An Essayist's Notebook

Notes towards an essay

All of my recently published essays have been identified by AI scanners as between 67% and 98% AI-generated.

I wrote my first published essay in 1965 and made my first documented contribution to public policy in 1969, in the United Kingdom, on the subject of arbitrary dismissal.

Since that time, my professional life has required that I write continually; essays, policy papers, reports, breifings, teaching materials & text books, letters, magazine features & jouralism, manuals and books

The suggestion that this work, or work emerging from the same habits and disciplines, is now classified as AI-generated is both curious and instructive. And even as I write this, I notice I can't help myself, but open this note with a tension. It's hard-wired. An immediate construction that emerges when my fingers connect with keys.

What's happening

I am told that as a practised writer, I may be triggering some of the same patterns that AI systems were trained to produce:

Clear, grammatical sentences with few mistakes. Consistent tone and structure throughout a piece. Balanced paragraph lengths. Predictable word choices rather than unusual or idiosyncratic phrasing. Explanatory writing that moves logically from point to point.

Apparently, and somewhat ironically, these are features that I strive for, I am after all addressing audiences that, for the most part, appreciate these things. These are features of good professional writing. And these are the very features that trigger the AI conclusion that I, or that my writing, is AI generated.

Thought: If I, and other writers, have been writing in roughly this manner for fifty, sixty years or more, and AI now writes in a similar manner, what is imitating whom?

Interim test.

So I took the seven paragraphs above, which I have written in the last five minutes or so, and ran them through the first free AI text detector that came up on bing; undetectable.ai . I did well and scored only 71% as AI drafted. Just Done gave me around 75% AI

The test assignment

Write an essay with three objectives:

1: Explain why my notebooks (like this one) are public. 2: Explain why I choose to use Write.as as my writing and publishing surface 3: Record the blogs and notebooks I maintain on Write.as and show how they link together, and how they link-in to my wider publication architecture.

Below I'm listing my structured notes that I will use to write the essay. Essentially I'll start with everything that occurs to me that I think is relevant. I will use the facility that Write.as affords me to edit and organize my notes as my thinking proceeds.

Structured Notes

I already have a notional structure in my head about the flow of the essay – the “publication architecture” as I call it.

I seem to be carrying an explanation of why the process of public thinking matters to me as an essayist. Write.as happens to be the tool.

I'm tempted to structure it around these questions: why I make my notes public / the open notebook concept why I want the foundations visible how my essays are the pursuit of understanding why write.as revision as navigation The notebooks/blogs as a defined appendix

Why I Write in Public

The discipline : People sometimes ask why so much of my writing appears in public notebooks rather than only in finished essays. The question assumes that the notebooks exist in order to reveal the process behind the essays. That is partly true. But disclosure is not the principal reason. Publishing notes is not an act of disclosure. It is an act of discipline.

Obligation : One of the most important lessons I learned from teaching is that public speech creates responsibility. The moment a statement enters the public domain, the person making that statement becomes accountable for it. That responsibility exists even when one is simply reporting the views of others...

If I write that the Environmental Party chooses to prioritise a particular issue, I remain accountable for whether I have represented that position fairly, accurately and honestly. Public communication imposes obligations.

It requires care not only in what is said but also in how it is said. A private note can remain vague. A public note demands greater precision. The audience may be large or small. There may be no audience at all. That is beside the point. Publication itself creates a standard to which the author must answer. The public note becomes a challenge: “Are you prepared to stand over this?”

Why the Foundations Matter

Many of my essays, reviews and policy pieces contain observations, interpretations and conclusions. Those observations emerge from somewhere. They arise from notebooks, fragments, field observations, discarded ideas, references, questions, conversations and research. Increasingly, I have felt that if the conclusions are visible, then at least some of their foundations should also be visible.

There is something almost contradictory about that. Foundations are usually hidden. Yet I find myself wanting to expose parts of the structure rather than conceal it. Not because I believe it to be beyond criticism. Almost the opposite. I want it to remain open to criticism. In a sense I am inviting the reader to become an editor and sub-editor peering over my shoulder. The notebooks are not merely supporting documents. They are part of the conversation. The reader is able to examine not only the finished essay but some of the path by which the essay emerged.

Essays and Understanding

I describe my essays as attempts at understanding rather than acts of advocacy. Advocacy begins with a destination. The essay begins with a question. Or a tension. Or a contradiction. Or an observation that refuses to go away.

My task is not primarily to persuade. My task is to understand. And to share that understaning. The closest I come to advocay is the pursuit of a shared understanding. If I claim that my essays pursue understanding rather than advocacy, then I should be accountable to that claim.

