Writing Back 2: Getting Over Our Essay Anxiety

16 May 2025

Episode 5.16 – Writing Back 2: Getting Over Our Essay Anxiety

It’s time for the end of our carpe diem journey, and we celebrate with a congratulatory essay! Hey, why so glum?

We look at what has caused all this anxiety over the ostracized essay, rant against how traditional schooling has abused it, and offer some introductory ideas on how the best essays are essential to the literary tradition. And we all get to write one now, too!

Key Terms:

• Conduit metaphor – A linguistic concept, that if we can structure, control, and limit the connotative diction in our writing, that our communication might travel from speaker to audience with minimal misunderstanding.
• Essai – Verb, after the pioneering creator Michel de Montaigne; to try, to attempt, to explore, especially the exploring of one’s own thinking

Steve’s Poetic Response to Marvell: “To His Bold Master”: https://waywordsstudio.com/verse/to-his-bold-master/

Longform Essay YouTubers Recommended:

• Deep Cuts – for lovers of music: ww w.youtube.com/c/deepcuts
• In Praise of Shadows for horror history: w ww.youtube.com/@InPraiseofShadows
• Defunctland for history of extinct theme park: w ww.youtube.com/@Defunctland
• Jacob Geller, for video games, history, politics, empathy: w ww.youtube.com/@JacobGeller
• Solar Sands, “of waking up”: ww  w.youtube.com/@SolarSands
• Jenny Nicholson, for popular culture: ww w.youtube.com/@JennyNicholson
• PhilosophyTube with Abigail Thorn, giving away a philosophy degree: ww  w.youtube.com/@PhilosophyTube

Traditional Essays Recommended:

• Zadie Smith, Intimations
• Margaret Atwood, Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing
• James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
• Martin Amis, The Rub of Time: Bellow, Nabokov, Hitchens, Travolta, Trump
• Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality
• Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths

Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/andrew-marvell-coy-mistress/

CHAPTERS

00:00    Irony So Common It’s Cringe
05:59    Opening Theme
06:31    Why Write Back?
10:58    But Why Oh Why an Essay? The Conduit of Fear
23:33    Writing for Uncertainty
27:23    But What Do I Write About?
31:47    Yeah, But Who Is Reading This Thing?
35:19    Outro and Credits

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Transcript:  https://waywordsstudio.com/podcasts/transcript-5-16-writing-back-w-getting-over-our-essay-anxiety

Have a Question? Literary Nomads Mailbag: https://forms.gle/MmhqcGgeLcjCaVK97

What are your thoughts on our discussion?  Email me: [email protected]

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Literary Nomads is the primary program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.

Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.

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CREDITS:

Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)

Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski

USING THIS WORK:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.

MLA CITATION:

Chisnell, Steve. “Writing Back 2: Getting Over Our Essay Anxiety,’” Waywords Studio, 16 May 2025, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/andrew-marvell-coy-mistress/.