writing as thinking
and the authors who know it
This morning, in my COMPSCI 276: Design, Technology, and Social Impact class, of all places, Professor Krzysztof Gajos urged us to write when reading academic papers—what he called a paper artifact. He said, with the vehement agreement of our guest (Sam Weiss Evans, STS researcher at HKS/SEAS) and all the confidence of a well-read, well-written research scientist: writing is thinking.
His encouragement prompted me to revisit a common thread that has run through many of the books I’ve read recently—writing as a means of synthesis, reflection, and healing. Obviously, an author which has successfully published an acclaimed novel or memoir will love writing, but the way these (incredibly talented and accomplished) writers talk about the value of writing is genuinely so beautiful.
What follows is, in no particular order, a collection of notes and quotes about the value of the written art form from some of my favorite books.
a history of my brief body
To write is to live on. The page rescues us from a longing for finality. Grief doesn’t wholly assail our imaginations. The creative drive, the artistic impulse, is above all a thunderous yes to life.
This means that his mother didn’t let him in on the open secret of her ugliness, which is what creative writing does—it traffics in ugly.
You should know this by now: poetry is the act of “hearing beyond what we are able to hear.”
know my name
When I wrote, when I drew, the world slowed, and I forgot everything that existed outside it.
You know how you can dive under a wave that is going to crash on top of you? Writing can help me do that—to pull way back from turmoil and impending overwhelm, and find a bit of sanctuary in the process, the action of scribbling down memories, visions, musings.
It took me a long time to learn healing is not about advancing, it is about returning repeatedly to forage something. Writing this book allowed me to go back to that place. I learned to stay in the hurt, to resist leaving.
I took out my worn copy of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, which had guided me through college. She wrote, “Remember that you own what happened to you. . . . You cannot write out of someone else’s dark place; you can only write out of your own.” For the first time I would be telling my version of the story. A letter, from me, to Brock.
i saw ramallah
Writing is a displacement, a displacement from the normal social contract. A displacement from the habitual, the pattern, and the ready form.
how we fight for our lives
by Saeed Jones
I had walked out of that room and written about it. I wrote about him, then past him—one poem, one story, one essay at a time. Pen as weapon, page as shield.
the bright hour
by Nina Riggs
I like direction that looks aimless but isn’t. Just subtle. Just making its way without hope, without despair. Isn’t that what Isak Dinesen said about writing? Same with living.
[On how afraid we are as a culture of images of uncontained chaos:] The professor had called these things Images of the Abject. We contain things and give shape to things in order to be less afraid of them. Yes, the crafted idea does this. It’s why I write. The metaphor does this. The intact body does it, too. Sometimes I worry I do this instead of allowing myself to feel things.
Reveal the pain, but hide the wreckage. I can hear Montaigne hollering: break it open, look inside, feel it, write it down.
heavy
by Kiese Laymon
I share with painters the desire to put a three-dimensional picture on a one-dimensional surface.
[Words from his mother:] And don’t fight when you’re angry. Think when you’re angry. Write when you’re angry. Read when you’re angry. Don’t let those people shoot you out of the sky while I’m gone.
the anthropocene reviewed
by John Green
In “The Palace,” Kaveh Akbar writes that “Art is where what we survive survives.”
the education of an idealist
Cass was content anywhere. Whether hanging out in an airport lounge or waiting at the dentist, he needed only his laptop to feel at home. I came to understand why he was one of the most prolific scholars in the world—he used every nook and cranny of the day, no matter where he was, to write.
between two kingdoms
“That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is.” Jeannette Winterson wrote. “It isn’t a hiding place. it is a finding place.”
“It is always what is under pressure in us, especially under pressure of concealment—that explodes in poetry,” Adrienne Rich wrote.
I loved the annual ritual of drafting resolutions: I was always filling journals with to-do lists and dreams. The semblance of a plan, no matter how tenuous, balanced out the uncertainty and confusion I felt about the future.
the girl who smiled beads
I know it is a privilege to have the safety, time, comfort, and education to try to shape my experience into something coherent, to think critically and creatively about my life. There’s a difference between story and experience. Experience is the whole mess, all that actually happened; a story is the pieces you string together, what you make of it, a guide to your own existence. Experience is the scars on my legs. My story is proof that I’m alive.
Everything in moderation, though. There is sometimes quite the opposite case to make (snagged from The Anthropocene Reviewed):
Toni Morrison once wrote, “At some point in life, the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough.”