention.
Before action there is attention.
Before advocacy there is attention.
Before judgement there is attention.

The activist notices.
The essayist notices.
The act comes later.

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The Essayist’s Task

Earlier formulation:
Understand the tension.

Current formulation:
Explore the field from which the tension emerges.

Or:

Illuminate the tension and provide bearings for its navigation.

Not: Fix it.
Not: Eliminate it.

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Bearings

A major discovery.

A bearing is: An orientation from which navigation becomes possible.
The essay does not provide a route.
The essay provides bearings.
The reader remains responsible for navigation.

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Recasting the Tension

The essay often does not resolve a tension.
Instead it re-describes it.

Example: – Initial tension: – Left vs Right

Recast tension: – A public capable of acting vs a public waiting to be acted upon

The essay changes the field within which the reader understands the issue.
The tension remains.
The reader acquires new bearings.

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Reader Relationship

Not:

Let me change your mind.

Not:

Let me persuade you.

Not:

Let me share this.

More:

We are here together.

The reader grants permission by continuing to read.

The relationship is invitational.

The essay creates conditions for discovery.

The reader’s own experience produces the re-evaluation.

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The Three-Line Statement

This is where I stand.

This is what I can see from here.

Come and look with me.

Interpretation:

This is where I stand.

A declaration.

A disclosure of position.

This is what I can see from here.

An encounter with the world.

Observation through a specific stance.

Come and look with me.

An invitation.

Companionship.

Shared attention.

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The Larger Pattern

Observation
↓
Tension
↓
Field
↓
Structures of Influence
↓
Recasting
↓
Bearings

The essay begins with a tension. – The tension reveals a field. – The field contains structures of influence. – The tension is recast. – Writer and reader acquire bearings. – The tension remains.

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Essayist.ie

Current descriptor: An exploration of how significance is discovered, organised and shared.
The essay as method.

Working understanding:
Essayist.ie is not about essay-writing as technique.
It is about:

• attention
• significance
• inquiry
• ontology
• structures of influence
• the essay as a method for exploring tensions and discovering bearings

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Perhaps the Most Important Discovery

The essay does not seek to change the reader’s mind.
The essay invites the reader into a field.
Within that field, the reader’s own experience may lead to a re-evaluation.
That re-evaluation belongs to the reader.
The essayist merely creates the conditions in which it becomes possible.

David Marshall
11 July 2026
dm.ie