Hi.
I'm Karen McKee, retired scientist and author, with another look at scientific writing.
In this video, I'm going to talk about how becoming a better writer will help you think
more clearly.
The act of writing not only lets you transfer the words in your head to a piece of paper
or a computer screen, it helps you organize your thoughts and wrangle them into a coherent
story.
In other words, writing and reasoning go hand in hand, working in tandem through a cryptic
process in the brain.
The act of writing somehow taps into the hidden recesses of the mind and extracts an insight
that would not have been accessible just sitting and thinking about that topic.
Most skilled writers experience this phenomenon of having ideas pop into their heads while
writing.
But writing does more than just innervate neural synapses and prompt flashes of insight.
The act of writing teaches you to think clearly.
If your thoughts are muddled, your writing will be disorganized and difficult to follow.
To make others understand your thoughts, you must learn to avoid ambiguity and convoluted
prose.
As you learn to write more clearly, your thought processes will also improve.
As you learn to think more clearly and logically, your writing becomes even easier to comprehend.
I experienced this writing feedback process early in my career.
My master's thesis was my first major writing project, and the initial draft was a jumbled
mess.
I had no idea how to wrestle the scattered thoughts in my head onto the legal pad I used
to write my first draft.
I kept at it, though, writing and rewriting sentences, reorganizing them into paragraphs,
and so on.
I finished my thesis, but it was barely readable, despite my best efforts.
As I've explained in a previous video, the main reason for my difficulty was because
I did not regularly practice writing.
The result was that I had no skill or confidence to help me when I finally sat down to write
my thesis.
Over the next few years, I studied how scientific articles were structured, and I practiced
writing scientific descriptions.
Eventually, I took out my thesis and rewrote it for publication in a journal.
After finishing that rewrite, I realized that something had clicked.
I began to think in a more linear, methodical manner.
This mental shift had a dramatic effect on my ability to plan and then to write up my
research findings in a logical sequence.
My new way of thinking naturally led me to write more detailed observations and preliminary
interpretations in my laboratory and field notebooks.
As the years passed, these notebook writings became more and more fluent and detailed,
and the manuscripts became much easier to write.
Most successful scientists go through a similar learning process.
What they realize is that the process of writing can lead to clearer thinking and a deeper
understanding of the topic.
One implication of this insight is that the habit of writing needs to be developed early
and practiced throughout the scientific process.
Many students fail to write on a regular basis.
They wait until all the data are collected to begin writing their thesis or dissertation
and then suffer because their writing skills are rudimentary and cannot help them work
logically through their data.
When they finally sit down to write, they get overly focused on the technical aspects
of writing, punctuation and grammar, and, in the process, let their writing be
hindered by their internal censor.
Instead, they should use the writing process to clarify their ideas and worry about polishing
their words later.
The take-home message here is that becoming a skilled writer has many benefits.
The feedback relationship between clarity of thought and clarity of writing, however,
is one that is often overlooked.
But it's one that, if recognized and nurtured, can help you become both a better writer and
a better thinker.
Thanks for listening and if you have an example of how the act of writing helped you figure
something out, please share your story in the comments.