Does it matter to writers that thought is wordless?

Yes! For one thing, it's part of why first drafts are often so bad!

Barbara: Last time we spoke, it was about new research documenting that thought is wordless. So, when you’re writing, you are not just putting onto paper “words that are in your head.” The research says that you go from thought to word in the process of writing (or speaking).

That is, when you sit down at your computer to write, you are really sitting down to figure out what you think. And if your thoughts are complex or foggy, you actually use writing as a way to clarify what they are.

Elizabeth: But the fact that writing helps writers to think has been noted for over a hundred years. Joan Didion (in her 1978 essay, Why I Write) famously wrote: “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking ...” Earlier writers like E.M. Forster, Orwell, and Faulkner wrote versions of the same idea. Flannery O’Conner described not knowing what she thought until she could see it on the page, a variation many others have also articulated. All these writers were aware that writing was a process of figuring out what they thought. So what does the research add to this understanding?

Barbara: Well, first of all, let’s be clear that many writers may have made this observation, but that doesn’t mean that everyone is aware that this is how writing works and that it’s just part of the normal process. People commonly assume that they think in words; so, when writing doesn’t come easily, they believe they are having more trouble than others or that they’re just not good at it. Writing is hard, for many reasons, and this new information gives an added explanation for why it is so hard.

Plus, since the idea that thoughts are wordless contradicts what many people believe, it’s also just plain interesting!

I also think that it can make a very big difference to have this neurological understanding. The writers you mentioned knew that writing helped them think, but they didn’t have this insight into one important factor as to why it did.

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Elizabeth: It’s certainly my experience that learning the biological explanation for anything I know experientially is helpful. Why are habits so hard to break? Why do traumatic experiences continue to have such a grip? Why do family dynamics tend not to change as we age? Knowing that the answer lies in intrinsic aspects of being human is exonerating. We know it isn’t a flaw in ourselves as individuals.

Barbara: I would argue that, if you are aware of the relationship between thought and language, you sit down at your computer with a different mind-set. On the surface it’s not a dramatic difference, but inside it’s a paradigm shift.

Here’s what I mean. If I’m struggling to write an article or an essay, it’s one thing to think of myself as simply having trouble writing. It’s another to think that I’m having trouble figuring out what I want to say. And it’s still another to be aware that I’m engaged in a back and forth process of trying out words and seeing them on the screen in order to take wordless thoughts and give them expression.

I think this conceptualization makes clearer what writers are actually doing when they write: attempting to give voice to something voiceless.

Elizabeth: I suppose it also offers ideas for how to tackle problems you might be having. I’m reminded of a terrible time I had writing a very simple travel story in a writing class I took years ago. Looking back, I wonder whether it would have helped me back then to know what I know now.

The story involved a wonderful family trip to Belize that included a series of daily horseback excursions to places so isolated and unusual — an unexcavated Mayan site, a swimmable river cave — that they supported the illusion that they were largely unknown to tourists (like us). That bubble burst when we were joined on the last day by a family whose children were in the same Little League as our two. I am a terrible travel snob — a perennial seeker of the “authentic” encounter — and had wanted this article to be a critical opinion piece about tourism’s commercializing impact on travel. But I was completely blind to the obvious conflict between my disapproval of packaged, exotic tours and my love of our own packaged tour! The harder I tried to express my opinions through the story, the denser my mental fog became.

I still have the notes and several failed drafts I made in my desperate efforts at clarity. I’m amazed now to see that many of the same sentences survived from early drafts to final essay. The problem was not in the writing per se but in the muddled thinking. Through the writing-work, I did eventually resolve the conflict. I found a way to say what I wanted about how travel had changed, while making fun of my impossible fantasy about what family travel today could or should be.

Barbara: So the writing process was somehow influencing that realm of thought… like a feedback loop in which you write something that you know is not right when you read it. And that realization then influences your next thoughts. Perhaps this is the process by which our thoughts get clearer or more organized.

Elizabeth: The breakthrough came when my teacher, who grasped that my dilemma was one of thinking rather than craft, offered what she thought I might be trying to say. She wasn’t quite right, but explaining to her what was wrong broke open the circular thinking in which I’d been trapped. If I’d known at the time that my problem was one common to writers, I might have felt less despair and seen the conflict sooner.

Barbara: If you turn to someone for help with a writing impasse, it’s important that they discern whether the problem you’re dealing with is one of thinking or of writing. You can write pages of beautiful prose and still not get to what you really want to express.

Elizabeth: I think we agree on this — it matters for writers to know that thought is wordless, given that we use language to help us think. But I’m not sure that concept would otherwise make a difference, because we’re so used to speaking and writing simple thoughts with no awareness of the thought-to-word transformation. It’s usually effortless and automatic. Somehow the brain does this fantastic trick. It’s mainly when you’re struggling to express yourself that this idea is helpful.

Barbara: I think the impact depends on the writer’s experience. It’s probable that experienced writers already operate with a sense of the fundamental task, although they might not have “put it into words.” They know how to optimize figuring out what they think by using techniques like: allocating lots of time for a creative project; noticing the ideas that pop into mind about the piece when not at the computer and writing these down before they can be readily forgotten; discussing ideas with other knowledgeable individuals to try out articulating the concepts.

For inexperienced writers, however, I think the idea that you’re turning wordless thought into words … back and forth until you get to just what you want to say…that through the writing you work out what you think…. could be a revelation and make a huge difference.

Elizabeth: It removes the onus of the struggle. We can stop being self-critical about how hard we find the task and how bad the early drafts are. Hemingway said, “The first draft of anything is shit.” Now we know why!

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