Writing to Learn: How to Write - and Think - Clearly About Any Subject at All

Another is that the essence of writing is rewriting. Very few writers say on their first try exactly what they want to say.

Finally, in the national furor over “why Johnny can’t write,” let’s not forget to ask why Johnny also can’t learn. The two are connected. Writing organizes and clarifies our thoughts. 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 whatever we’re trying to

To conceal meaning (it was reasoned) is equally to conceal lack of meaning….

One of them asked him what it took to be a humor writer. “Comic writing,” he said, “needs audacity and exuberance and gaiety—and the most important of these is audacity.” Then he said: “The reader has to believe that the writer is feeling good.” The sentence hit with me tremendous force, especially when he added, almost as an afterthought, “even if

Students often feel guilty about modeling their writing on someone else’s writing. They think it’s unethical—which is commendable. Or they’re afraid they’ll lose their own identity. The point, however, is that we eventually move beyond our models; we take what we need and then we shed those skins and become who we are supposed to become. But nobody

By having them describe how they arrived at a result I can comment on it, and they can make use of my comment when they go back to the experiment. There’s a feedback that isn’t possible when the teacher just grades from numerical answers. Revising helps the students to rethink.”

Nouns that denote concepts are the death of vigorous writing. Good writing is specific and concrete.

Writing is learned by imitation. I learned to write mainly by reading writers who were doing the kind of writing I wanted to do and by trying to figure out how they did it.

Therefore, for the purposes of this book, I’ll generalize outrageously and state that there are two kinds of writing. One is explanatory writing: writing that transmits existing information or ideas. Call it Type A writing. The other is exploratory writing: writing that enables us to discover what we want to say. Call it Type B. They are equally va