Writing: More to It than Putting Pen to Paper

In his book Teachers as Cultural Workers, Freire (1998) states that “writing is not a mere mechanical act preceded by a greater, much more important act: the act of thinking in an organized manner about a specific object,” a thinking act during which the writer becomes “more intimately” knowledgeable about the object only after studying it and thinking about it thoroughly, and only after, can the writer address the object of study on paper. Instead, it is a multilayered writing process that involved, in no particular order, “thinking, doing, writing, reading, thought, language and reality,” all of which are “impossible to separate and dichotomize.” In other words, the writer will decide on an object of study, consider it carefully, jot down some ideas, read up on it, revisit the original thoughts, revise the ideas, jot down some more notes, read some more, revisit again, begin to draft, etc. Writing should be a process that leads to knowing and re-knowing. It should be about becoming enlightened again and again. The more a writer is in the muck of writing, the more the writer learns about the process, the craft, and the object of study.