Writing is almost like teaching to me. It’s about thinking “out loud” so that other (like students) understand what’s going on in your head. If when I’m doing a math problem in front of the class and I just jump several steps and give the answer, then my students won’t understand anything that happened. It’s not just about getting the “right” answer, but the journey there – showing and understanding the work. To me, that’s what storytelling is about – explaining your thinking.
It’s always been very natural for me to explain my thinking. How else will they know how to do the problem? How else will they know which method to choose? How to think - if I don’t explain how I think?
Writing is a natural extension of this. I have to explain my thinking. I don’t like teachers who “hand wave” a solution. It’s like “abracadabra” here’s the end and you don’t know how it happened. I try not to do that in class and definitely not during my writing.
The engineer in me likes to know how things work and explain how things work. Granted, not all (or many) engineers can explain things well. They tend to get caught up in their own mind and terminology. Communication between engineer and layman isn’t always the best. When I worked as an engineer in an office, I was always the “translator”. It always fell to me to write up the documentation so a user could understand it. I didn’t mind because I knew the others were really bad at it. And bad documentation is useless. Good documentation is gold. So, good writing… in any format is a beautiful thing.
