Most writing instruction emphasizes writing about what one knows. The advice is generally sound. Writers produce stronger work when they have actual command of their subject. The work is more honest when it draws on real understanding. The reader experience is more rewarding when the writer is in genuine relationship with what is being written about.
The advice is also incomplete. Some of the most useful writing happens when writers attempt subjects they do not yet understand and use the writing itself as the way to develop the understanding. The discipline required is specific. The results are often the writer's best work, even though they were not the writer's most confident work at the time of production.
This essay is about that quiet discipline.
What writing-as-thinking actually does
Writing about a subject you understand is the documentation of existing understanding. Writing about a subject you do not yet understand is the production of understanding. The two operations are different at the cognitive level even when they look similar on the surface.
The writing-as-thinking operation produces understanding through the discipline of putting words in their proper order. The discipline forces the writer to confront gaps, contradictions, and unexamined assumptions in her thinking that conversation or unstructured reflection would not surface. Each sentence requires a specific commitment to a specific claim. The accumulation of commitments forces an integration that less structured thinking does not produce.
This is why writers sometimes report that they discover what they think by writing about it. The discovery is real. The writing is not documenting prior thinking but producing thinking that did not previously exist in finished form.
The writing-as-thinking operation is more demanding than the documentation operation. It requires the writer to work at the edge of what she understands rather than within her established command. It produces uncertainty that the documentation operation does not produce. It can fail in ways that the documentation operation does not fail.
The honesty requirement
Writing about subjects you do not yet understand requires a specific kind of honesty that comfortable writing does not require.
The writer has to acknowledge — at least to herself — that she does not yet understand the subject. She has to write toward understanding rather than from it. She has to accept that her early drafts will be wrong in ways that her later drafts will identify and correct.
The honesty requirement is uncomfortable because it conflicts with the writer's professional self-presentation. Writers are expected to know what they are writing about. Writers who acknowledge that they do not yet know are exposing themselves in ways that the conventional self-presentation guards against.
The writers who maintain the honesty requirement produce the best work in this category. Writers who attempt to write about subjects they do not understand while maintaining the conventional self-presentation produce work that pretends to authority the writing has not earned. The pretense is visible to careful readers and undermines the work.
The maintained honesty also serves the writer beyond the immediate work. The discipline of acknowledging what one does not understand is a discipline that strengthens with practice. Writers who regularly engage in writing-as-thinking develop better calibration about the limits of their own understanding generally.
The patience requirement
Writing about subjects you do not yet understand requires patience with the writing process that comfortable writing does not require.
The early drafts of writing-as-thinking pieces are typically worse than the writer would tolerate from comfortable writing. The drafts contain errors of fact and judgment that the writer's developing understanding has not yet identified. They proceed from premises that subsequent thinking will reject. They reach conclusions that revision will overturn.
Writers who lack patience with this developmental process tend to abandon writing-as-thinking pieces before the developmental work has produced its results. The abandoned pieces look like failures because they did not arrive at finished form. They were actually serving as the cognitive infrastructure that finished work would build on. Abandoning them sacrifices the eventual finished work.
Patience with the process requires accepting that writing-as-thinking produces multiple unfinished drafts before producing finished work. The unfinished drafts are not failures. They are the route through which the finished work eventually arrives. Writers who treat them as failures lose access to the finished work that would have followed.
The reading requirement
Writing about subjects you do not yet understand requires sustained reading that comfortable writing does not require.
The understanding that the writing is supposed to produce has to come from somewhere. Some of it comes from the writing itself. Some of it has to come from external sources — the existing literature on the subject, the work of writers who have addressed it before, the documentation that the subject's history provides.
The reading is harder than recreational reading because it has to be done with attention to specific questions the writing is trying to answer. It is also harder than reading for already-developed projects because the writer does not yet know which questions are the right questions to be asking. The reading and the writing develop together, each informing the other, neither leading definitively.
Writers who attempt writing-as-thinking without the supporting reading produce work that is internally coherent but inadequately grounded in what is actually known about the subject. The work may have stylistic merit but lacks the substance that the engaged reading would have provided. Writers committed to the form have to commit also to the supporting reading.
The structural challenge
Writing about subjects you do not yet understand presents structural challenges that comfortable writing does not present.
The writer who does not yet understand the subject does not yet know what the right structure for the eventual work is. The structure has to develop along with the understanding. Early drafts often have weak structure that subsequent drafts have to address.
The temptation is to impose structure prematurely — to use a familiar essay structure or a recognizable argument shape to organize material that has not yet earned that structure. The premature imposition produces work that looks finished but is actually constraining the thinking the writing was supposed to support.
The discipline is to let structure emerge from the developing understanding rather than to impose structure on incomplete understanding. The discipline is uncomfortable because it leaves work in unfinished forms for longer than the comfortable writing process tolerates. It is also necessary for the writing-as-thinking work to actually produce the understanding the writing is supposed to develop.
The specific value the form produces
Writing-as-thinking produces value that comfortable writing does not produce, specifically because it operates at the edge of the writer's understanding rather than within established command.
The value includes the development of the writer's own understanding, which then becomes available for subsequent comfortable writing on the same subject. The writer who has done the writing-as-thinking work on a subject can subsequently write comfortably about that subject in ways she could not before the work was done.
The value also includes the specific quality of work that emerges from sustained engagement at the edge of understanding. Such work has a texture that comfortable writing does not have. The writer's struggle with the material is visible in the writing in ways that strengthen rather than weaken the result. The reader experiences the thinking happening rather than only the conclusions reached.
The value further includes the writer's development as a writer. Writers who regularly engage in writing-as-thinking develop capabilities that writers who only write comfortably do not develop. The expanded capability becomes available for all subsequent work, not only for the specific subjects that prompted it.
What I tell writers about this
When I work with writers I encourage them to attempt subjects they do not yet understand at least occasionally. The work is harder than comfortable writing and the failure rate is higher. Writers who never attempt it are missing one of the most useful operations available in the writing life.
I tell them to be honest with themselves about the state of their understanding. They are writing toward understanding rather than from it. The acknowledgment is uncomfortable but is required for the work to function.
I tell them to be patient with the developmental process. Early drafts will be worse than they would tolerate from comfortable writing. The badness is not failure. It is the route through which the eventual finished work arrives.
I tell them to do the supporting reading. Writing-as-thinking without supporting reading produces internally coherent work that is inadequately grounded. The supporting reading is part of the work.
I tell them to let structure emerge rather than imposing it prematurely. Premature structure constrains the thinking that should be happening. The discomfort of unfinished structure is the cost of allowing the thinking to develop.
And I tell them to value the work this form produces. The writers' best work often comes from this category. The work that strains them at the time of production often outlasts the work they could produce easily. The straining is part of what makes the work last.
The quiet discipline of writing about subjects you do not yet understand is one of the more rewarding disciplines available in the writing life. It is also one of the more demanding. Writers who develop the discipline have access to work that writers who avoid it do not have access to. The development is worth the demands it makes.
