Writing and Thinking

Christopher Morley once advised that "the problem is to teach ourselves to think, and the writing will take care of itself." In other words, writing is a product of clear thinking. That sounds right and it's a logical cause and effect line of thought. How can we write if we can't think? Flannery O'Connor had an answer to that. She said, "I write to discover what I know." For her, the writing came before the thinking and the cause and effect of Morley's rationale was reversed. In other words, thinking is a product of writing. Hmmm. What this apparent dichotomy means to writers is that thinking and writing are inextricably intertwined. Each feeds the other and each enhances the other. So when we are writing, we need to pay attention to what's going on in our brains. Are we just writing to record what we already know or are we writing to discover what we have yet to learn? Perhaps we are doing both. It is very possible that by first plumbing the depths of what you know well, you will stumble upon what you had never considered before. And writing is the tool that gets you there. If we use writing as the powerful tool that it is and use it to not only share existing knowledge, but also to explore as yet undiscovered knowledge, we can find new planes and vistas together with our readers and experience the thrill of growing through good writing. May 2012 be a year of this kind of growth for you.