Gaining insight by weblogging

Yesterday I read a short article in Dagens Nyheter about a teacher who had received a prize from the Swedish Academy for her work. She teaches a method called “cognitive writing”, which is about learning by writing, so to speak:

Writing and reading are closely related to each other, says Anita Welin Clarhäll. You understand more of what you read if you are also forced to write about the subject. Writing is … an unparalleled tool for thinking and developing concepts. The point is that the students should gain insight by writing.

Before starting this weblog, I didn’t realize how important writing was to me. I have always written much in my life. I have used BBS’es for nearly 15 years, for example; and in projects I have been in, I have had a tendency to send lots of e-mails to the others in the team about things we were doing. But I have never written in the way I am now. My weblogging has emerged into a habit of reviewing things I read, which feeds reading, which feeds weblogging, in a virtuous circle. And reviewing what I read gives an level of understanding uncomparable to only reading.

Weblogging is generally about linking to things you have read, but I would suggest to all webloggers that they write at least a short review or commentary on the things they link to. What do you think about the subject of the text you’re linking to? What did it make you think of? Do you agree or disagree? Asking yourself questions like these, and answering them, will raise your level of understanding of what you have read. And it will also set off the virtuous circle leading to more reading and more weblogging – and more understanding.

If you make a habit of reviewing rather than simply linking, while maintaining an attitude that it’s better to post half-baked things than to not post at all (should the review part hinder your posting, because of self-criticism or low self-esteem or perfectionism), I bet that you’ll see yourself returning to the half-baked ideas, refining them.

Gail Sher writes in her book One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers that her frustration with longing for writing, but being unable to write was cured “via haiku … For several years I wrote one haiku a day … Gradually it dawned on me that the healing factor was not the haiku but the ‘one per day.’” So making a practice out of weblogging – doing it every day, no matter what, writing short commentary for links posted and not allowing unfinished thoughts to “censor” you – will transform your weblog as well as yourself.

The ideas in this post are half-baked ideas to me, as are the ideas in most of my posts; if I would let that keep me from posting, I wouldn’t write anything. But writing feeds writing, and since these things are interesting to me, there got to be one or two people that are interested in these things too. I’ve written about this a few weeks ago, and will probably return to this topic many times in the future. Gail Sher’s book is very inspirational and can be read as “Four Noble Truths for Webloggers” (or ”... Programmers” or ”... Bakers” or …).