The Best Writers Do Their Thinking First

To be a writer, you need to be a thinker. Thinking is working. If you are gazing out of a window, others think you're dreaming or lazing, but, if you're a writer, it's much more likely you're plotting your next story, novel, article or poem.

 Here's some brilliant stuff about thinking from an amazing 17th century thinker:

 John Locke - On Thinking About Thinking
Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons
We see Locke as the Father of Empiricism, a philosophy promoting the discovery of truth through experience; that we know nothing that does not come to us through our senses.


Locke did not believe that innate ideas existed but rather that the human mind at birth was literally a “blank slate,” and all knowledge came directly from the senses.
Some thinkers now dispute the doctrine of the Blank Slate, for example, Professor Steven Pinker. In his book The Blank Slate, Pinker explains his conviction that intellectuals, who subscribe to the theory that the human mind is born a blank slate, on which experience makes its mark, are denying the existence of human nature, our common humanity and our individual preferences. Read more...

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