Writing and Thought

This blog entry was in my Google Reader today (which I haven't checked for a few months...) and I found it to be worth sharing. The entire thing is very well done and worth reading, but this one thesis stuck out to me specifically.

Writing and thought. I write not because I know but because I want to know. Among scholars today, there is no error more pervasive than writerly Docetism. The Docetic heresy divides idea from style; it is the belief that one can have clear thoughts regardless of the clarity of their expression, or that one first has an idea which is subsequently communicated through the neutral medium of prose. But between idea and form there is a mystical union of natures; to write well is to think well. Language is not the external adornment of thought. It is thought itself, the blood and tissue of the idea.


This is something that I have noticed in my own personal life that has bothered me recently. It seems that when I sit down to write everything is very scattered and I often find it difficult to express myself. Also, when I am talking a lot of times I struggle to come up with the words or to express what I am "thinking". What I have begun to realize, however, is that its not so much a that I am struggling to express myself, but that I am really struggling to think. I find my thoughts very scattered, as scattered as my writing and sentences, as scattered as the schedule of my life.
Actually, this ties back into his fourth thesis, Writing and Discipline, very well. I have found that there was a certain level of discipline inherent in the education system I have been a part of thus far in my life, but without the presence of that system my level of personal discipline has greatly decreased. And without the level of discipline that I have had in my life thus far, I have found that my ability to think and process information and therefore to communicate with other individuals has greatly decreased.
So I find myself with a great need for enough discipline to think.