So you're saying that Paul Graham is trying? :) From that same Wiki definition I notice that "In English, essay first meant a trial or an attempt. That implie

So you're saying that Paul Graham is trying? :) From that same Wiki definition I notice that "In English, essay first meant a trial or an attempt. That implies an iteration on some seed, or maybe just the intent to grow and iterate on the initial essay. Personally I find that true. Most of my "essays" I keep for myself, or sometimes share just with close friends who I trust to bounce ideas off as they mature. Later they become collections of essays in a folder, and I might join the dots between them to perhaps see the potential for something of a book, or a new essay that synthesises them. So I think calling something an "essay" grants the author one special privilege; the right to revise and "re-attempt" the same piece without moral judgement. That's problematic in the Internet age, where the provenance of a document is judged by dates, by diffs to archived versions etc. It wouldn't seem right to actually change the contents at the same URL. Nor would it seem right to insist on tracking edits, because a writer always has the right to forget and disown old and weak ideas they've moved beyond. So I think essayists have our permission to keep approaching the same idea over and over. The way composers would sometimes write ten different versions of the same piece. What makes a "best" essay then is its improvement with respect to the author's previous attempts. All we can ask is, "Is this Mr Graham's best essay so far?"