I’ve learned a lot from writing.
I write about travel and self-improvement. I’m currently doing a Masters degree in Psychology and Wellbeing. There’s a lot of reading and writing involved in that too.
It often involves gathering information, fact-checking and a lot of research.
But the learning isn’t about the research you do, or the information you gather.
And it’s not even about the ideas that you’re inspired to write about after all of your research and reflection.
Learning isn’t about information or facts or ideas.
Learning is a process.
And the writing process is just the learning process typed up or written down on paper.
And anyone can do it.
What is learning?
This might sound controversial but learning isn’t about facts, information, trivia or anything of the sort. You can get ideas from a book but you can’t really learn about them.
That type of ‘learning’ is just memorising.
Learning is something that happens through experience. Experience requires action. And all the facts in the world mean nothing if you don’t use them.
Now, ‘using facts’ is a broad term. You can use them for anything. To support your position when you do something in your job.
Or create an argument for a college essay.
You can decide what you’re going to have for lunch.
Or even regulate your emotions so that you can live your life more the way you want to.
You can do anything with information, really. But you only really learn when you do something. The key in the above examples is the action, not the information.
Luckily, there’s an action you take with information to ensure you learn from it: You can write.
Some people call writing a superpower.
That’s because writing is learning in action. There’s more to learning than just memorising, despite what we were all forced to do in school.
The ability to learn by writing is a skill. And like any skill, you can learn it – and master it – by practicing it in a deliberate and thoughtful way. The nature of writing means that in practicing it, you’re mastering the art of thinking.
Deliberate practice
Deliberate practice is a straightforward process that can be replicated to master any skill. Though, of course, the actual work required to master that skill is far from straightforward. It takes years, if not a lifetime.
But you can start now, and learn something from every step of the process, before repeating it over and over.
First, practice an action or skill with a clearly defined goal or rule of success.
An important aspect of this is that your overall goal is on the edge of your abilities: not too easy that it becomes boring; not too difficult that you get frustrated and give up. You need to challenge yourself, but in a way that’s meaningful to you.
Break the big-picture skill – for example, playing a song on the guitar – into micro-actions like playing individual chords.
Perform the micro-actions and decide if they’re ‘right’ or not. Use external feedback like someone else’s opinion, if necessary.
Repeat each micro action, slowly if necessary, until it’s perfect.
Build it all up again until you have the whole.
The steps of deliberate practice can be replicated to learn anything.
And because writing is all about our thoughts and our words, it’s a form of thinking in action. If you want to write a finished article, book or even an email, there are steps you need to take.
You need to write, reflect, fix your mistakes and then edit until it’s just right.
By its nature writing is deliberate practice of thinking.
The best thing is, when we put something into practice in this way we enter our ideal state of consciousness as humans – the flow state. We’re at our most blissful when we’re doing something we love but challenging ourselves to the furthest extent of our capabilities.
It also just so happens to be the state in which we learn.
How to learn by writing
Journalling or free-writing
“I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say” – Flannery O’Connor
This is where you practice writing and articulating thoughts.
Journalling or free-writing is a great way to figure out what you’re trying to say in the first place. When done as a practice, it’s great way to think ‘out loud’ and to clarify your thoughts. It takes practice though to be able to do this freely and in an uninhibited way.
Many people find journalling to be a good daily habit just for clearing their minds and starting or winding down the day.
This step is where you practice writing. Think of it like having your first tennis lesson, where they teach you how to hold your racket, or your first week skiing where you practice standing up and stopping without killing anyone.
For many, this is enough. And that’s fine. Even by just writing in a stream of consciousness, you already learn a lot about what you’re thinking or feeling. There’s limited space in your brain for your conscious thoughts, and this physical act of releasing them can be great just to make space for the ‘important things’.
But the benefits don’t stop there, as there is so much to be learned from not just identifying your thoughts, but working on them, reviewing them, refining them, and making them better.
Research and planning
This is where you figure out what you want to write about. “What am I trying to say?” It’s also where you define your goal.
If you want to write a post or an article on a topic, it’s a good idea to know what you’re talking about. If you have a particular skill or area of expertise, this might come easily with minimal need to research.
Even if you do know your stuff about something though, it always pays to have your research and fact-checking done.
Beware: many people consider this to be learning.
Looking up facts, gathering information.
