Why Everyone Should Write

Sometimes writing is encouraging. You realize you understand a topic better than you thought. The process flushes out all kinds of other ideas you never knew you had hiding upstairs. Now you can apply those insights elsewhere.

Other times it’s painful. Forcing the logic of your thoughts into words can uncover the flaws and biases of your ideas. Seeing the words on paper looks ridiculous. Things the mind tends to gloss over the pen tends to highlight.

Writers don’t know exactly what they’ll write about until they start writing, because the process crystallizes the fuzzy ideas we all have floating around.

This is probably why writing is intimidating for some people. They don’t think they can write because, in their head, they don’t know what they’d write about. But hardly anyone does.