Notes on Writing to Learn

I’ve had this book on my reading list for some time now but never prioritized it because of the title. While I was interested in both writing and learning, I never felt an urgent desire to explore “writing to learn” when comparing it to the other books on my list. However, as I was working on a new post for the blog, I chanced upon it again and decided to take a detour to read it, scavenging for fodder for my writing. To my utter surprise, despite the title, the central thesis and purpose of the book is not about writing to learn. Rather, it is about writing as thinking/reasoning, which is a pre-requisite to learning.

The book presents several excerpts of well-written non-fiction from various disciplines to underscore Zinsser’s points that (1) clear thinking leads to clear writing, (2) anyone can learn to write well, even if they don’t consider themselves writers or don’t have a background in the humanities, and (3) good writing requires good models/examples. To aid learners on that last point, Zinsser provided a collection of lucid (and in some cases poetic) writing from various disciplines, sourced from the experts within those fields. I found the choice of literature delightful and thoroughly enjoyed reading them even though they were not part of my usual reading diet. The first point seems intuitively true, but is perhaps a tad difficult to prove rigorously. The second point is a bit more contentious, I think we can probably work with a more focused subset of “anyone with enough motivation and/or interest” and say that it sounds plausible. On the final point, I agree that good models have improved my writing in discontinuous jumps in the past. Finally, regarding the central thesis of “writing = thinking/reasoning”, that is the exact topic I was working on. This was a recent realization for me, and I have been developing the post as a meditation on the topic.

Zinsser’s point about strong models in particular prompted a reflection on my own writing journey. I have been writing for a long time. In fact, one of my first memories, ever, is of writing a short story. It was about a rabbit and a bomb— indubitable frontiers of knowledge for a three year old. The exact plot of the story is lost to time, but I do remember the satisfaction of creating it ex nihilo. As I grew older, and was forced to learn Chinese ¹, Chinese composition became a requirement for class and was, unfortunately, not something I was readily able to transfer my English writing skills to. My mother enrolled me into a Chinese essay writing class during the period of Grades 3-5 (roughly) and while it helped, I never did quite achieved the level I wished. At Grade 6, however, worried for my standardized exams, my mother procured a collection of award-winning esssays and stories from China written by students my age. That was eye-opening.

The essays in that collection opened my eyes to what the possibilities could be. Prior to reading that, I was writing in a very conventional way, for the lack of a better description. For example, with a prompt of “a day at the beach”, I would describe the events leading to the visit to the beach, the activities at the beach, and perhaps conclude with a return home— yawn inducing stuff for both the reader and the author. The examples of writing in that collection was different, they were creative and broke the rules. A day at the beach could end up being a musing on ecology, a philosophical realization, or a heart-warming interaction between family members. My writing was transformed. I continued to hone my writing along those lines and read even more voraciously, adding more Chinese books to my book shelf and enriching myself with writings from different periods in history.

A couple more years later, school required us to write in certain fixed “formats”. For instance, as a letter to a friend, an interview, a formal letter to a government official, etc. While I did inject wit and creativity into those and was able to get good grades on them, I was still very much playing by the rules, within the sandbox circumscribed by the premise of the prompts. It wasn’t until I read《陈鲁豫——心相约》by Chen Luyu, a prominent Chinese journalist and talk show host, that I realized that grilling someone in an interview could be entertaining and fun. Another “rule” broken yet again. Interviews became my forte during composition classes from then on. In essence, the interview format allowed me to introduce characters into what was conventionally a staid format.

Given my love of reading (mostly fiction at that point) and writing, I naturally thought that fiction writing would be something I could do well. I was wrong. While I applied myself to studying and practicing fiction writing, plotting was very difficult for me. The early victories did not translate into later successes. Much belatedly, I had only recently observed that enjoying writing and enjoying fiction did not necessarily imply that I would be good at writing fiction. I had taken two facts that were in close proximity and assumed they would do well together ². As a pivot, I am currently trying my hand at non-fiction writing, something which others have commented that I do well ³. Even in non-fiction writing, characters, dialogue, and plot are still important. There are many courses and books for business writing that expound on the importance of story-telling. As humans, we resonate best with stories, heroes, underdogs, and everything in between.

My own meandering through the landscapes of composition brought Zinsser’s distinctions about the writing process into sharper focus for me. For instance, he asserts that there are two types of writing: Type A (explanatory writing) and Type B (exploratory writing). While not explicitly stated, the implied idea is that these are distinct and mutually exclusive categories. I disagree with that assertion, as my personal experience has amply illustrated. To be more precise, I believe explanatory writing can be written in an exploratory way. One does not preclude the other. Zinsser seems to conflate the result (the explanatory article) with the process (the exploratory writing). Funnily enough, Chapter 12 “World of Music” covers this nuance exactly.

“[T]he mystery that lies at the heart of the creative process, not just in music but in writing, painting, sculpture and every other art, as well as in mathematics, the sciences and the humanities. The mathematician, the scientist and the philosopher, thinking and writing their way toward the center of a problem, are no less immersed than the composer, the artist and the writer in an act of commitment that they can never recover or even explain. What finally impels them all is not the work they achieve, but the work of achieving it.”

This beautiful quote from Zinsser himself about the creative process and drive captures the distinction of process vs result. To me, the process of writing comes down to a few factors: (1) the default processing mode of the writer, whether top-down (starting with a clear structure or outline and key points) or bottom-up ⁴ (discovering the structure through the process of writing and drafting) ⁵, and (2) how well the writer knows the topic they are writing about, with the latter being the more influential factor. Greater expertise often facilitates a top-down, explanatory approach. The information is organized in their mind and they can, relatively speaking, easily present a logical flow of the information. A likely wrinkle is that an author may be writing for a different audience than the usual one they are used to, which may require them to explore and explain the information to the new audience in the right way.

Ultimately, this book was a worthwhile read despite the flaws mentioned above. To me, a good non-fiction book is like a Hydra on Mount TBR: slicing one off the list often leads to more good books from its references. I have duly added several to my reading list— books I would have overlooked otherwise.

Footnotes

1. A fact I’m ever grateful to my parents for since it allowed me to meet my wife. She wasn’t part of the class, but without being able to speak Chinese, I would likely not be able to grow as close to her as I have. ↩

2. I like chocolate and I like chicken, but chocolate chicken will likely be a disaster in all but the hands of the most skillful of chefs. ↩

3. Perhaps out of politeness than a sincere compliment, but I will take it nonetheless. ↩

4. In contrast to the “bottoms-up” processing method where copious amounts of alchohol is imbibed. A processing mode that I used to employ, to great success I might add, but have since abstained from in recent years. ↩

5. More commonly known as “planning” vs “pantsing” in writing circles. ↩