I write therefore I…think
Thursday, August 26th, 2010
I’m taking a class this semester on how to teach writing workshops. It’s an interesting class, but not my point today. While slogging through the first of five textbooks (five! Eeek!), I came across a cool idea:

Writing is a tool for thinking. It’s a medium, a process for identifying or organizing our thoughts, reconsidering an issue from a new direction, or solving a problem.
And if writing is thinking, then we can look at the entire act of drafting and revising as one of exploration and discovery. (Which personally, sounds much more exciting than revising).
While this is probably common sense, I found it fascinating to see it articulated. And I wonder what it means for my process of writing.
I certainly find it true that while writing, the very act of writing gives me new ideas and new thoughts I would have never had otherwise. The very act of writing propels the new ideas which will be scribbled down next.
I just started a huge round of revisions on a manuscript I finished six months ago. And you know what else I noticed? The more I work on the revision, the more I try to clarify and consolidate, the more I learn about my characters. As I keep revising, I find tweaks in the plot that make it all come together at a new depth. I find ways to increase characterization. I’m not just editing, but thinking it through from new angles as I revise, and strengthening the story in the process.
And how about plotting? If we get ideas from the writing process itself, is it possible to plot out a whole book ahead of time? If we learn characterization from writing the characters, can we ever really know them at the beginning of a book?
So what do you think? Does the very act of writing create new ideas to write? Or do you wait for ideas and then write them down? Do you plot, or do you wait for ideas to come from the writing itself? Do you agree that writing is a medium for thinking?




As Chance recently reminded us, there’s no point in listening the bashers, especially ones you don’t know, or those who’s opinion you don’t hold in high esteem to start with. But this semester, I got lucky — no bashing, only helpful, critical and very well-thought-out advice.





