I will be that you’ve heard this before: it’s really important that you learn how to write well.
But why? What’s the point of writing when we have so many other ways of communicating in modern times?
History
First, I’m going to give you a little history. Human beings tramped around the Earth for many years before they learned to write. They figured out how to make stone tools, hunt animals, and even farm before they learned how to write.
But the one thing they couldn’t do before they started writing was communicate over time and distance. If you wanted to tell someone something, that person had to be standing in front of you. People created oral traditions, where they transmitted knowledge through stories, songs, and poems, but still, there had to be at least one person standing with another person communicating.
But then someone figured out writing. In fact, lots of people figured out writing, so it was pretty much inevitable that writing was going to happen. Once people could write, they could record their ideas, questions, observations, and history. And once they could do that, they could read other people’s ideas, questions, observations, and histories.
That’s what we call civilization. Writing is pretty much at the center of modern civilization.
So what?
That’s probably what you’re saying next.
“Hey, maybe I don’t want to be civilized.”
OK, then go live in a cave, but not until you’re eighteen!
Before then, learn to write well and communicate and find out what being a good writer can do for you.
What writing can do for you
1.
The main thing writing will help you do is organize your thoughts. You might think you know your opinions about global warming, pet mongooses, or Minecraft. But until you start writing your ideas down and organizing them, they’re going to be all hazy and confused inside of you.
Writing helps you figure out what you think about things. Sometimes when you write things down and organize them, you’ll find yourself finding out what you don’t know about a subject, or changing your opinion on an issue.
2.
The second main thing writing will do for you is to allow you to communicate with others.
“Why can’t I just record a Youtube video?”
Well, you can. And that’s a form of communication. But writing is still the fastest, most efficient, most widely accessible mode of communication there is. And writing is behind a lot of the other ways we communicate.
3.
The third thing I think is important about writing is that it’s a great way to be creative. They say “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but I think making pictures and writing about things are really different. If you wanted to draw a picture of a beautiful tree, you would draw it very differently than you would describe it in words. Neither way of communicating—drawing or writing—is better than the other, and neither way is “more true” than the other.
They’re both different and important.
Other important things about writing
I’m not going to go on. I’m going to let you think of them: What have you done with writing that has been useful or entertaining in your life? Think of some of the ways you use writing…and write them down!
Number 1 is the one I use most often. It’s a way writing helps me.
Number 2 makes sense because we wrote letters long before we had YouTube videos.
About Number 3, I think I like writing better than drawing, but they’re both equal.
Some of my own ways that writing helps me:
Writing allows me to write FICTION stories that I thought up and really want to show to others.
Writing helps if you don’t know what tone to speak in to tell a story.
Writing helps if you can’t speak in another language.
Writing helps you if you are so ill that you cannot talk.
So you’re basically saying the whole point of writing is to communicate in a civilized fashion whilst being creative.
I disagree. The point of writing is to communicate in a civilized fashion whilst being creative AND having a finished result that is actually good writing. Being creative is not an excuse for writing poorly.
I do agree with you that good writing is important, DOGGGO. However, I don’t agree that we should shame people who don’t write well yet. Writing is a practice: If you don’t do it, you can’t get better at it. One way to get better is to write something, however poorly you write, and share it with other people. The more you write and share, the better your writing will get. So I will never agree that people should hold back their writing for feat that it’s not “good enough.” It’s always good enough for now, and it can always improve!
(Amazingly, I missed this comment years ago and am only now responding to it. Sorry it took me so long – not sure why I didn’t see it!)