the tiniest essay who ever lived.

lifespan: 500 words (roughly)

One of the shortest essays in the world has a total of zero words.

Yes, you heard that right. Aside from the a title and a few notes at the bottom, that essay is a blank page.

It's a paper in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis titled "The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of writers' block" by Dennis Upper in 1974.

Dennis really took situational irony personal.

Anyways, this paper actually has nothing to do with what I plan on talking about in this letter, I just thought the useless knowledge would be nice to put out there.

the discovery

This week's discovery goes by the name of the mini essay, and it’s a concept I got from another beloved creator who also goes by a name which is Odysseas, to whom I would probably give my last bowl of ice cream if it ever came down to it.

Watch this to learn about the mini essay.

This letter is not really a tutorial on how to write a mini essay, mostly because I'm yet to write one myself.

This is more or less just me clarifying my thoughts.

the (possible) structure of my mini essays.

For now, my mini essays are going to go as thus; I'll start wth a thesis which is going to be as self explanatiry and as broken down as possible.

Like; 'rejecting mainstream interests is counterintuitive'.

Then I go right into it; no intro, no storytimes, just straight to the meat.

Which now that I think about it is the same structure of my shower ted talks.

The only difference being that I would have to edit away any diversions, of which there are a lot when I talk to myself in the bathroom.

All that being said, my word count limit would be 1k words.

Which is very freeing for me as a certified yapper with desicion paralysis as my second name.

A teensy bit of structure is the best way for me to exercise my creative freedom fully.

I'm also not the fastest writer.

I've been ghostwriting for close to six months-damn-and till date I can't write more than 500 words in one hour, and that's with an extremely detailed outline.

Anyways, I'm currently allowing ideas for my first mini essay marinate in my brain which will hopefully not take a long time.

But who am I kidding, everytime I've said that, I end up going AWOL for a month or two.

With me being in the middle of exams, we can only hope that doesnt happen this time.

challenge completed?

In my last letter, I mentined trying to go as low as possible something, that something being the word count of this letter which I managed to keep at about 500 words (minus the outro) which is pretty much one of my shortest word counts on a letter so far.

outro+cta

Now that my free trial month is over, I actually have to start getting serious with my life.

So while I'm battling lecturers for A's in my exams, I'm going to be working on my personal brand, from the ground up.

Starting with a brand strategy and possibly a content calendar

I've also gone back to my first love, chess and I plan on learning it from scratch so my little brother-who I taught-won't beat me when I go back home.

Wish me luck.

And I'll see you in my next letter.

vale.