But for you, the writer who really wants to learn, it’s only the beginning of the process.
I repeat: Looking up facts is NOT learning.
Because learning requires a transformation of your consciousness. Something that makes you see the world differently.
Even when you know the general topic you want to write about or point you want to make, it helps to do some research, or even just tease out a rough or detailed plan. This gives you a goal in mind to aim for when you’re writing. And having a clearly defined goal is a key part of deliberate practice.
It’s how you know if you get something right or wrong, or if it’s good enough. Part of setting your goal with your piece of writing is defining, or just internalising, a particular standard to aim for.
“What am I trying to say?”
“Who do I want to write for?”
“What kind of language do I want to use?”
“How much do I want to express myself?”
Now, there’s something to be learned from every step of this process. But it’s important to remember that the fact gathering is not where the real learning happens. You can be the same person with all the facts and no idea how to use them.
Like journalling, creating a plan can be good for organising ideas, or even just figuring out what you’re thinking.
First draft
Now you’re attempting your clearly defined action – writing – with a clearly defined goal in mind: to write about something in a structured and well-thought-out way.
Once you’ve planned what you’re going to write and gathered the information you need, the next step in writing your article or essay is to… write.
This part is going to be terrible.
Well, it might be good. If you like writing, it’ll probably be fun. But it won’t be just right yet.
This is another step in the learning process. Going a step beyond journalling and just dumping words out on a page or a screen, this time you must use articulate your ideas in a structured and coherent way. There needs to be a beginning, middle and an end.
Sometimes this structure will flow cleanly as you write your first draft. Often, your ideas will be there but you’ll have to return later to rearrange everything in its right place.
When you’re writing your first draft: just write. Write whatever you can think of and don’t stop. Don’t worry about quality, or correctness, or anything else. Just go for it.
You can decide if it’s good or bad later.
Editing
This is the reflection part of deliberate practice, where you ask yourself “Is it good enough?” With first drafts, it invariably isn’t. And so you re-write until it is. This is similar to breaking a skill down into small pieces and practicing them again and again until they’re just right.
Some people find the writing itself hard. Just figuring out what you’re trying to say takes practice.
But for me, this next part makes everything that bit harder. And that’s why it’s something I put off doing for years from when I first started writing.
See, it’s all fun and games writing your first draft with no judgement.
But the first draft is only the first step of learning.
The next step of deliberate practice is reflecting on what you did. This is where you ask yourself “Is what I’ve written good enough?” The best thing though is that you decide what ‘good enough’ is.
In order to reflect, you must read your work again. Taking some time off after finishing the draft is always a good idea. It’s a way of giving yourself a fresh pair of eyes without having to ask someone else for theirs.
Go for a walk, catch up with other work or friends or whatever. A good night’s sleep is probably the best option.
Then it’s time. Editing is where you’re going to review what you’ve written and make it better. Checking for spelling and grammar, but also style of language, readability (and not just the SEO sense), structure, coherence and whether the things you wrote about even made any sense.
Writing can be the most fun in the world, even if you’re never done it before. Personally, I find re-reading something I’ve written excruciating at times, though I have gotten better at it. It’s part of learning to be a writer.
And it’s hard because here is where you have to grapple with your own brain, and to an extent, your ego and who you think you are. You’re actively looking for mistakes in what you did, what you wrote, and because writing is a form of thinking – what you thought.
It activates the fear of failure in your brain that makes so many of us procrastinate when we have to do something.
“It isn’t good enough” you’ll tell yourself.
But you need to persevere here.
Remember, deliberate practice occurs when you challenge the edge of your abilities. And every time you think of a way to improve your first draft (or your second or your twenty-second), you’re erasing what you thought were your limits and expanding them.
This is where you challenge who you thought you were, and improve on it.
By the nature of modern writing (i.e. typing) you have the magical ability to go back and re-read, edit, change, cut, paste and generally play with your words and where they go for the rest of your days (if you like).
And this is how playing with your words and ideas is the right kind of practice – you can keep doing it until you get it right. Remember, ‘right’ is your own standard. Are you happy with it? Have you said what you’re trying to say, in just the way you meant it to come across?
No worries. You have time. It’s not quite like training to be, say, a footballer, where you’re never more than seconds away from failing your next task.
