An Essayist's Notebook

While reflecting on voice recently, I found myself arriving at an unexpected conclusion. The question was not where my voice came from, but where it should go. Over the years my writing has gradually organised itself into distinct territories. Marshall on Policy deals with policy. The Marshall Review provides a home for commentary and reflection. Marshall on Essays explores essaying itself. My music sites have their own purposes and audiences.

These boundaries are useful. They help readers find what interests them and avoid what doesn't. We do not read newspapers from cover to cover; we navigate them by habit and interest. Websites are no different.

Yet life continually presents things that sit beyond such categories. A queue. A speed bump. A campervan parked outside the house. An overheard remark. An assumption nobody seems to question. A small irritation that turns out to reveal something larger.

These things rarely justify an essay. They are often too slight for policy and too personal for review. Yet they are frequently where thought begins. That realisation has led to the creation of INQ. Unlike my other sites, INQ is not organised around a subject. It is organised around attention. The working strapline is:

INQ.ie Marshall on Things.

It is a place for observations, questions, curiosities, irritations and occasional convictions. A place where the subject need not justify itself before it is allowed onto the page. Perhaps the simplest way of putting it is this: INQ is where I intend to write in my own voice, unboxed.

Not recklessly. Not carelessly. But without feeling obliged to fit every thought into a pre-existing category or publication. If Marshall on Policy asks what should be done, and The Marshall Review asks what should be made of something, INQ asks a simpler question:

What's going on here?

The answer may sometimes turn into an essay. It may occasionally become a policy piece. More often it will remain simply an observation. And that is enough. As a reminder to myself, should I ever become too polite, too cautious, or too eager to self-censor: Speak up, man.

And, oh yeah, it's pronounced ink.