William Zinsser's "On Writing Well" is a classic in the world of the how-to-write genre. But his "Writing to Learn" is less well known. I had to read it, though, because I had a compelling question.
I wanted to know if a person could write as a way to learn. Could a person gain clarity on truth by methodically sifting through their own mental contents? And if so, how would that work? Is it possible to use WRITING as a vehicle for LEARNING?
This is a question I've had for a while. I've heard that a person figures out what they believe only by working through their thoughts carefully in writing. If this is true, then I need to commit myself to some sort of dedicated practice because every day I get ideas in my head that I can't quite put into words. They seem compelling, but fuzzy. They excite and interest me. But they evade me too. They are not concrete enough to explain properly. So I feel stuck, sometimes, living inside my private world of ideas, unable to adequately formulate or organize them.
So that is why I picked up Zinsser's "Writing to Learn." I expected to find out how and to what degree a person uses the tool of writing to figure out the contents of their own brain.
Zinsser answered my question. In a nutshell, yes, writing does help you learn by organizing what you already know and exposing what you don't know, and clarifying thoughts by forcing some sort of commitment to real words.
Writing forces you to put ideas into concrete words and sentences. Your struggle to find the right word helps you clarify a concept mentally. Your re-reading what you've written exposes logical fallacies and fuzzy or blank spots in your reasoning. If you are honest with yourself, you will go back and think more and rework unclear passages until you can see, on the page, something that reflects as closely as possible what you have envisioned. It is a form of creation: making the implicit, explicit.
He distinguishes between two types of writing. First, there is free writing. That is writing to simply dump thoughts onto a page. That act can serve to remove distractions from your own mind if something is occupying you. Or, as you re-read what you wrote, it can expose ideas and themes that you may be unconsciously/consciously tossing around.
The second kind of writing is writing for a specific goal -- such as explaining a concept or story. This is where you really find out what you do and don't know.
But in order to really see your thinking properly, he advises against bloated writing with fancy language that can cloud meaning. If we are so flowery or verbose that someone can't tell what we are saying, then we are either unsure what we are trying to say, or we are trying to "appear" smart. Which actually makes a person look dumb or arrogant or both. But mostly it just doesn't serve to help you think clearly. Clear writing, clear wordage, equals clear thinking.
Zinsser advocates for simple language that flows from one well-worded concept to another, leading the reader through a thought process from a beginning to a logical conclusion. Seems obvious, I know, but when you are the writer, basically nothing is obvious anymore, so it is helpful to have that spelled out.
So in working my way through the book, I did eventually get my question answered, but I wasn't prepared for the format of this book, which I didn't like. It is actually written for educators to promote the idea of writing across the curriculum, so I wasn't his "target audience." And he talks at length about how he met up with various teachers from various scholastic subjects, and how they conversed about student engagement with this pedagogical method. That's where I skimmed.
The best parts of the book were the authors he quotes. He includes lengthy passages from writers of every discipline: chemistry, anthropology, mathematics, psychology, and others, and shows how these writers can make their topics reachable to everyone. (I had to go on to Amazon and wishlist a whole bunch of authors I discovered, which makes my need to clone myself to be a full-time reader even more urgent!)
Would I recommend this book? If you are an educator interested in writing across the curriculum, then 100%. Otherwise, probably not. Unless you want to read the awesome passages from other writers, which was great, or if you want to hear his commentary on those authors, which was interesting. But you get just as much good writing advice in his "On Writing Well."
I'm just glad I crossed the book off my list. Now I get to read another one!! Ahhh.... the sweet nectar of life: books! *sigh*