Writing Not to Express, But to Learn

I used to believe that people who write do so because they have something to say and know something about that something. Sure, there may be difficulty in choosing words, structuring sentences, and arranging paragraphs, but the main idea is already known and thus just needs to be described. Therefore, I perceived writing not as an artistic development or process-to-achieve-understanding, but as the final step in laying down what is already known.

This assumption about writing often kept the white pages in Microsoft Word as white pages. The thought was always, "How can I write about something, when I don't know what that something is, don't know what to say about it, and don't know what good it would be for anyone to read about it?" As I've grown to understand my own learning process, I realize that writing is not a final step, but one of the first steps required to walk on when forming coherent thoughts and opinion.

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to read Stanley Hauerwas' Hannah's Child where he summed up this same idea:

Writing is hard and difficult work because to write is to think. I do not have an idea and then find a way to express it. The expression is the idea. So I write because writing is the only way I know how to think.

I recently remarked to someone that I feel as if I have not been thinking very deeply over the past few months. I attributed this to busyness and a mind consumed with a newborn in the house. There is certainly truth in this, but the larger factor (I am realizing) is that I have not been writing at all. I hope to engage regularly in the process of writing not because I have a lot to say, but because by engaging the discipline, I will hopefully think deeply and be continually transformed.