writing exercise

How Writing Makes People Smarter Supported By Science

by

This post by  originally appeared on Lifehacker. We all knew this anyways, but it is nice to have your views supported by science!

~ * ~

Everyone should write—not just professional writers.

You might say it’s easy for me to say that because I’m a writer. A singer can just as easily say, “Well, I believe that everyone should learn to sing.” But, out of all the creative means of expressions available to human beings, none intrinsically champions critical thinking, enhances creativity and improves clarity of thought quite like writing. Writing makes us smarter.

Here are some reasons (backed by science) why that is so:

1. Writing helps us untangle the messiness in our minds and allows for clearer thinking.

This is perhaps one of the most beautiful things about writing. In her book, Why We Write, curator Meredith Maran interviewed writers on why they write. Nearly all of them gave self-serving reasons, but there was a delightful, recurring motive of why people write: Writing provides a pocket of time in the present moment to reflect, digest and think deeply.

Joan Didion, author of Play It as It Lays said, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.”

Armistead Maupin, author of Tales of the City explained, “I write to explain myself to myself. It’s a way of processing my disasters, sorting out the messiness of life to lend symmetry and meaning to it.”

It’s not uncommon for one to think they have totally grasped a concept until they write it down and realize there are aspects of the concept they hadn’t quite thought about.

Writing, then, is a way to organize our thoughts. It allows us to reflect and helps us gain new insights and achieve new perspectives. You think more deeply when you write, and that helps you see things more clearly.

Read the full post on Lifehacker.

How Writers Can Grow by Pretending to Be Other People

by

This post by Joe Fassler originally appeared on The Atlantic on 4/22/15.

The author and editor Kate Bolick found that “imaginary time-traveling”—projecting herself into the life of someone else—helped her feel closer to women she admired.

By Heart is a series in which authors share and discuss their all-time favorite passages in literature. See entries from Jonathan Franzen, Amy Tan, Khaled Hosseini, and more.

In 2011, Kate Bolick’s much-discussed Atlantic cover story “All the Single Ladies” made a case for the unattached life, decrying the lack of affirming cultural narratives for single women. In a new book, Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own, Bolick combines memoir, literary biography, and cultural history to continue her examination of what it means to remain alone. Spinster studies the lives of five groundbreaking, independent women—Neith Boyce, Maeve Brennan, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Edith Wharton. As Bolick considers how these historical figures triumphed, faltered, and made tradeoffs, she explores the pleasures and consequences of long-term solitude, as well as her own competing desires for freedom and attachment.

When I spoke to Bolick for this series, she chose to discuss an overlooked short story by Gilman, one of the five “awakeners” depicted in the book. “If I Were A Man,” falls somewhere between Freaky Friday and Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis”: the story’s female narrator, Mollie, wakes up one day to find herself inhabiting her husband’s body. We discussed different forms of projecting oneself into another person’s experience, and what’s revealed in our personal fantasies about freedom, relationships, and the future.

 

Read the full post on The Atlantic.

 

5 Cheeky Tips For Bloggers Embarking On The A-Z Challenge

by

This post by Tara Sparling originally appeared on her blog on 3/31/15.

April is a month when thousands of bloggers embark on what’s called the The A-Z Challenge: where people blog on 26 near-consecutive days (every day except Sundays) – on a theme of their choice. It’s a fantastic exercise. It can get the blog blood flowing, prodding bloggers either out of a pit, or into a routine; and it’s a sure-fire way to either increase your audience, or get one in the first place.

Well, I’m not doing it. You’ll thank me later, when you realise how much blogging content increases next month, that I’m not going to be adding to it. I’ll be slow blogging as usual, but reading and cheering all challenge participants loudly from the sidelines.

And yet I’m going to do one bolshie post on this whole lark anyway. How dare she make pronouncements when she’s not even participating, you cry!

Because it never stopped me before, that’s why.

And so, as I sharpen my mouse in readiness to click on the content of others, here are a few tips from one of the people who might be reading you in April.

1. Use the opportunity to do something you wouldn’t usually do.

 

Read the full post, which includes further elaboration on the first tip plus four more tips, on Tara Sparling’s blog.