The Impact of “Idea-Driven” Writing
The most important moment in an educational experience for both learners and teachers alike is the fabled and classic “Aha!” moment. Known in a more technical context as the “Eureka Effect”, this is the moment we’ve all felt in school where a topic so inconceivably difficult becomes perfectly clear all at once. This moment is what students who are eager to learn live for, and by the same token it’s the gift that all teachers wish they could give to all of their students. It’s what education is all about.
My experiences this semester with looking inside who I am intellectually in the context of writing have felt like one big “Aha!” moment where my entire life was the topic that I didn’t understand. Over the past few months I’ve been encouraged to sit down and question what I’ve valued throughout my life and what kind of impacts those values have had on me intellectually, an activity that I’ve never even considered doing before. I never questioned what I was learning in grade school and why I was learning it, or how my life as a musician affected this and why it did, because I figured that I had a full understanding of who I was and why I valued what I did. The way I discovered that this wasn’t true was through the work in idea-driven writing that I’ve done in this past semester, which forced me to take a deeper look at what my ideas really were.
The concept of idea-driven writing is the most meaningful lesson that this class had to teach, because it transformed my writing from being an academic and boring collection of words to being a powerful and effective form of art. In order to craft idea-driven writing, the author needs to first establish what the idea is that they actually want to get across in their writing. This first step is crucial to the writing process and is something that I’ve never done before this year. If there is no meaningful idea that you care about and want to portray through your writing, then there is absolutely zero point in writing about it, because there will be no meaningful ideas in the paper. When this happens, a piece of writing turns out as merely a mixed bundle of sentences that make sense but have no deeper meaning or message. With an idea-driven approach, on the other hand, every paper you write will not only have meaning to the author but it will come across as much more powerful to the reader, because writing with your ideas at the wheel ensures that your writing serves its purpose of communicating a powerful message.
When you write with the meaning and power of the ideas that you really care about, you in turn find out more about yourself through writing. Setting the precedent that you are going to be an idea-driven writer means that in order to consider writing about a topic, you need to think deeply about it and how it makes you feel. This forces you to fully unpack what you value in terms of a certain topic before you even begin to write. Once you start writing, you realize that these fully unpacked ideas are flowing beautifully on a sheet of paper, and by the time you’re done you can look back and read about yourself and what you truly believe. Writing in this way makes writing into an artistic and wonderful experience where you learn more about yourself and what you believe in without even realizing it.
What’s more is that this idea-driven writing process never stops. One of the most useful techniques for this style of writing is going back in a draft and rearranging the paragraphs to put the more powerful ideas at the beginning of paragraphs while cutting out some of the more redundant and narrative based filler writing. The end result after several rounds of this is a piece of writing that drives home an idea that the reader relates to and fully understands from multiple angles. This writing style is a never ending process of looking back at your ideas and unpacking them more and more until you’re written down all of the different powerful and meaningful thoughts you have on a topic. Essentially, idea-based writing is a learning experience that teaches the writer about themselves while also crafting a powerful piece of art.
What made this class so impactful as a whole is that I was able to learn this style of writing and utilize it when writing about myself and my values, leading me to see myself in a whole new light. When I sat down at my desk to write this semester I would start a piece by collecting my thoughts and ideas about my own life and values, fully unpacking them in my mind and understanding what I wanted to say about them. This process forced me to look back at my life as a musician and student and question why I acted certain ways and valued what I did, an experience that I’ve never been encouraged to do in an academic context. The result was that I was able to track the development of my appreciation for my education and for music throughout my entire life with great detail and analysis, which was the greatest learning experience I’ve ever had the pleasure of having.
Through learning to be an idea driven writer I was able to fully understand my values in both an educational and musical context and learn how to make my writing into an art form. Prior to this semester my writing was purely influenced by ideas that were not my own, making my writing bland and neither meaningful nor powerful. After learning to write with my ideas and feelings at the wheel, however, I was able to turn writing into a romantic and beautiful form of art that I could use to learn about myself and what I believed in, a tool that’s value is unmatched. Now, writing is my gateway to those “Aha!” moments that make everything in life click together and make sense, because every piece I write is a learning experience where I force myself to unpack my ideas and fully understand them. Idea based writing is the key to learning more about yourself than you could ever imagine.
