On Writing

Paul Graham once said that you can’t think well without writing well, and you can’t write well without reading well.

Writing subjects your thoughts and ideas to a test. Do you understand the topic as much as you think you do? I often find myself skimming an article in a magazine or a chapter in a book, thinking that I understand what the author is trying to say. However a few hours later, when I try to share the gist of the article with a friend over dinner, I cannot articulate precisely what I had read earlier in the day. I find myself borrowing concepts from other places to fill in the gaps. I make things up when I get stuck. When I get asked a question about it, I struggle to answer it in my own words often promising that I will send a link to the original piece. Sometimes it occurs to me that I remember so little of it that I wish that I never shared it in the first place.

When you write about a topic you subject your mind to the rigour of being able to describe the concept clearly without gaps, repetitions or stutter. Writing exposes the areas that you don’t really understand fully. You often go back and forth to the source to get more details. You scout around for new sources or for someone else to paraphrase it in a clearer way. You then need to find the correct words to represent your understanding. In the process, a few new light bulbs in your mind usually illuminate. A good writer, therefore almost always disovers new things while writing.

And if writing almost guarantees to shed additional insights into the topic that you are pursuing, is the reverse also true? If you did not write about a topic that you are trying to master, does it mean that you have not comprehensively explored it? But it does not stop here.

You may also like to connect what you read to what you already know and build on a novel area. Like a lego block, you build new sets not by following the instructions over and over but by building new castles with the pieces you have. Great ideas, great thinking and writing come from those explorations.