The "Magic" of Written Communication - Part I

I consider written communication to be the greatest invention in the history of mankind.  The ability to communicate with other human beings in "non real time" is, to me, "magical."  Spoken communication is, of course, critically important for the progress of humanity.  But spoken words, as soon as they are spoken, are immediately gone and all we have left is our recollections of them.  When something is written, you can go back to it again and again and get exactly the same information.  It is as close as we will ever get to time travel:  through writing, I can communicate with people in the future; through writing, I can hear directly from those who lived in the past.  That all seems pretty remarkable.

I've always wanted to write.  I remember trying to write books when I was in third grade.  In high school, I used to sit with my friends and we would compose fictional stories.  The stories were terrible and poorly written, of course, but we had fun.  I think I always had in the back of my mind that I would become a world-famous author.  Hah!  Then I majored in Biomedical Engineering and spent the next 12 years immersed in moving up the ladder of degrees until I finished my PhD.  During those 12 years, I took one - yes one - semester of English (and that was more speech than writing).

But here I am - writing.  One great thing about the internet is that it gives you the opportunity to write things that go out to the world.  Whether anyone reads them...who knows?  But still, it's kind of fun.

For me, writing is the perfect communication platform.  I am not a quick thinker - never have been.  I have a terrible memory.  But when you write, you can take as long as you want thinking through how to phrase your thoughts.  For example, I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out what word to use to describe writing for the title of this blog entry.  I settled on "magic" even though, as a scientist, I'm not really excited about that word.  I thought about "miracle", but that word has some pretty specific meaning to me and I wanted to reserve it for future blogs.  I thought about "excellence of writing" or "greatness of writing", but those words just seemed lacking in terms of what I wanted to express.  In the end, I felt "magic" was the best word to describe how I felt about writing.

When you write, you also have a chance to research your material, check sources, etc.  As a researcher, I really appreciate that.  I want to write things that are factual, correct, true.  When you're talking and you want to make a point, you may not be totally confident of your sources.  If you have a bad memory like me, you're never even confident if you remembered some of the basic principles correctly.  Since I hate looking stupid, it is often safer to keep my mouth shut!  But writing gives you the chance to run to the reference library (or the internet!) and check everything out first.  I know that isn't always true - Facebook is based on writing and it is full of unchecked foolishness!  

The funny thing is that after all those years in college without a class on writing, my entire career in research is dependent on my ability to write.  If I don't write high-quality manuscripts for scientific publication and if I don't write clear and cohesive grant applications, then my career will end quickly!  It was a painful process to learn to write in a manner that allowed me to be successful (so far)...

I hope you find the things I've written on this page interesting and thought-provoking.  I hope it spurs you to start writing your own blog.  It is the most "magical" form of communication!