Writing as thinking

Published on New York Times blog, in response to opinion essay by Ben Dolnick, “(Let us out of this clause),” July 6, 2020:

Writing is neither telling, nor, as some purists used to argue literature should be, showing. Most people don't realize that writing is thinking. That’s why I love it.

An essay can be written, as a novel, play, or poem really cannot, merely to persuade. The problem for writers who do that too much is that soon everything is a political polemic, but one loses sight of what one is for, besides winning at any cost. It's Sophistry.

Essay writing was invented by Montaigne in the 16th century, as a labor of thinking. (His follower Shakespeare stages people doing this in the moment). Yes, what I carefully work out while composing, I may revise for clarity. The roughness of a thought showing is not always bad.

Another pitfall is kibbitzing armchair editors thinking good writing is "correct." Even grammar's rules are but sedimentations of habits of practice; correct thinking only ever corresponds, not to the things themselves true statements are thought to refer to (this idea leads to puzzles and dead-ends in philosophy, because the represented fact must have a form corresponding to the representing statement, but what is that?), but to prior thoughts, prejudices properly so called, that timid writers enforce as patterned expectations.

The argument for logic, which does deserve credence, is that it is the form of a clear and intrinsically compelling thought, just as a good lyric poem may picture well a state of mind. Good essay writing takes the reader through the writer's path of working out a conclusion. Leave proving what you know to lawyers and law courts.