I had a realization at some point which was really helpful: I don’t really know what I think about something until I write about it. I wondered why that is, and I came up with four reasons!
- Writing puts thoughts into a concrete form
- Writing makes you focus on details
- Writing makes you clarify your thoughts
- Writing makes you organize your thoughts
Writing puts thoughts into a concrete form
Thoughts—what are they made of? That depends on whether you want a scientific, philosophical, or religious answer! But from a writer’s perspective, thoughts live in our brains without any substance. Sometimes we know what we’re thinking, but when someone says, “What do you think?”…we can’t answer! And sometimes when we do answer, our thoughts come out sounding very different than they did inside of us.
When you make a thought “concrete” by writing it down, you can imagine pouring the wet slop from a concrete mixer into a mold, smoothing it out, and making it useful. That’s what you do with your thoughts. You put them into words and then you can see how one thought is lumpy and hard to manage, another thought is missing a corner, and yet another thought will never be part of a good, solid sidewalk!
Writing makes you focus on details
Have you ever noticed that you think you know what you think about something, but then someone starts asking you questions and you realize you haven’t really thought it through?
That happens to me at restaurants all the time. Wait: do I want soup or salad with that? Fried rice or plain? Do I need a drink or is water OK?
Writing your thought down and making it concrete helps you fill it in with details. Let’s take a simple example. Think about a place that you know well: your grandparents’ house, your local library, or the grocery store you go to. Which details would help someone understand how you feel about this place?
Maybe your grandma’s house smells like cinnamon and that makes you feel comforted. Maybe you remember an event at the library that still makes you laugh. Maybe you have a memory from when you were little and you were scared that you were stuck in the cart!
Once your thought is concrete, you can fill it out with detail that makes it more real to other people.
Writing helps you clarify your thoughts
Think about something you have a strong opinion about. If you had to defend that opinion, how well would you do right now? Maybe OK. But what if you wrote it down, made it concrete, and found the details that would be most convincing? Ah, then you’d be ready for a discussion!
Sometimes, though, writing down your opinion has an unexpected result: You don’t really agree with yourself anymore! Oh, no, how awful! Actually, I disagree: that’s not awful at all. A lot of times we have opinions and ideas that we haven’t really examined. Once we do, we become more thoughtful and more aware. Occasionally, we end up changing our opinion. But more often we end up understanding the issue more deeply, which is always good.
Writing helps you organize your thoughts
Thoughts are in our heads in a jumble. Some of us are pretty good at organizing in our head, but most of us do best if we have something concrete to work with. And for thoughts, that means written words. If you want to write about different varieties of snails, how would you organize what you write? Would you separate the types of snails by size? By habitat? By how delicious they taste? Writing down the various qualities will help you make that decision.
It gets even more complicated when we are making an argument (and no, I’m not talking about yelling at your sibling!). An argument in writing is the main point that you are making. So perhaps your point is that hamsters are better pets than rats. If you really want to convince someone, organized thoughts will lead them through your argument to your conclusion. If they follow along with you, they’ll be more likely to think, “Hey, that person has made some good points!”
If it’s all a jumble, they’ll just stick with whatever opinion they had going into it all.
The fact is, I don’t know what I think till I write it down
This is literally true: I didn’t know why I think it’s good to write things down until I wrote all this down and figured it out! As a writer, obviously, I hope you love writing as much as I do. But even if you think of it as a chore, at least you can think of it as a helpful chore.
Writing helps you make your ideas clearer, more detailed, and better organized.
Now… go have that argument!
Photos by Annie Spratt on Unsplash and Jon Tyson on Unsplash