Thinking is PreWriting, Writing is PreReading

Emig’s Revolutionary Vision: The Magic of the “Visible Graphic Product”

In 1977, Janet Emig made a bold claim that changed how we understood writing forever: writing is more than a way to record our thoughts. It’s a unique way of thinking itself. Her key insight was that writing represents “a unique mode of learning—not merely valuable, not merely special, but unique.”

What makes writing so special? Emig argued that writing is fundamentally different from talking. She called writing an “artificial process.” Her point I think is that talking means lips, teeth, throat, tongue, and nose. Writing means pencils, pens, keyboards, paper, and alphabets.

When we speak, we can rely on gestures, facial expressions, and the immediate environment to help communicate our meaning. We can perceive bodily messages that sit beneath conscious, deliberate thought and language. We use our bodies to speak.

But when we write, we must create everything from scratch. There are no bodily messages. Communication is decontextualized. We have to build our own context into an artificial, compressed, unnatural artifact, anticipate our readers’ questions, and make all our connections explicit.

Here’s where Emig’s thinking becomes almost mystical. Writing simultaneously activates our hand (the physical act of forming words), our eye (seeing what we’ve written), and our brain (processing the ideas). This creates what she called “a uniquely powerful multi-representational mode for learning.”

Even more remarkably, writing uses both sides of our brain—the logical left hemisphere that organizes and sequences ideas, and the creative right hemisphere that provides intuition, emotion, and those sudden “flashes of images” that often spark our best insights.

The real magic happens in what Emig called the “visible graphic product”—the actual words appearing on the page. Unlike thoughts that disappear as quickly as they arise, or speech that vanishes into the air, writing creates a permanent record that we can see, review, and revise.

This visibility is crucial because it allows us to literally watch our thinking unfold. We can see where our logic breaks down, where we need better connections, where new ideas are trying to emerge. The written text becomes a thinking partner, offering what Emig called “immediate feedback” about the quality and direction of our thoughts.

Perhaps most profoundly, Emig argued that writing is “connective” in ways that other forms of thinking aren’t. When we write, we’re forced to make explicit the relationships between ideas—to show how this connects to that, how these examples support that argument, how this evidence leads to that conclusion.

Writing demands what Vygotsky called “deliberate structuring of the web of meaning.” We can’t just gesture vaguely at connections; we have to build them, word by word, sentence by sentence.

Poe’s Expansion: Writing as Multiple Intelligence Orchestration

Twenty-three years later, Mya Poe took Emig’s insights and asked a crucial question: if writing is thinking, what kinds of thinking does it involve? Using Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, Poe argued that effective writing draws on far more than just linguistic intelligence. It’s actually a complex orchestration of multiple ways of knowing.

Gardner identified eight different types of intelligence: linguistic (sensitivity to words and language), logical-mathematical (reasoning and pattern recognition), spatial (visual and spatial perception), kinesthetic (body movement and physical skill), musical (sensitivity to rhythm and sound), interpersonal (understanding others), intrapersonal (understanding oneself), and naturalist (recognizing patterns in nature).

Traditional education focused almost exclusively on linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence, often leaving students who were strong in other areas feeling like failures.

Poe’s breakthrough was recognizing that writing actually requires most of these intelligences working together. When we write, we use spatial intelligence to organize ideas visually on the page, kinesthetic intelligence to feel the rhythm and flow of sentences, logical-mathematical intelligence to structure arguments, and interpersonal intelligence to imagine our readers’ responses.

Her students demonstrated this beautifully: Drew, an architecture major, discovered he could write better by first sketching his ideas visually. Chris and Paul connected writing to music, showing how both involve building patterns and creating rhythmic flow. Justin and Chris compared writing to chess, revealing how both require strategic thinking—“playing the game in your head” to anticipate responses and plan several moves ahead.

This chess metaphor captures something essential about writing as thinking. Just as chess players must simultaneously track multiple pieces, anticipate their opponent’s moves, and maintain a long-term strategy, writers must juggle multiple ideas, anticipate readers’ questions and objections, and keep their overall purpose in mind.

Both activities require what Poe called “spatial as well as logical-mathematical intelligences”—the ability to see patterns and relationships while also thinking strategically about cause and effect.

Poe’s insight was that many students who struggled with traditional writing instruction weren’t “bad writers.” They simply needed pathways that honored their strongest intelligences.

A student who excelled at kinesthetic learning might discover powerful writing strategies by thinking about the physical process of pottery-making. A visual learner might find their voice by first drawing concept maps or sketches.

The Convergence: Writing as Visible Thinking

Together, Emig and Poe reveal writing as a uniquely powerful form of thinking that makes order from chaos. Emig showed us that the “visible graphic product” of writing creates a special kind of feedback loop. We can literally see our thoughts emerging and evolving on the page. Poe expanded this to show that the thinking captured in writing draws on all our intelligences, not just our verbal skills.

