How to Write an Essay
The normal process of essay-writing, for me, is like this:
I have the initial idea.
I immediately create a new post in Substack. I might write a key paragraph there and then. I will certainly jot down the initial idea along with any related ideas that occur as I’m typing. The goal is to make as many notes as possible now, when the inspiration is fresh, so that when I come back to the essay there will be enough material for me to “find my feet”- not a blank page but a set of starting points.
I always jot down an idea as soon as possible because otherwise I will probably forget it.
Some of these notes will immediately be evolved into actual paragraphs for the essay, others will be ignored for the time being and I will eventually get around to either fleshing them out or deleting them.
What now follows is some days of frenzied writing (usually between one and four days). During this phase, many new ideas are jotted down as they occur to me (see above). Eventually, new ideas stop coming, and the frenzy dies down and I stop writing.
I might read through the essay and calmly expand the odd paragraph here and there.I take a few days away from it and work on other things. Then comes the “redrafting” phase.
Most of the paragraphs are written by now, so this is when I revise the structure, improve sentences, etc. This phase can take quite a long time, because the structure of something is very important and because sentences can always be improved.Then comes the “finessing” phase, which is much more casual. The essay is 97% done by now, but the final 3% of work is finishing touches that can make all the difference. This phase can last, on and off, quite a long time - basically until I am happy with the essay. Often the opening paragraph is written in this phase, because by now I know what it should say.
That is the simplest version of the process. With some essays it is much faster, with some it is more elongated and messy. I might write some new paragraphs even at the “finessing” stage. I might split an essay up into multiple parts (a series) or into several completely separate essays; some of those will be written immediately within the same frenzy as the original idea, others will enter a long purgatory and be forgotten about until, months later, I’m looking for something to work on.
The asterisk symbol is my best friend when writing. Because I never use it in the actual text itself, I can safely use it to mark any piece of it that requires attention. This could be a word or sentence I’m not sure about, a need for a hyperlink or supporting evidence, a question I will need to find the answer to, additional research that is needed, or simply to mark the place where an image should go. At any time, I can do a search for the asterisk symbol and immediately find every point in the essay that needs some type of work done. Once there are no asterisks left, it might well be that the essay is finished.
Have a place where you are comfortable and have minimal distractions. Writing requires immense concentration.
Start writing with whichever point interests you most. Do this again and again, until the only points left to write are the boring ones. Then brace yourself one day and just bite the bullet. For each boring point, you can write a basic version initially; tomorrow that version might inspire a more interesting treatment. Having the text in front of you is always better than having it in your head, in some vague form, frightening you because you haven’t written it yet.
Never be afraid to write a paragraph even if “you haven’t got to it yet” in the essay’s structure, or you don’t even know where in the essay’s structure it will eventually go. We live in the era of non-linear editing, after all. The important thing is to write the paragraph while it’s fresh in your mind or you have “zest” for it. You can worry about placement later.
Any point that occurs to you should be quickly jotted down, with an asterisk next to it. Actually, a key part of writing is moving these rough notes around the text until you find the best place for each one. It’s like planting seeds that will eventually grow - each one needs to be in the right place.
The same applies to paragraphs. I said earlier that you can write them in any order and arrange them later. This is true, but you should try to arrange them quite soon. Once something is in its proper position in the whole, it will inspire new things. And if it doesn’t, that means that section is finished and you can devote your mental resources to other sections now.
The first paragraph should simply open the topic. It doesn’t need to be stilted and it doesn’t need to describe the argument you intend to make or the material you intend to cover. It just needs to get the reader “into” the essay. However, you might well achieve that by briefly describing the point you intend to make or introducing the scope of the material. Either way, try to make the first paragraph engaging and short.
Make your text as clear as possible. Ideas are complicated so the text that conveys them should be simple; do not burden your reader with unnecessary cognitive load. To that end, I favour short sentences and will split a complex sentence apart wherever possible.
Always refer to something using the same name. This increases clarity. Multiple names will lead the reader to assume you are referring to different things. You have created unnecessary work for them.
Always delete redundant words and sentences. If two sentences make the same point, merge them or delete one. Keep doing this until there is no repetition at all.
Try to think of ways to make each point more concisely. Keep doing this until it is impossible.
Making the text as concise as possible helps, not only the reader, but you as the writer, because it clarifies the material, enabling you to better work with it and develop it. Redundant verbiage gets in the way like clutter in a room.
Never be afraid to just rewrite a paragraph from scratch. Sometimes it is the only way to make it work. But always keep the original somewhere, because you might want to revert to it or merge it with the new version.