You can keep going over and over your words again until they’re just right, like a golfer who has to practice the same swing, or the same type of shot, over and over thousands of times to get it just right.
And like the golfer, or the footballer, or the runner or the guitarist, this bit can be painful. It’s hard to look at something you’ve worked so hard on only to have to brutally cut out half the words.
It’s so painful that most give up before they’ve even begun, and many more give up months and years down the line because they’re just not committed.
But like any skill, it’s through the pain barrier where learning happens. The writing process offers mental pain rather than the physical pain of running sprints to improve your speed, but it’s pain none the less.
But this is where you really start learning.
Proofreading
This is more reflection, but it can be where you challenge yourself to go beyond what you thought was “good enough”. You put the finishing touches on a piece to change it from ‘good’ to ‘great’.
This is where you check for last-minute errors and mistakes. Grammar, spelling and coherence are all accounted for. It’s similar to the editing process but it makes the difference between a good piece of writing and a great one. It’s your chance to polish your piece and make sure it’s fit for consumption.
What will it look like to a reader? More importantly, what will it read like? Reading aloud is good here to make sure that it doesn’t sound hammy or hacked together, like your flat joke that didn’t stand the scrutiny of the real world.
Publishing
This is where you use internal feedback from ‘performing’ in public, or external feedback from a coach (whoever they may be) to further expand your sense of your work, and yourself. This bit can be truly transformational, as long as you’re open to constructive criticism and honest feedback. There’s no shame in being proud of your work either.
Maybe your learning journey ends after proofreading. Maybe you’re only writing for yourself. That’s fine, because there’s something to be learned from engaging with any step of the writing process. Even journalling alone has scientifically verified cognitive and emotional benefits – which means you learn something from them.
But if your aim is to publish your work, then there’s even more to be learned from that too. Because this is where you get feedback from other people.
‘Publishing’ can mean posting your writing on your own blog or social media, on a large publication’s website, or even just showing what you’ve written to someone else.
You’re the most important critic of your own work, and as a writer you shouldn’t feel the need for other people’s validation. But all the good nights’ sleep and long walks in the world mightn’t be enough to remove you fully from your work.
There’s always something to be learned from a second pair of eyes, or more.
And all forms of feedback are ways to learn more about what you’re written. What you’ve left out. How other people think about your ideas, and also how they respond to your writing itself.
Whether positive or negative, once you’ve published your work, it takes on a life of its own. Maybe someone will hit the like button. Maybe a publisher will proudly display it on their website, or a friend will tell you they loved it and have some questions for you. You’ll learn just as much about them as you do about yourself and your writing.
It’s also another step in the thinking process. Sometimes you know that joke wasn’t quite right as soon as you’ve said it, before anyone has even reacted to it. Because just saying it can be enough. And in our case, just writing it and releasing it into the wild can be enough for you to know how good it is.
It’s like when you’ve sent a text to your ex and immediately realised that you shouldn’t done it.
Or applied for a job and immediately felt good about it.
You kind of know as soon as it’s done.
All great talents have a great coach. And the wider world into which you release your writing can be your coach.
And your learning process is not just about your writing, but about the world, the people who inhabit it and with whom you interact, and yourself. Taking an action like publishing and experiencing all of the positive and negative emotions that come with it are part of the learning experience. There’s a shift in consciousness where you suddenly know things that you didn’t before.
Repeat
And what do all good masters of something do when they’ve achieved their goals?
They keep going.
Once you’ve done the whole writing thing once, you’ll be a different person. The next step is to keep going.
Write more. Learn more. Think differently about the world.
Learning is transformational
Learning happens when you use information to make sense of the world in a new way.
Every time you write, and every time you engage with any or all of the steps in the writing process to the best of your abilities, you learn something new. Remember, learning is not the gathering of facts and information. Learning happens when we push ourselves to the edge of our abilities.
It’s using ideas and information to deliberately practice thinking. And the act of writing contains all the steps of deliberate practice to think.
It’s about working with what you know, articulating it, reviewing it, refining it and then releasing it. Learning happens when we push ourselves to the edge of our abilities.
And this real, deep learning, changes your consciousness. You see yourself – and therefore the world – differently.
That’s why it’s painful. Because you’re changing your perception of who you are.
It’s about how you learn, not what you learn.
And if you keep persevering with this writing process – this learning process – it will change your life.