Writing is Everything — Here Are Three Reasons I’m Putting it First
· Storycraft and writing
In a world guided by values, I’ve embraced one transformative truth: writing, more than anything, shapes my existence; that’s why it now comes first.
In life, we are guided by our values and beliefs, so, a few years ago, I decided to start deliberately identifying and ranking my core values. I review them often and for each value in the list, I ask myself questions like:
- What am I doing in my life right now to obtain or keep this value?
- Around this given value, what’s something new I can start doing now — something I can change, to get better outcomes?
My hierarchy of core values continues to change and evolve as I learn and grow and, over time, writing has steadily climbed higher in rank. The more I think about it, the more I realize that for me, writing is everything, so now, I’m putting it first — first in my life, first in my days, and first in my ways. Here are just a few of many reasons why:
Clear Writing Means Clear Thinking
Writing is careful, deliberate, and scrupulous thought. You haven’t truly thought about a thing unless you’ve written about it.
My experience has proven that if you want knowledge on a subject, there’s no better way to learn than to attempt to teach through writing. Writing forces you to think, to study, to structure and organize your thoughts, to refine your thinking, and then to be able to express your views clearly and effectively. It helps you get straight on what you think and allows your mind’s wings to grow.
See also: Clear Writing Means Clear Thinking Means…, by Marvin H. Swift, Harvard Business Review, 1973
Writing is Connection
Writing is one of the most powerful ways for us to inform, educate, inspire, entertain, and move one another. It’s one of the best ways to reach one another and to share in the wonder and beauty of life and living. But not only does it connect us to each other, it can connect us with the higher spirit within us and around us — the Holy Spirit, if that’s how you see it, God as you understand him, or broadly speaking, the “IS.”
Writing Amplifies and Enhances Your Experience of Life
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
Writing is like living our whole lives more than once and in multiple different ways — savoring the various flavors of experience through a variety of different frames and feelings. It helps us reframe our past, for example — healing childish old wounds with the reconsideration of earned wisdom. It lets us reexperience our sweetest moments deeply. It allows us to create new worlds out of our own — new places to play — imaginative mindscapes that can sometimes be more real and more imbued with truth than the spaces we physically inhabit.
What about you? What do you love about writing and why is it something special, if not also “everything” to you?
First published on Medium on .