There are a few traditional staples which spring to mind when you think of Author's Purpose - to persuade, to inform, to describe, to entertain. They do indeed intermingle and intertwine almost always, but they are there, and they are handy when breaking down a text or writing your own. They're more than handy, actually. Figuring out the purpose of a communication can reveal its intended audience, explain language and structure, and empowers an author to make their own informed, purposeful choices from these elements.
A completely valid purpose which you don't see very often, though, is ... to think.
You can conceive of this in a few different ways. The first of which is in the more poetic, expressive sense of the word. Many people author something to make sense of how they are feeling - to think through their emotions. Some people write to get all their thoughts out of their head, and to be able to think more clearly. For some, grappling with this process of scribing your thoughts and bringing them into reality can enable you to stumble upon meaning, to come to terms, and to get closer to truths. Your purpose for writing is to provide the conditions for which this kind of thinking provides fertile ground to emerge from.
The other side of the "To Think" purpose for writing is related, but slightly different. You can write to make sense of complex ideas and to find connections, new avenues of thought and inspirations where there were previously none. Many writers would do this at the start of the writing process - scribbling down their half-brewed thoughts, potential plot lines and themes.
An example from myself - I spent the summer holidays immersed in a some key educational books, blog posts, and research papers. To make sense of all this input, I needed to output. So I wrote down all the little chunks of knowledge and thoughts which resonated with me on Post-It notes and stuck them to a wall in my house. I was writing to enable thinking. I could then see the big picture of all the bits I was learning and from there, start to find patterns and goals and clusters of similar and dissimilar pieces of the puzzle. I arranged and rearranged my Post-It notes as I synthesised my thoughts, combining ideas and extending others. Eventually it lead me to some professional goals and areas of focus for me as I entered Term 1, 2015.
This kind of writing is done best in a form which is easy to move around or change - hence the use of Post-It notes but also whiteboards, blackboards etc. It speaks to the fact that thinking is not set, it's in the process of being discovered, so you will need to erase and go over and scribble and change. It's tentative writing. Writing straight into a document on a screen makes you write a certain way, confined by the boundaries of the screen, the linear lines, and the quirks of the particular programme. It doesn't particularly lend itself to highly-flexible, visible, moveable, collaborative types of thinking and writing.
A few other examples of writing "To Think":
Empowering students with the language and ways of doing that this term suggests, opens up a range of interesting avenues. Is writing to think something you can get better at? Does it happen at certain stages of the writing / creative process? How might it be woven into other parts of school / home life? How can this kind of writing and thinking boost serendipitous and innovative outcomes?
A completely valid purpose which you don't see very often, though, is ... to think.
You can conceive of this in a few different ways. The first of which is in the more poetic, expressive sense of the word. Many people author something to make sense of how they are feeling - to think through their emotions. Some people write to get all their thoughts out of their head, and to be able to think more clearly. For some, grappling with this process of scribing your thoughts and bringing them into reality can enable you to stumble upon meaning, to come to terms, and to get closer to truths. Your purpose for writing is to provide the conditions for which this kind of thinking provides fertile ground to emerge from.
The other side of the "To Think" purpose for writing is related, but slightly different. You can write to make sense of complex ideas and to find connections, new avenues of thought and inspirations where there were previously none. Many writers would do this at the start of the writing process - scribbling down their half-brewed thoughts, potential plot lines and themes.
An example from myself - I spent the summer holidays immersed in a some key educational books, blog posts, and research papers. To make sense of all this input, I needed to output. So I wrote down all the little chunks of knowledge and thoughts which resonated with me on Post-It notes and stuck them to a wall in my house. I was writing to enable thinking. I could then see the big picture of all the bits I was learning and from there, start to find patterns and goals and clusters of similar and dissimilar pieces of the puzzle. I arranged and rearranged my Post-It notes as I synthesised my thoughts, combining ideas and extending others. Eventually it lead me to some professional goals and areas of focus for me as I entered Term 1, 2015.
This kind of writing is done best in a form which is easy to move around or change - hence the use of Post-It notes but also whiteboards, blackboards etc. It speaks to the fact that thinking is not set, it's in the process of being discovered, so you will need to erase and go over and scribble and change. It's tentative writing. Writing straight into a document on a screen makes you write a certain way, confined by the boundaries of the screen, the linear lines, and the quirks of the particular programme. It doesn't particularly lend itself to highly-flexible, visible, moveable, collaborative types of thinking and writing.
A few other examples of writing "To Think":
- Planning of any kind (like planning an assignment)
- Annotating and marking up some text
- Writing a To Do list or reminders
- Brainstorming
- Collating information when the links are yet unclear
- An ideas wallet and bug list
- Our weekly timetable at school, before it is finalised
Empowering students with the language and ways of doing that this term suggests, opens up a range of interesting avenues. Is writing to think something you can get better at? Does it happen at certain stages of the writing / creative process? How might it be woven into other parts of school / home life? How can this kind of writing and thinking boost serendipitous and innovative outcomes?
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