The Difference Between a Ramble and an Essay

This is a ramble, which I'll explain in a second. A friend read my last post and complained about it's length, and though it's probably longer than it has to be, I don't see any reason to apologize for that. I tried to explain that it was I call a "rambling," or a "ramble," but I realized that I needed to ramble in a blog post to fully explain myself.

I have a simple distinction in my ponderous prose, that is, any prose I write that isn't telling a story, be it fiction or non-fiction: essays and rambles. Essays are what you'd expect them to be, well thought-out and reasoned arguments or discussions that come to a conclusion of some sort, whatever that means. The important distinction here is that they are thought-out. If say I've posted an essay, that means I've considered the beginning and end of it even before writing (probably no outline but at least some degree of extensive planning), have written it out in Word, proofread it multiple times, considered whether my arguments are sound, whether there's some more complicated angle that I haven't explored yet - a short essay could take as long as a week to write, considering all the time I would like to spend composing it. What is a ramble? Definitely not thought-out. I tackle a ramble spontaneously, without any planning, just letting my thoughts spill out right into the blog-post window as they would come, and without a moments proofread afterwards either. Once a ramble is written, it's written, and I click "Publish Post" and there it is in its raw (and only) form.

That's not to say I don't take my rambles seriously - though the thoughts are spilling out, I do try and make sure they make sense and follow some train of logic. It's not just a meaningless exercise in argument but, to put it better, a sort of public journal, a way to take some topic or some idea and dwell on it for a bit. In the course of a ramble I might consider things I hadn't thought of before, or I might digress. I post it because, if anything, a ramble should be commented on more than an essay, since in a ramble you are encountering ideas as they are developing, and so there is more room for constructive discussion and such. If the ideas of a ramble come to meaningful maturity, an essay can be made from the progress between the 1st simple thought and the profound end. But don't lose any sleep over understanding a ramble, because it is, in a sense, the equivalent of me talking to myself.

So if you read anything I write and notice that I've called it a rambling, don't be scared and think it will be incomprehensible, but also understand that if it is of some monstrous length, that's only because I was following a spontaneous train of thought and had no preset road to go along in my reasoning. Organization will be lacking, but hopefully there are ideas therein that are worth pondering over. I think ramblings should be funner to read, to see one's thoughts in their truest state as opposed to the refinements we make afterwards that are like make-up and wardrobe - you'll never get any closer to the real writer than seeing his thoughts just as they come to him. For the sake of my friend, I won't make this blog post any longer, just a note for the future...