The notebooks help provide that accountability. They reveal whether I have genuinely followed the evidence. They reveal whether I have acknowledged ambiguity. They reveal whether reality persuaded me before I attempted to persuade the reader. If I claim merely to illuminate a tension, then I must be prepared to show how I arrived there. The notebooks become part of the discipline of intellectual honesty.

My View of Essay Writing

The essay is not journalism. Neither is it academic writing nor opinion. It is a mode of inquiry. The essay begins with a tension and follows that tension wherever it leads. The essayist starts not with a conclusion but with a problem. Through reflection, observation, research and writing, relationships previously hidden become visible.

The purpose of the essay is not necessarily resolution. Sometimes the deepest achievement of an essay is simply to reveal what is actually being argued about. Or what relationship has remained unseen. The essay is therefore a journey towards perception. Not toward persuasion.

Why Write.as?

The reasons are partly philosophical and partly practical. Write.as allows me to work almost anywhere. I can work from a phone while travelling. I can capture a thought before it disappears. I can draft a paragraph while waiting for a train or sitting in a harbour. Good sentences rarely arrive according to schedule. The platform accommodates that reality.

More importantly, Write.as has altered my relationship with composition. Years ago I would often compose large sections of text in my head before writing them down. The arrival of increasingly sophisticated software encouraged a different habit. Revision became too easy. Drafting became fragmented. Composition increasingly moved from the mind to the screen. Write.as on my phone, nudges me back towards mental composition. I find myself crafting paragraphs internally before typing them. It encourages me to think first and edit later.

The Freedom of Not Knowing

Perhaps the most important characteristic of Write.as is that a piece does not need to know what it is when it begins. I can sketch a structure anonymously. I can create an outline. I can develop an idea. I can begin writing without deciding where it belongs. Indeed, I can finish a piece before making any decision about what sort of piece it is.

Only afterwards do I decide whether it belongs in: • a notebook, • a field note, • a review, • a briefing, • a policy essay, • an essay collection, • or somewhere else entirely. There is enormous freedom in that. The classification follows the writing. The work discovers what it is before being assigned a home.

Publication Architecture

Part of this arises from the way I work. I sometimes think of myself not only as an essayist but as a publication architect. I am often interested in structures before I am interested in destinations. I want to understand the shape of an argument. The relationships between ideas. The route through a landscape.

Only later do I determine where a piece belongs. Write.as makes that possible. A piece can exist before its final form is known.

Revision

Revision occupies a different role in my work than it does for many writers. The important epistemological work often happens in the first draft. The writing itself generates understanding. Relationships emerge. Connections become visible. Assumptions reveal themselves. The first draft is frequently where discovery occurs.

Subsequent revision is something different. Less an act of knowing. More an act of navigation. Like choosing the best line through a bend on a favourite motorcycle. Or selecting the ideal moment to tack in a sailing race. The destination remains unchanged. The craft lies in finding the cleanest route.

The Open Notebook

The various notebooks and publications form something like an open notebook. Most websites display conclusions. These sites document parts of the process that precedes conclusions. Ideas begin as observations. Observations become notes. Notes become briefings. Briefings become essays. Essays become reviews, policy pieces or larger works. Not all observations become essays. Not all notes deserve publication beyond the notebook. Some remain exactly as they began. Yet together they document an attempt to understand rather than to persuade. Persuasion is left to the set of relationships between the revealed in the elements of the source material, and the reader

Appendix: The Write.as Publications

The Marshall Review (rvw.ie) The most polished publication in the network. Essays and reviews concerning culture, ideas, books, music and public life.

An Essayist's Notebook (esy.ie) Questions, fragments, observations and developing ideas. The closest thing to a public working notebook.

Field Notes (notes.marshall.ie) Research notes, sources, references and supporting material. An attempt to make visible some of the foundations from which essays emerge.

Radar Signals (signals.marshall.ie) Observations, anomalies, developments and emerging patterns whose significance may not yet be fully understood.

Briefing Insights (insights.marshall.ie) Short analytical briefings and concise explorations arising from ongoing inquiry.

The Marginalia of Sigi (sigi.ie) Annotations, side notes, reflections and intellectual wanderings that do not naturally belong elsewhere.

Wordpress & Substack

Marshall on Policy (plcy.ie) Essays and reflections dealing with governance, public policy and civic questions.

Ontology (ontology.marshall.ie) Explorations of meaning, relationships, categories and the structures through which ideas acquire significance.

The Writing Network Taken together, these sites function less as separate blogs than as different views of a single intellectual process. Some contain signals. Some contain research. Some contain questions. Some contain essays. All form part of the same endeavour: the attempt to understand the world through inquiry, and to conduct that inquiry in public