How We Write and Learn to Write

Article for Reflection: What's Right with Writing by Linda Rief

I was lucky. I had the absolute best English teacher in high school. I actually still keep in touch with her and she is currently completing her masters at UNI while continuing to teach high school english. She followed a lot of the rules that Reif mentions in this article, so it is easy for me to forget that not everyone had that while they were learning to write. 

My Conception of Writing
Writing is a way of understanding. Whether it is understanding ourselves, a historical figure, a topic, or the world in general. Reif has a couple great quotes along these lines: 

1. Writing let's us communicate what we know and helps us think of things we didn't know until we began writing. Writing is one way of communicating our understandings and misunderstandings of ourselves and the world. (33)

2. [Writing] helps us pay attention to the world. Good writing lets writer and reader learn or think or feel something. Putting words on paper gives us a voice -- allows us to be heard. (35)


Those who write, creatively or otherwise, have an instinctual understanding of this. However Reif puts it into words as it has value for teaching writing. Reading it, as we learn to write through reading, also helps us as writers understand why we are compelled to write and how we we write. The importance of reading mentioned in the article is also noteworthy. Reif says that "a person can read with out writing, but can not write with out reading" (34). However I think that writing is just as essential to reading, for, as previously stated, writing is a way of understanding. I know that I personally have learned more about any and every piece of literature by writing about it than by purely reading about it. Writing helps you access those understandings that you can't quite verbalize in conversation without writing it out first. And on a final note regarding writing to understand our world, Reif mentions that the only way to become "thoughtful citizens of the world" (35) is by writing. "They must commit their thinking to paper."