Writing to Find Out

"I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say."

— Flannery O'Connor

Context

O'Connor said this in one of the letters collected in The Habit of Being, her posthumously published correspondence, which many readers consider as essential as her fiction. The line is self-deprecating on the surface but points to something precise: that thinking and writing are not sequential — first you think, then you write — but simultaneous. The act of writing forces the mind to commit, to test, to discover where its actual positions are rather than where it imagines them to be. This is why journals reveal things therapy does not, why writing a difficult email clarifies what you actually want, and why people often find out what they believe at the end of a sentence rather than at the beginning.

Reflection Question

Is there a question in your life right now — about a relationship, a decision, a direction — that you have been turning over in your head without resolution? What might happen if you stopped thinking about it and started writing about it instead?

Application Tip

Pick one unresolved question in your life and give it fifteen minutes of writing — not typing, if possible. Do not plan what you will say before you begin. Start with the sentence "What I actually think about this is..." and write without stopping until the time is up. Read it back. O'Connor's point is that the answer does not precede the writing; it emerges from it. Most people find something on the page that they did not know they held.