Thinking is a craft

 I like to write, and when people me why, I usually reply that writing is just a species of thinking. I think at the point of a pen.

If there’s a better way to talk about writing I don’t know what it is.

I also think that writing is a craft. You can learn to use tools — words, illustrations and arguments — to improve the way you write. And, since writing is a way of thinking, that attention to tools and craftsmanship improves your thinking.

Here’s a line from Scott Newstok’s How to Think like Shakespeare that argues that the most helpful way to talk about thinking is to talk of it as a craft:

What’s a better way to talk about vibrant habits of the mind? I propose that craft more accurately describes (and celebrates) thinking, whether in Shakespeare’s era or ours. Craft reminds us of the writer-in-process that Shakespeare was — a product of his practice, just as we can be.

Note that word “practice.” A musician must practice his instrument. A doctor must practice her medicine.

One of my uncles used to call me the “horizontal nephew,” the teenager who could be found lying on the couch on the back porch, reading a book or staring at the ceiling, lost in thought. I was just practicing.

• Sources: Scott Newstok, How to Think like Shakespeare; Princeton University Press, 2020, p. 25.