"In time I began to understand that it's when you start writing that you really find out what you don't know and need to know"
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The insight is both practical and liberating: clarity is not a prerequisite for writing, it is a result of writing. Setting words on the page exposes the gaps in your knowledge and sharpens the questions you must pursue. Until you try to frame an argument, narrate an event, or render a character, you can live under the illusion that you know enough. The moment you begin, the structure of sentences and the tug of logic demand specifics: names, timelines, motives, textures. Scenes insist on particulars. A paragraph forces you to decide what matters and what follows from what, and that pressure reveals missing facts and faulty assumptions.
David McCullough practiced this lesson across a lifetime of historical storytelling. He was not an academic historian by training; he began as a writer and editor who followed curiosity into archives. Working on The Johnstown Flood, he only discovered the breadth of what he needed as he tried to tell the story, which then sent him back to letters, engineering reports, rainfall records, and eyewitness accounts. The same cycle drove John Adams and 1776. As he drafted, questions bloomed: How did it feel in the room? What did they read that week? Who was there and at what hour? Writing became both test and compass, showing where the research was thin and where the narrative could carry weight.
The advice counters perfectionism. Waiting to start until you know everything guarantees paralysis, because knowledge expands as inquiry deepens. Writing is a thinking act, a way of discovering what you think and why. It builds a bridge between curiosity and evidence, between sources and story. It also demands humility, because the page exposes ignorance without mercy. McCullough embraced that exposure as part of the craft. Begin, he implies, and let the work itself teach you what you must learn. The process is iterative, not linear: draft, discover, return, refine. That is how understanding grows sturdy enough to stand.
David McCullough practiced this lesson across a lifetime of historical storytelling. He was not an academic historian by training; he began as a writer and editor who followed curiosity into archives. Working on The Johnstown Flood, he only discovered the breadth of what he needed as he tried to tell the story, which then sent him back to letters, engineering reports, rainfall records, and eyewitness accounts. The same cycle drove John Adams and 1776. As he drafted, questions bloomed: How did it feel in the room? What did they read that week? Who was there and at what hour? Writing became both test and compass, showing where the research was thin and where the narrative could carry weight.
The advice counters perfectionism. Waiting to start until you know everything guarantees paralysis, because knowledge expands as inquiry deepens. Writing is a thinking act, a way of discovering what you think and why. It builds a bridge between curiosity and evidence, between sources and story. It also demands humility, because the page exposes ignorance without mercy. McCullough embraced that exposure as part of the craft. Begin, he implies, and let the work itself teach you what you must learn. The process is iterative, not linear: draft, discover, return, refine. That is how understanding grows sturdy enough to stand.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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