EP09: Writing As An Extension of Thought - TRANSCRIPT

 Hi! You're listening to Hyba is Writing, and I am your host, Hyba. For those of you who don't know, I didn't upload any episodes last week because I was having some trouble with Google Podcasts. It seems that the platform doesn't show any episodes past Episode 6, which is the second part of me reading Brittle Teeth. I'm not sure why that is, and it's still happening, but I am trying to figure it out. Until then, I've decided to continue sharing, so I hope you will enjoy listening to this on any of the many other platforms where it can be found.

I'm also not outside for this episode, so apologies for that. I have been working on a side project non-stop for a few days now, and it has a deadline for the end of the week, so I've been doing my best to focus on only that project. It is currently 2:51 AM, so that will give you an idea of how my days are going! But I feel great, you know? When you do something you want to do and that you like, it feels really nice.

Anyway!

Today's episode is about a theory that I personally find very interesting, and it's the idea that writing is an extension of thought. At first glance, this theory doesn't seem very thought-provoking. It kind of makes sense, doesn't it? A journal or diary entry might be the most obvious example of this. Also, I realize that there are many studies that show that writing helps you think more clearly and improves your critical thinking skills, but I think you'll see that I'm thinking about a different relationship here.

At the end of last semester, I had a paper to write for a class that I hadn't really attended. I hadn't attended the class because I was also working from home at the time, and anyone who has worked from home knows that it's really hard to have a work-life balance, and it's even harder when you throw studies into the mix - not to mention also working on my writing. So, I ended up having to write that paper and not really knowing where to begin. Since I didn't have time to go through all the lectures, I dove headfirst into the literature that I would need in order to write my paper. At first, I felt really, really lost. I didn't understand what a lot of the literature was saying - obviously because I didn't have the background since I hadn't attended any of the classes. But then something interesting started happening.

I persevered and kept swimming through that literature, and at some point, things just kind of clicked. And it took me back to this conversation I was having with a coworker about how writing can be seen as an extension of thought. I started thinking about that, and I really like doing these kinds of thought exercises, so I pushed it a bit farther. (And, as a quick side note here, I think this probably has something to do with how language gives you access to cultural structures as well, which is another fascinating topic.)

If writing is an extension of thought - thought being someone's thought structures and processes - then reading could potentially give you access to the writer's thought structures and processes. It's easy enough to see this in literature that is meant to instruct and teach. For example, textbooks are purposefully presented in easy-to-follow ways in which the path is more evidently laid out for our brains to follow. But when it comes to diving head-first into literature about a specific subject without really any prior knowledge of that subject, it's kind of fascinating to see how much you can learn despite not having the basics and foundations, if that makes sense? I'm not sure if I'm explaining it well or not, but hopefully the gist gets through.

Anyway, all of this got me thinking about writing fiction. In literary analysis, we talk about what the author meant when they wrote a piece of fiction. We wonder what was going through their head and try to decipher their words. Sometimes we get it, and sometimes we don't. As writers, especially when we're writing fiction, I don't think we're always aware of how much of ourselves - specifically our thought structures and thought processes - we're putting into the thing we're writing. Of course, we all come with our biases and our assumptions, and that's definitely part of it - and we also aren't often aware of those as we write, either.

But the really cool thing about this particular subject when it comes to writing fiction is that when we worldbuild - when we create worlds and the peoples, cultures, societies, and systems within those worlds - we are creating a thought structure that we are giving the reader access to. And it's a lot like diving into literature about a specific subject head-first (and now you know why I was telling you about my paper-writing experience). We can't explain everything piece by piece - we're not writing encyclopaedias here! We don't do a lot of info-dumping, in other words. But we do write our stories carefully with the intention of letting the reader learn about the world without truly having to learn about the world from its very basics, if that makes sense. Through our writing and these carefully chosen words, we give the reader access to a complicated structure that they would otherwise not have access to, in a way that purposefully seeks to teach them or inform them about it while not overtly doing that for the most part.

That's a lot of stuff to fit into a short episode, and I wish I could have talked about this subject more in-depth! It's one of those topics you can talk about for hours and not really get tired of it. I hope that I've done it some justice here, as short as it is. If you have any questions, thoughts, comments, or suggestions, let me know via my Tumblr or my Twitter, which are linked in the episode description.

Thank you so much for tuning in today!

Until next time!