Professor Bainbridge links to The Questioning Christian, which links to a longish Paul Graham essay entitled “The Age of the Essay”.

The essay is worth the read. One of the basic ideas is that the process of writing the essay formalizes thought. The essay isn't an argument, with a topic/thesis, support, and conclusion (sorry, Mrs. Adams,** I guess you got it wrong). The essay involves exploring a question or an idea, examining different aspects of it, and arriving at conclusions or clarification of ideas based on the process of writing. The essay isn't the destination, it's the journey.

I've always considered writing to be beneficial in the role of clarifying thought; Mr. Graham puts words on paper mostly reflective of my point of view. This is one of the reasons why I blog. I know most folks out there don't give a whit about the stuff I write; but it helps me immensely when thinking about issues, small or large. Consider this excerpt from Mr. Graham's essay:

If all you want to do is figure things out, why do you need to write anything, though? Why not just sit and think? Well, there precisely is Montaigne's great discovery. Expressing ideas helps to form them. Indeed, helps is far too weak a word. Most of what ends up in my essays I only thought of when I sat down to write them. That's why I write them.

In the things you write in school you are, in theory, merely explaining yourself to the reader. In a real essay you're writing for yourself. You're thinking out loud.

But not quite. Just as inviting people over forces you to clean up your apartment, writing something that other people will read forces you to think well. So it does matter to have an audience. The things I've written just for myself are no good. They tend to peter out. When I run into difficulties, I find I conclude with a few vague questions and then drift off to get a cup of tea.

Wow, he is so right on track here. I do exactly the same thing unless I know I have an audience. This is why I've invited some close friends to help me by commiting to read drafts of what I write for the Pastoral Epistles and then come over to my house to talk about what I've written. It helps the process immensely, and a better product is the result.

** Mrs. Adams was my 10th grade English/composition teacher.