An essay should have a purpose, and you need to know what the purpose is, and it should do nothing but serve that purpose. However, sometimes you need to “free-wheel” for a while and just write organically, and let the purpose emerge gradually. Once it does, you might need to prune a lot of irrelevant material. This doesn’t mean deleting it forever; maybe you will find a home for it in some other essay? But you really should do this, because if it remains where it doesn’t belong it will only detract and disrupt.
If you have written an essay but you can’t say exactly what its purpose is, you should probably shelve it.
Then comes structuring. The structure of an essay depends on its purpose, but generally speaking it should begin by pointing out some source of uncertainty and end as soon as that uncertainty has been satisfactorily addressed. This is why you shouldn’t worry about structure - or the opening paragraph - until a decent chunk of the essay has been written. You might find that you’ve ended up addressing a different uncertainty than the one you initially started with.
The final paragraph should be a summation - probably not of the entire essay, but of its final phase. It’s nice if you can link back to something from early on, but this is an unnecessary flourish. The very last sentence should be punchy.
Sometimes I show an essay to somebody else before publishing it. This can be useful because, being immersed in the topic, you might not realise that you haven’t explained something sufficiently. Conversely, you might have over-explained. Cutting one’s own material can be painful (that’s why writers used to have editors) but it is something I am trying to get better at doing.
Whatever else matters, the two “end conditions” for an essay are:
it should achieve a purpose
it should not be boring
If it fulfils those two, you have probably succeeded.
I greatly appreciate your blogging work and do try to take the time to read your essays when I get a chance. I also think that one essay a week is reasonable because it's not an overwhelming amount of information to have to take in. Some creators are extremely overproductive by their very nature and create several hours' worth of content every single week (AA is a textbook example, but I believe he was a university lecturer after all, so probably misses the experience of "talking to an audience"). Quality over quantity should be the general rule.
It barely needs to be said that we are absolutely saturated in content in 2026. Every week on the Internet there are thousands of hours' worth of blogs, podcasts, videos and more created. No one, even if they devoted all of their time to watching all of it (which would be a pretty sad existence), could possibly take in even a fraction of what is being said. Online writers, bloggers, vloggers, podcasters and so on must compete for the limited attention of their audience.
There is also the newer factor of AI to take into account: AI can produce in a matter of seconds what could take hours or days for a human to write, with significant mental effort required in the process. Of course, not everything created by AI is of good quality, but we're still in the very early days of AI and the more time that passes, the harder it will become to distinguish between an essay painstakingly written by a human and one written by an AI in under a minute.
All of this should act as an impediment to any aspiring online writer or blogger, but I can think of at least two other factors that can serve to discourage potential bloggers such as yourself:
As you will of course be aware, political speech comes with consequences, especially in this country. It can fall foul of the law in some circumstances, but even if it doesn't do that, there can still be social and economic consequences of political speech. Some employers would happily let go of someone who expresses the "wrong" political opinions online. There are also groups that go around doxxing and spreading personal information about people, sometimes with spurious allegations attached. All of this serves to help "shut people up" and has the effect of helping to perpetuate the injustices that continue to prevail in our societies, because it makes it harder to speak the truth plainly, openly and without the kind of self-censorship that so many people engage in.
Finally, there's also the simple reality of people not having enough free time to write, especially for those who work full-time. If I did not have to work, I'd probably be capable of writing similar weekly blog posts to those you're publishing at the moment, as I'm certainly not short of ideas or things to say. When your free time is limited, though, all of that goes out the window.
The biggest problem with writing is that the effort-reward ratio isn't balanced for most people: if blogging were a highly lucrative industry, I'd be right in there and would happily quit my current job to do something similar to what you're doing, but the reality for most is that it's a struggle, and extremely competitive due to the aforementioned over-saturation of content and the "attention economy" we have in the social media age.
Unfortunately, this means that genuinely great and intellectually nuanced ideas are sometimes lost simply because there isn't a market for them, and many people have their attention captured by the most simplistic of things. One of the biggest problems with the free market is that it doesn't genuinely reward true greatness; instead true greatness sometimes languishes in obscurity while that which appeals to the lowest common denominator is the most commercially successful. There are countless examples within music, food, TV, entertainment, and elsewhere: slop for the masses makes a profit while those occupying a creative niche struggle financially.
A society like ours that doesn't seem to value the truth, beauty, greatness or intellectual nuance, and above all, just wants you to shut up, pay taxes and die, is a psychologically demoralising environment. That is why it is so important that people like you are doing the work you do: you speak for thousands of others who have a very similar perspective on many issues. Keep up the great work.
So, there's a madness to your method, that explains a lot. You forgot to advise that we eschew obfuscation. But seriously, I feel like writing something now. Thanks for the inspiration.