Writing is thinking. They are inextricable.
One cannot think without writing - Luhmann.
Thinking doesn’t just produce writing; writing can enrich thinking - Thiago Forte
Writing is, without dispute, the best facilitator for thinking, reading, learning, understanding and generating ideas we have. - Sonke Ahrens
To make ideas permanent and digestible
The meaning of a thought, insight, or memory sometimes isn’t immediately clear. Our minds are turbulent. Insights, ideas, and memories can vanish as quickly as they appear. We write them down and are able to revisit them and view them from a different perspective in order to digest what they mean to us. In comparison, if left to themselves, they may twist, morph, and evaporate from the entropy of time in the confines of our memory.
We need an external medium in which to see our ideas from another vantage point, and writing things down is the most effective and convenient one ever invented. - Thiago Forte
As art
I write like the 12 dollar desk salad, the bar that packs 20 grams of protein and plastic into one 200-calorie brick. But good writing, like a good meal, needs fat. It should indulge readers, is meant to be chewed and enjoyed, affording a generous escape from the prosaic and mundane. — Jasmine Sun
As fun
I can’t worry about this movie getting made or not. I had to write my favourite movie that doesn’t exist. That was the most fun thing I could do with my time. - Jordan Peele
As claims
We write not only to state what we have think but also to show why others might agree with it and why it matters. We also know that whatever it is we think, it is never the entire truth. Our conclusions are partial, incomplete, and always subject to challenge. So we write in a way that allows others to test our reasoning: we present our best thinking as a series of claims, reasons, and responses to imagined challenges, so that readers can see not only what we think, but whether they ought to agree. — Writing in College, by Joseph M. Williams and Lawrence McEnerney
As an ongoing, public learning experiment
Writing is not just a recording process but it also gives the ability to bring something into existence that may never have been before. Writing is not solitary, nor does writing ever need to be finished.
If you want to learn something and get better at it over the long run, you have to write it down - Sonke Ahrens
If the solution you seek doesn’t exist, create it - Toni Morrison
Experiments, Convergence and Divergence, Human Metacognition, Networked thought
As query
A blog post is a search query. You write to find your tribe; you write so they will know what kind of fascinating things they should route to your inbox.