
Writing Is Thinking: Learning to Write with Confidence - stephsmithio
https://blog.stephsmith.io/learning-to-write-with-confidence/
======
soneca
I write in Portuguese with confidence. Then I started to get confidence
writing in English. Then I got confident enough to start writing a newsletter
with writing advice _in English_ [0]

Then someone in HN commented in one of my posts _" I don't trust any writing
advice from someone who thinks "certificated" is a word"_ lol

That killed most of my confidence of writing in English and I gave up the idea
of having a newsletter.

[0]
[https://writingfordevelopers.substack.com](https://writingfordevelopers.substack.com)

~~~
cmbailey
The FAA deliberately uses "certificated" as opposed to "certified" when
referring to pilots and flight instructors.

It insists that conveys a distinct and useful meaning because they don't
certify pilot quality. Instead, the pilot has been issued a certificate
confirming that they passed a test to a particular minimum standard. The
reason for the difference is to convey that there is no assurance or guarantee
that the pilot consistently and continuously meets this standard. Unlike with
a "certified used car", the FAA is not going to be held responsible if your
pilot crashes your plane.

Reference: I am an FAA-certificated Flight Instructor and Commercial Pilot.

[Edit: typo, thank you lkschubert8]

~~~
phasetransition
I prefer this particular word sense.

Personally, it would inspire more humility about what a certificate means and
my ability to consistently apply the knowledge behind it. It gives pause
immediately as I consider things I could apply it to.

------
atoav
A technique I often use when I ended up in a confused spot or feel unhappy is
to write letters to a person without sending them.

Somehow having a person in mind that you have to explain the whole mess to,
really fucuses your thoughts and helps you in some way to figure out where you
stand faster and more easily.

~~~
xtacy
One of my professors used to say -- Writing is to thinking as alum is to murky
water. Indeed, writing makes you crystallise your thoughts.

------
CalChris
Thinking is thinking and writing is writing. We regret the confusion.

Writing is work. You start with words on paper (or on a laptop) and you keep
on working until it isn't crap. You start with something. You end with
something better.

What your college writing instructors were teaching you was your mistakes.
Think about them and remember them. When they pointed out a mistake, keep on a
lookout because you'll make that mistake again. People don't make random
mistakes. They are very systematic in their mistakes. I still remember my
corrections.

When I was in college my trick was to get a draft done a week before the
deadline. It wasn't perfect. It was anything but perfect. But it was
something. It said roughly, not perfectly by any stretch, what I wanted to
say. Then I wrote, rewrote, edited, deleted, added, corrected, reworded,
reordered, cited, formatted, spell checked, grammar checked, perfected,
critiqued, tweaked, read aloud, questioned, ... on up to the deadline.

I worked. I didn't think. I worked. I didn't wait for some great thought to
descend upon me from the clouds at the deadline (that works for Maureen Dowd
but I'm not Maureen Dowd; she has talent and I don't). I worked. Fact is, I
enjoyed my work. Pretty much a day before the deadline, I was damned cocky
about my writing (lowest essay grade, A-) and _then_ I really started having
fun. At that point, I was relaxed and I really knew what I wanted. Like a cook
who enjoys their own cooking, when I go back to re-read it, I thoroughly enjoy
my own writing. The work and the craft show, to me at least. And if it doesn't
show to me then it can't show to someone else.

Writing is work. It is closer to restaurant prep than it is to confiserie.

~~~
therealdrag0
I had a similar experience in university, and your post makes me feel
nostalgic for the times of having nothing to do but work on an essay and think
about my language and the craft. :)

> Thinking is thinking and writing is writing. We regret the confusion.

You're right that the headline is oversimplified; and saying this might even
obfuscate the point it's trying to make, which is that writing can be a tool
to clarify thinking. This I sympathize with. Thoughts can be slippery and
emotional and fallacious, but writing them down helps build compound thoughts
and gives you leverage to organize them into a more coherent/rational
narrative. So I think it's worth spreading the notion that writing is not just
for communication, but can be a tool for thinking.

------
greggman2
I know I struggled with writing when I was in junior high and high school. Now
as an adult I find it relatively easy I think. My advice to my junior high
school teacher would be to talk to the student (me) about something they
enjoy. Whatever that is today I have no idea. Fortnite? Boys? Girls? whatever,
ask what the kid is into. Then ask questions about it. Why do they like it?
What's so cool about it. What's it like to do. Etc.. After they've talked your
ear off for 10 minutes tell them to just write everything they just told you.

No idea if that would work but I feel like most people have no trouble talking
about things they enjoy. Could be a movie, a TV show, a sport, science,
twitter, instagram, no idea. If my 8th grade teacher had not asked me to write
but instead just talked with me about say D&D, something I was into, I'm sure
I could have spoken 1000-5000 words on it. The same words I'd have said to
another kid I wanted to introduce D&D to them. I believe that would have
helped me write sooner.

