"I don't want to analyze myself or anything, but I think, in fact I know this to be true, that I enter the world through what I write. I grew up believing, and continue to believe, that I am a screw-up, that growing up with my family and friends, I had nothing to offer in any conversation. But when I started writing, suddenly there was something that I brought to the party that was at a high-enough level." —Aaron Sorkin
Writing is definitely a different form of thinking. It’s more precise. You actually have time to think. I suspect that you are a verbal communicator as well as a written communicator. I could be wrong. Imagine if you visited here or vice versa. Would we be mute in each others presence? that would be something else!
BUT I know what you see in this. I was an awkward communicator in my youth – feeling that I had nothing to offer. I’m a late maturer. Now i am full of opinions.
Yes, funny I was remarking on a student story about how she had managed to capture the fleeting layers of things that occupy the mind at one given moment. Writing IS a way to make sense of it – to take one layer of thought and articulate it.
I never felt I was a verbal communicator. Not a phone-talker. I think my verbal communication skills are pretty good, I even was a member of toastmasters for awhile so that I could be a better facilitator. But I am also an awkward communicator. And when there is awkwardness between me and another, I clam up.
And then there is the content of what I talk about, and often other people don’t want to talk about that stuff, like my “radical” social and political views and my “hippy-dippy” experiences in expressive arts…
I’ve always been full of opinions – just never wont to express them verbally. But that is entirely dependent on who I’m with as well.
Steve – I imagine we’d talk around the table for hours.