Start Me Up

I had the pleasure of talking to some freshmen in their UVC classes last week. I asked them what they wanted to know about college writing. During our conversation, a theme emerged. Most of the students I spoke with told me that the hardest part about writing was getting started.

There are a number of techniques for getting started. Experts recommend doing some brainstorming, free-writing, creating a web, or making an outline. All of these techniques have value, and I concur with the experts: try one or more of these techniques and see what works best for you. But as the conversation with these students unfolded, I was struck by a thought that I’d like to explore.

Almost every creation story I’ve ever seen emphasizes that creation came from the organization of chaos. The Creator in these stories always brings order to the chaos. This same story is fundamentally true of “small c” creators as well and, thus, it is true for writers (and Writers).

When we write, we rarely know exactly what we want to write until we write it. We must work hard to shape our formless thoughts into a point, something sharp and focused. This shaping often takes place on the page itself, but it just as often takes place in our heads. In fact, there is a definite back and forth relationship between what appears in our head (the image of our creation) and what ends up on the paper (the final form of the creation). In short, writers make order out of the chaos of their thoughts.

My point is that the very act of thinking “Where do I start?” is, in fact, a start. We have begun the process of creating order out of the chaos of our thoughts. Is it difficult? Yes, often times. But it is also clearly the beginning of writing.

This is the point I’d like for those students among you to take: don’t confine your definition of writing to the act of putting pen to paper or fingertips to keyboard. The page is merely a container for your thoughts. Typing merely propels your words to the page. Thinking is part of the writing process. In fact, it is the real essence of writing. To continue the creation analogy, it is the spirit that inhabits and energizes the flesh.

Thinking is the work of writing. The rest is just packaging. This fact is why writing has such a critical role in education. It is the primary reason (of two reasons) why writing is so important: college is about learning how to think. Not what to think, but how to think, the process of thinking. (The second reason that writing is important is that it is still the best way to communicate complex ideas to a large number of people over an extended period of time so, it is critical that you learn how to communicate clearly in writing.)

The kind of deep thinking you are learning to do in college can’t be rushed. It takes patience. Because writing is thinking, the same is true of writing: it can’t be rushed, and it takes patience. If you’ve started grappling with the chaos of your thoughts, you’ve started to write. Does that make it any easier or more fun? Probably not, but at least we’ve now accurately located the real problem, and that’s the first step toward solving it.