Fall 2021: Keep Writing

Blogging seems to work for my students, judging by their responses to the Post 14 prompt to "explore the effects of class blogging on your own writing and the writing of your classmates." Perhaps some students are blowing smoke when they say they enjoyed blogging, but I don't think so. Enough students say that blogging doesn't do much for them to convince me that most are giving an honest response. Plus, I've been reading them for almost three months now, and I have faith in most of my bloggers.

With blogging on my mind, I was pleased to read Josh Bernoff's post "What did you learn today? And would you blog it?" in which he talks about writing in general, but blogging specifically, as one of the very best tools for learning. You should read his post.

First, he talks about how to come up with new ideas to sustain a life of writing a blog post five times a week, which he does. He lists six sources that he uses to get his ideas for 260 blog posts a year:

• Reflect on any milestones in your life and what you learned from them. Birthdays count.
• Reflect on something you just read that made you think differently. You do read, don't you? If you want to be a lifelong learner, then you read -- new stuff.
• Reflect on something you witnessed or became aware of that is wrong and should be corrected. If you see nothing wrong in the world, then you might not be looking.
• Reflect on something you witnessed or became aware of that is right and should be promoted. If you see nothing right in the world, then you are definitely not looking.
• Reflect on any experience that you think would elicit support, sympathy, or appreciation from others.
• Reflect on any experience that you think would amuse or entertain others.

Regardless of the topic of your blog, looking into these six areas of your life can lead you to plenty to write about, so go for it. I mostly blog about things that I've read. Writing is how I process my reading and make it my own.

Why do this much writing? To grow, to learn. Bernoff says:

Learning is growth.
Thinking about what you learned creates more growth.
Writing about what you learned forces you to think harder about it, and how it fits into your worldview, and how you would explain it — which creates still more growth.

So writing is learning first. We usually think of writing as communicating, but you have to learn something before you communicate -- or at least, you should. Few things in life are more agonizing than listening to or reading someone who doesn't know what they're talking about. It's why I sometimes become frustrated with students who submit essays before they've learned something worth writing. I'm old enough to realize that I'm not going to finish reading all the good stuff that I want to read, so when I have to read writing devoid of meaning or learning, then I can become cranky. I know it's part of my job, but still ... Fortunately, every term I have students who learn something worth saying and who put in the effort to say it well. I'm very thankful for those students. They save my job and maybe my life.

Bernoff concludes his post by encouraging his readers to try writing regularly. He promises them that they will learn and grow into better, more interesting, more useful people. I know that he is correct. And a blog is a fine platform for regular writing. A blog with readers can help keep you on track with your writing.

Of course, there are other ways to learn, but writing is a damn good way. It works for me. I know lots of things because I write. You can write, too.