Great Thinkers; Great Writers

While I was reading a long list of quoations and some terminology from the analytical psychologist Carl Jung, I remembered a chance encounter with an old friend in the English Department. Bentley was grading papers when I saw him in the JFSB. He's teaching a Freshman English class as a graduate student. I feel like I write like a freshman anyway so our conversation gets on that topic. Paraphrasing he said that writing takes a lot of thought. And then he said, "You can find a thinker that doesn't write well, but rarely will you find a writer that doesn't think well."

I've seen this simple idea repeated so frequently this semester. Carl Jung is a renown psychologist(obviously a great thinker) and he has also developed his writing so that reading quotations from him is thought provoking. I have been writing a lot more this semester and I have learned how easy the act of writing has become following thoughtful pre-writing (this idea never occurred to me until now).

There are also plenty of examples of good thinkers writing poorly. For my major, I am ever reading more and more primary research articles. It takes unparalleled mind power to understand it at all. I understand that they write to a different audience, but it's even difficult for specially educated people. Here's the point, and it's been re-iterated in class many times: improve your thinking by writing; improve your writing by thinking and writing. Great writers are great thinkers.