Writing as thinking
Photo by Hannah Olinger on Unsplash
We have all struggled with writing at one point or another in our careers. These struggles often manifest as procrastination in one form or another. We put off finishing a manuscript in favor of starting a new project. We find literally anything to do except for working on that grant application. Suddenly our service or teaching obligations become more “urgent”. Or we will block off a whole day, excited to finally make some headway on our writing project, only to drink 5 cups of coffee and waste too much time social media instead of actually writing. We tell ourselves that writing is hard, and that maybe we’re just not good at it. But really what we’re not good at—and what we are avoiding—is organizing our thoughts.
If you’ve ever kept a journal, you may have had the experience at the end of a writing session of feeling much better, or of finding a solution to a problem that had been bothering you, or you may just end up in a place that was very different from where you had started. As you write, you are working through the myriad of feelings, ideas, and obligations that are swirling around you every day. All of this occurs because writing is actually thinking. But writing as thinking doesn’t happen only when you’re writing in your journal. Every kind of writing is thinking—whether that’s writing an academic paper, a non-fiction essay, or a poem.
It is because writing is thinking that writing doesn’t always feel great and it doesn’t always make sense. Our writing is a mess when our thoughts aren’t particularly clear and we don’t know how to wrangle them. Don’t get discouraged though, as this is just the start of the process; it doesn’t need to be the end result. Writing is one method we can use to wrangle those thoughts. Precision in writing comes from precision in thinking, and that precision comes from cultivating writing as a practice. When you practice writing consistently over time, you’ll find yourself asking: what am I really trying to say? Or upon re-reading your work, you’ll think: this isn’t what I’m trying to say; what I want to say is THIS. Working through your thoughts will ultimately translate into the structure and order of the words you use to communicate those thoughts. The writing process will often feel murky and frustrating, but there will also be beautiful moments. Sometimes you will look at the final product and marvel at how it turned out, even better than you had imagined it could. Sometimes you won’t even remember writing it. It will be as if the hand simply took over, and then the words appeared on the page or screen. Sometimes, somewhere along the journey, you will happen upon an idea or discovery that was far bigger or better than what you had started with or expected to find, but you had needed to write your way to it first.
Understanding that writing is thinking is exactly why so many are alarmed at the increasing use of generative AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT in academic (as well as other) settings. By offloading writing to AI, we’re offloading the very act of thinking. By offloading thinking, we’re stifling our growth as scholars, and hindering the process of discovery. When using generative AI as an automated assistant, it is crucial that we understand what parts of our work we are automating. Do we want to automate our writing practice, and by extension, our thinking process?
So, how do you cultivate a practice of writing? Shockingly, it doesn’t take much. Natalie Goldberg, an influential author on the craft of writing, suggests writing for 10 minutes a day on any topic you’d like or in response to a guided prompt. Author and playwright, Julia Cameron, suggests doing “Morning Pages”, 3 handwritten pages that are done first thing in the morning on whatever comes to mind. Both strategies emphasize writing without editing, without judgment, and without constraint. While these activities may seem to be counterproductive to academic writing—why would I waste my time writing something random when I have a grant to finish?—they will get you into the habit of wrangling your thoughts into written form, help you establish your written “voice”, and may lead you to discover new ideas.
Writing isn’t easy, but, in academia, it’s a necessary task in so many facets of our jobs. Rather than seeing it as a skill you don’t have or don’t need, see it for it actually is: thinking. Embracing the perspective that writing is thinking can help you reframe writing as a (relatively) fun challenge in seeing just how far your ideas can go. If you need help with this reframe, or want to chat over your writing projects, feel free to reach out.
Next week: Speaking as persuasion
