What is writing? Or, what is the purpose of writing? Communicating is a common answer, and certainly writing is a way to communicate. But I think this answer is making an error in fundamentality. Fundamentally, writing is thinking, not communicating. I’ll make the case for writing as thinking later, but first let’s look at the problem with the writing as communicating view.
To be fair, most people will not completely divorce thinking from the writing process. After all, what does writing communicate? Thoughts. But saying writing is “communicating thoughts” implies that the thoughts are already formed. Are they? Before you write them down? I don’t think so. Maybe, just maybe, the first sentence is a thought already formed, but succeeding sentences are logically built upon the preceding sentences and must be generated. They are not “already in the mind of the student.” Students get “stuck” because they don’t already have the succeeding thought. They must generate the thought. Writing is fundamentally thinking.
In part, students know this is true. I suspect that they are not embarrassed primarily because they might get grammar wrong (they don’t mind getting things wrong in other subjects nearly as much); they are embarrassed because deep down they know the importance of thinking, and they are afraid to have their thoughts on display. A critique of their writing is a critique of their mind and soul, not a critique of their grammar and communication skills.
There are many important implications for the “writing as thinking” view. If you can convince the student that thinking is man’s distinctive and fundamental means of survival, flourishing, and happiness, then the “writing as thinking” view makes writing a life-promoting activity for the writer regardless of any opportunities or requirements he may or may not have to write as an adult. It’s not about the person you are communicating with; it’s about your ability to think deeply and clearly so that you can make better decisions in life, flourish, and be happy.
Why do we have rules of grammar? The communication view at best will say that the rules are for the sake of clarity in communication (leaving open the critique that “You knew what I meant”). A worse explanation is the notion that “people will think you are ignorant” because you make mistakes in grammar. But the “writing as thinking” view sees the rules of grammar as rules that create, not just clarity in communication, but clarity in thinking. This view gives a much more personally important purpose to grammar.
To more positively make the case for the thinking view, we need to introspect on the activity that is thinking. In thinking, we ask ourselves (our subconscious) questions. Sometimes an answer “comes to us.” Unless the answer is obviously what we are looking for, we then usually analyze that answer by asking another question, “Is that right? Or, is there a better answer?” If we are unhappy with the answer, or we get no answer, we think of a different question to ask in hopes of getting a different answer. Now introspect on the writing process. Is this not a constant process of asking yourself questions; analyzing the answers; seeing how they fit with the facts, your other points, and your overall point; then realizing you need to ask better questions and going through the process all over again? And we are anxious to get it right and do it well, not so we are understood, but so we are understood. The working of our mind is on display. It is a display of our thinking at its most refined, most exposed, and most stylized frozen in time.
What about the view that we do the thinking first, by pre-writing activities (brainstorming), that the generating of ideas is the first part of the writing process? Is the rest of the writing process fundamentally about communicating (i.e. the thinking is primarily for the purpose of communicating clearly and effectively)? I still don’t think so. The result of the prewriting process is usually at best an outline. When converting the outline into an essay, the writer is not simply asking himself if his idea is clear to his audience; he is fundamentally asking himself if the idea is clear, period. And not just clear, but relevant to the topic, inventive, factually true, consistent with his other ideas. In essence, the standard for good writing is good thinking, not good communicating. The average reader will find JK Rowling’s ideas more understandable and clear than Victor Hugo’s ideas. But Victor Hugo is rightfully considered a better writer because, while his writing takes much more effort to understand, his writing is more profound, more inventive, and addresses more complicated ideas. He does better thinking.
In short, treating writing as fundamentally communicating rather than thinking, is not giving the act of writing its proper due. It makes the activity of writing a harder sell to students (and teachers and administrators), and more importantly, it overlooks the life-enhancing personal value that writing can have for an individual, whether he writes to communicate for a living or if his writing never gets read by a single soul. Having explicit, clear, integrated, deep, and independent thoughts is clearly beneficial to an individual’s decision making, flourishing, and happiness; writing is the way to generate those thoughts.