On Writing as Thinking 

How do you use writing to aid your thinking in your professional/intellectual/scholarly/research practice?


Nada Ayad
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

February 2025
Issue 1

It was only after I had gone through the process of publishing my first article when I realized what the writing process is:

 
a marvel. In the process, there’s no inevitability, only possibility. Rich and enriching. Lush and generative. It’s a time of inwardness, unpredictability, the underside of the mundane, the underbelly of the expected, the space and place for ideas to be unearthed, for honesty to push itself to the core.  It’s one of the only times when the absence of me yields pure creation and ideas. It’s both a solitary experience but also the most connected I ever feel to humanity, including my own.

In a world that can be so clinical and wrenching, where there can be rigidity through false authority, it’s a relief to believe in the possibility of wonder. You think you know so much, but then you’re baffled by the process, by not knowing, by wander and wondering. For me, sometimes it's a relief to participate in something while not being able to fully explain it.