I also wonder if the internet is a net plus here. People write short tweets
but lots of people write long comments. This comment itself is more than I
think I ever wrote on a teacher chosen topic in 8th grade.

~~~
stephsmithio
I think this is a great point. When I was growing up, I really struggled with
writing and in hindsight, it was because I had no freedom with it. I was
writing about topics that I didn't care about and trying to write in a way
that I thought would be graded well. For years after, I thought the struggle I
faced just meant that I "wasn't a writer" and avoided it at all costs. Only
recently have I started to explore it more due to a strange string of career
events, but I hypothesize that many others will never revisit it once they've
classified it as something they're not good at.

------
mttyng
It’s exceedingly difficult to write clearly and get your point across, and
this is especially true for technical subject matter. Steven Pinker calls this
the “blindness of expertise” which prohibits us from explaining concepts we’re
familiar with in a clear way because we assume the reader to have more
knowledge than they actually do. Reading his book, “A Sense of Style” made a
lot of things clearer to me in terms of writing. I recommend the book highly,
even though it gets _super_ deep on grammatical structure and, from my
perspective, that tended to be a little dry (and over my head).

~~~
ihadfun
Sounds like the author was blind to his expertise.

~~~
mttyng
Ha! Good point. Although, I don’t think I was the targeted audience. It seemed
to be more geared towards individuals that label themselves as “writers”. I
remember practically nothing from my grammar education. Terminology like
“definite article” might as well be Mandarin.

~~~
therealdrag0
:) I also loved that book. I developed, what I like to think of as a sense of
style, while getting an English degree, and the main tools/advice I developed
totally line up with what he shared in the book.

------
sheinsheish
I write in English. Not a lot but I do. It’s not my native language though. My
mother language is greek. I grew up in Greece, then in age of around 23 went
to study piano in Germany for 5 years and instead of going back to Greece I
landed in Croatia. Here I had to learn a complete new (Slavic?) language. It
took me 3 years. In the meantime I was consuming English content in the
“usually suspicious” ways, internet, software, books, movies, tv etc. The way
I communicated with my wife was in german first(where we met), then a little
greek and after we got back to Zagreb / Croatia, we crossfaded to croatian the
more I learned it. My point is: I can read and write a specific language
(croatian or english better the other two less) the same goes for talking. But
there’s absolute no distinction whatsoever in my head about what is the way I
think in : croatian or greek? I really don’t know. It’s like a fog or cloud.
What do you guys think ?

~~~
jhrmnn
My own personal theory of mind is heavily inspired by David Eagleman's
Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. There he describes a model of mind
in which a multitude of independent "agents" propose "ideas", which bubble up
to our consciousness (the top-level agents), which pick some of these ideas
according to some (to us) opaque key.

In this model, I imagine that many of these low-level ideas start in a non-
language form, and as they bubble up to the higher levels of the mind, they
get wrapped in language, as they are processed by consciousness. But since
things are not simple, the higher-level agents can modulate the lower-level
ones, and that's how the language parts of our minds can influence the non-
language (emotional?) parts. I have experienced several instances of purely
rational cognition imprinting into my emotional perception of reality.

------
cryptobro1984
I've really enjoyed weekly writer's meetups. They come in different flavors,
but essentially, writers get together in a coffee shop, chat for 5 minutes,
and then write for an hour or two in silence. Helps make writing a little more
fun than sitting in a cave by yourself, and it's nice to connect with fellow
writers.

~~~
tarosnow
Does it not feel awkward in that one or two hours of silence though?

~~~
adzm
Not when you realize that everyone else is too busy doing their own thing to
pay any attention to you.

------
stephsmithio
Growing up, writing was often my least favourite thing to do. It still doesn't
come "naturally" to me, but this year I starting using a process that makes it
easier for me to "show up". I've basically tried to lower the barrier to
entry.

Curious to know what writing tips or processes others are using to strengthen
their "writing muscle".

~~~
slowmovintarget
It may sound silly, but learn to maintain a fountain pen.

If you stop writing, the ink dries out. So write a page every day. Yes, you'll
be writing about the pen and paper a bit. But your brain will be rewired to
move your hand.

You'll need to learn the ritual of cleaning the pen with cool water
(preferably distilled). You'll love the ritual of carefully opening the bottle
of ink, and filling the converter (I recommend a blunt syringe). The bottle is
very often beautiful in and of itself. Once you have refilled the pen (and
cleaned it off), it begs to be used again.

Get good paper, or at least paper able to stand up to proper liquid ink.

Eventually, you will find that you're not writing about how well the ink is
flowing, or whether the nib is scratchy. You'll be writing out your thoughts
on the use of narrative for propaganda, or the challenges of raising children,
or the sadness you feel at the change of season. Or you'll write about the
pen.

You'll get in the habit, though. It will clarify your thoughts. One last
recommendation: put the date on each entry. You'll find it interesting later.

Fountain pens 101 [1] is a good set of videos for learning about fountain
pens.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1AEFDC6AC935BAFC](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1AEFDC6AC935BAFC)

~~~
rexpop
> Yes, you'll be writing about the pen and paper a bit.

My diary is full of entries about how I need to cut my fingernails because
they're making it hard to type a diary entry.

------
Roritharr
I always stop myself writing longer professional articles as what I'd like to
write doesnt fit my own bar of quality requirements.

I have some experience in a couple of fields and deeper experience in a few,
but I can't really point to any studies that would underpin any learnings or
points I'd like to make and without those I feel what ever I write becomes
just the ramblings of someone vaguely qualified.

I have a much easier time giving advice in person, sometimes having a couple
of people invite me to observe & coach, but somehow writing feels like it
requires so much more care and study that it frightens me to start.

~~~
ribs
I hear all that, but you know how it is about writing - you can help dozen /
hundreds / thousands of people at once. It’s probably worth it to write
something and show it to some people.

