AF: Thoughts on thinking, reading, writing

Maria inspired this post...this started out as just as a comment on her post, but as I got into it, I saw that there was something bigger that I wanted to say to all of you.  So I rewrote, and here I am.

First, two by Zinsser, one of my favorite writing teachers:

Writing is not a special language that belongs to English teachers and a few other sensitive souls who have a 'gift for words.' Writing is the logical arrangement of thought. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly, about any subject at all.  

and

Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own. Writing enables us to find out what we know -- and what we don't know -- about anything we're trying to learn.

Thinking and reading and writing in a complex manner takes practice. No one has to be amazed or intimidated or rendered silent by uncertainty or shyness. You are young, and you need lots of opportunities to think and read and write about complex things.

Technology has little to do with that capacity. You can build the discipline to stick with something when it gets hard.  This has to do with distractibility -- and distractibility can be overcome, even while using technology -- or at least distractibility can be factored in, or mitigated.

For example: I know that when I read an e-book on my iPad, if the book starts giving me any trouble, I am more likely to bail out than when I am reading the same book in paper-and-glue format. When I'm reading on my iPad, I often get the sudden urge to see whether anyone liked the photo I posted on Instagram. Then I might read Twitter for a minute or two or five, and then I'll just quickly check Facebook. Before I know it, 30 minutes are gone. However, if the same book is giving me trouble in paper-and-glue, my options are fewer. I may fall asleep, or I will just put the book down and go do something else.

Technology hasn't limited our ability to think. It just makes bailing out easier. If you want to be a deep thinker, you can, whatever format you work in.  You train yourself to hang. with. it.

Changing formats up works best for me.  Keyboard...pen...ink...digital media...traditional media...I want to know how to use it all.  I am fluent in all of it.  Literacy today means being able to work well in all formats.

The secret is to learn how to PERSEVERE, to stop flitting from thing to thing, like a moth. Learn to go slow.  Technology speeds us up, has our heads swinging back and forth, "what should I look at next?"  But as ideas become more complex, thinking and learning require that we go deep into a thought, persist, consider implications, reflect on what we are doing.  And then to write about the work.

Multiple studies affirm what Zinsser said,  that WRITING "our way into a subject [makes] it our own", helps us to apprehend what we are learning.

[Notice, I used the verb "apprehend" instead of "comprehend," "understand," etc.  Why?  It is a conscious decision, the use of that particular word.  I point this out because this is the level of attention that I bring to this task.  I want you to be more CAREFUL as you choose words, to stop grabbing a close approximation, while at the same time learning to use language in ways that are a little wild and rebellious too.  Break a few rules.  Write something surprising and risky.]

Anyway.  Want to learn to amaze yourself? Write about what you are learning and thinking more.

One last thing:  Clive Thompson talks about this in STYT, (so did Socrates -- I mean, this is a fundamental truth of rhetoric):  the AUDIENCE matters.  An audience shapes writers.  So many people haven't started writing on the blog, or they hold back, because suddenly their writing has a wide audience.  You are not just writing for a teacher.  The unseen audience can motivate some people; it silences others.

(And writing for teachers can have a strange effect on a writer's development.  We'll talk more about this later.)

Anyway, it's not just writing that is going to help you learn to think more deeply.  It is writing for an audience.  Why not say something today?  It's July 23.   Today is a good day to get started, if you haven't already.