Write
First, Think Later
 Why is it so Hard to Get From Thought to Writing?
Thought is not a linear, nice, neat process. Thought
is layered, circular, spiraled, interrupted. Thought is
words, pictures, and various senses. Thought is a mess.
Eventually, thought can become something every scholar
values: a nice clear sentence. A grammatical, flowing sentence
that makes its point concisely. Unlike the sentence I just
wrote.
But if you sit around, waiting for the jumbled mess of
thoughts to become that lovely sentence, you will write
one sentence a week, if you’re lucky. It will be a
perfectly nice sentence. But it won’t finish your
dissertation or get you tenure.
How can we speed up this process of going from incoherent
thoughts to clear sentences, paragraphs and scholarly arguments?
One way is to write before the thoughts have fully formed.
In other words, write to find out what you think.
 The Critic vs. Creator
Peter Elbow, in his classic book "Writing
with Power," suggests that successful writing
has two stages; creating and criticizing. The problem
is that these two stages tend to “operate at cross
purposes: creativity is strong only if critical thinking
is weak, or vice versa.” (p. 9) If we try to do
both stages at once, we grind to a halt: “…many
people are tied in knots by trying to be creative and
critical at the same time and so they write wretchedly
or not at all.” (Elbow, p. 9)
If you've read
my newsletter before, you might guess that I think
the “Critic” resides in the left hemisphere
and the “Creator” in the right. Although they
live in the same brain, they don’t see eye to eye.
So in order to expedite the writing process, it’s
best to let the Creator go first. This means that your right
hemisphere, which is not specialized for verbal activities,
will be mediating your writing. The ideas will flow, but
the language and logic may not show up the way you like
at this point. That’s ok.
As you write, you will hear a little voice saying, “this
is the the biggest bunch of baloney; you’re repeating
yourself; this is trite, useless, poorly formed, not grammatical,
what will they say when they read it, etc. etc.” Ignore
that voice – it’s your left hemisphere trying
desperately to regain control. It’s a very controlling
hemisphere, especially in academics.
Later, in a different writing session, allow the left hemisphere/Critic
to have its say. You will rewrite, delete, move sentences
around, delete some more, find better words and phrases,
and generally improve your work.
When you honor the fact that different parts of your brain
work differently, you make the best use of all that brain
power you’ve got.
By the way, I would never ask you to do something I wouldn’t
do myself. This article has 461 words, before writing this
sentence. But I threw away 322 other words to get to this
point. Both my hemispheres are satisfied.
Warmly,
Gina
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