That’s definitely true for me. My journey as a writer also follow steps you mention, maybe not in the same order: write fun stuff without worrying → start to worry and write less → realize that a crappy first draft can end up in a drawer or your hard drive → write crappy first drafts so that you have clear ideas for the rewrite of the actual post.
As for why writing is a superpower, I have another hypothesis, in addition to the working memory: writing forces you to commit your ideas to a specific form. While they’re in your head, it’s really easy to adapt them whenever something slightly wrong appears. Same in a conversation: you can explain away, or in a different way, so that in the end it seems the other one has understood you. But paper is ruthless, and writing something down means you can’t get away with changing it without a thought. If it’s wrong, you need to change the words. And that forces you to go further intellectually.
seconding that; I often find that I’m forced to confront problems with world-models that I’ve long assumed were true when I try to write them down, and in fact trying to write down a list of reasons for why I believed what I did ended up leading me to the conclusion that Orthodox Judaism is not self-consistent, which eventually brought me here.
That’s definitely true for me. My journey as a writer also follow steps you mention, maybe not in the same order: write fun stuff without worrying → start to worry and write less → realize that a crappy first draft can end up in a drawer or your hard drive → write crappy first drafts so that you have clear ideas for the rewrite of the actual post.
As for why writing is a superpower, I have another hypothesis, in addition to the working memory: writing forces you to commit your ideas to a specific form. While they’re in your head, it’s really easy to adapt them whenever something slightly wrong appears. Same in a conversation: you can explain away, or in a different way, so that in the end it seems the other one has understood you. But paper is ruthless, and writing something down means you can’t get away with changing it without a thought. If it’s wrong, you need to change the words. And that forces you to go further intellectually.
I like that hypothesis of paper being ruthless. I think there’s something there.
seconding that; I often find that I’m forced to confront problems with world-models that I’ve long assumed were true when I try to write them down, and in fact trying to write down a list of reasons for why I believed what I did ended up leading me to the conclusion that Orthodox Judaism is not self-consistent, which eventually brought me here.