This convergence explains why writing feels both difficult and clarifying. It’s difficult because it demands the coordination of multiple cognitive systems. We simultaneously manage language, logic, spatial relationships, rhythm, social awareness, and strategic planning.

It’s clarifying because this coordination creates a mental representation that transcends any single intelligence: visible thinking that can be examined, revised, and shared across time and space.

When we write, we’re not transcribing pre-formed thoughts but orchestrating a complex cognitive symphony. Each word, each sentence, each paragraph represents the convergence of multiple intelligences working together to create meaning that exceeds what any single intelligence could achieve alone.

AI and Emig’s “Artificial Process”: Making the Visible Graphic Product

Emig’s conception of writing as an “artificial process” creates fascinating theoretical possibilities for rethinking AI. If writing itself is an artificial process from the start, if we want natural communication in our classrooms, the medium we have to use is talk. From this perspective, AI adds another layer of artificiality to what is already artificial: the written alphabet.

Writing is artificial.

If writing’s power lies in its deliberate construction benefiting from the emerging visual graph—forcing explicit connection-making and systematic relationship-building—then AI could serve as a cognitive amplifier that enhances these very qualities while preserving their essential artificiality.

Affordances of AI in Emig’s Framework:

Enhanced Visibility of Thinking. AI could expand Emig’s “visible graphic product” beyond static text into dynamic, multi-dimensional representations of thought.

Consider a writing interface that creates real-time concept maps as you type, showing how your ideas connect and where logical gaps exist. As you write about climate change, for instance, the system might visualize the relationships between economic, scientific, and policy arguments, highlighting where you need stronger connections or contradictory evidence.

This transforms Emig’s static “visible graphic product” into a living cognitive mirror that reflects not just what you’ve written, but how you’re thinking as you write.

Amplified Feedback Loops. Emig emphasized writing’s unique capacity for “immediate feedback” through the visible text. AI could exponentially enhance this by providing multiple types of simultaneous feedback.

Imagine writing a persuasive essay where AI simultaneously checks your logical consistency (“This claim contradicts your earlier argument about renewable energy costs”), analyzes rhetorical effectiveness (“Your audience of skeptical engineers might respond better to technical data than emotional appeals”), and identifies evidence gaps (“You need supporting data for this assertion about battery storage”).

Rather than replacing the writer’s judgment, AI makes visible the cognitive work that typically remains hidden, like having multiple expert readers offering suggestions in real-time.

Multi-Modal Cognitive Integration. Emig discovered that writing uniquely integrates “hand, eye, and brain” in a tri-modal learning experience. AI could extend this integration by enabling fluid translation between different representational modes.

A writer exploring urban planning might sketch neighborhood layouts, which AI could help transform into policy arguments about housing density, or convert statistical data about traffic patterns into narrative descriptions of community impact. This preserves Emig’s insight about multi-modal thinking while expanding the range of modes that can contribute to the writing process.

Constraints and Risks

The Delegation Dilemma. Emig’s framework suggests that writing’s cognitive power comes precisely from the effort of deliberate construction. If AI makes connection-making too easy, we might lose the very fuel that generates deep thinking.

Consider the difference between AI that automatically generates transitions between paragraphs versus AI that highlights where transitions are needed and asks questions like “How does this evidence relate to your main claim?”

The former does cognitive work; the latter scaffolds it. The constraint here is maintaining what we could call “active cogitation”—enough challenge to force genuine intellectual work, but not so much as to be paralyzing.

Preserving Hemispheric Integration

Emig emphasized writing’s activation of both logical and intuitive brain processes. She noted how William Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury” began with “the image of a little girl’s muddy drawers as she sat in a tree watching her grandmother’s funeral”—a right-hemisphere flash of imagery that became great literature.

AI systems trained primarily on patterns in existing text might over-privilege left-hemisphere linear processing while diminishing these crucial intuitive contributions. The risk is creating writing that is logically coherent but cognitively impoverished—technically correct but lacking the “sudden gestalts” and “flashes of images” that Emig saw as essential to the creative and communicative process.

AI and Poe’s Chess Game: Strategic Cognitive Partnership

Poe’s chess metaphor—“playing the game in your head”—opens even richer possibilities for AI collaboration. If writing involves strategic thinking across multiple intelligences, AI could serve as both opponent and partner in this cognitive game.

AI could dramatically expand the writer’s capacity to “play the game in your head” by modeling multiple reader personas, simulating various counterarguments, and tracking the long-term consequences of rhetorical choices.

Imagine writing a proposal for renewable energy funding where AI helps you anticipate responses from different stakeholders: “Environmental groups will likely support this, but they might question why you haven’t addressed biodiversity concerns. Economic conservatives might focus on cost-benefit ratios—your current data supports this angle. “Rural communities represented on the committee have expressed concerns about land use that you haven’t yet addressed.”

This provides a more sophisticated game board on which to play strategic writing, rather than replacing the writer’s strategic thinking.

Intelligence Translation Interfaces. Poe showed how students could access writing through their strongest intelligences—Drew’s architectural sketches, Chris and Paul’s musical patterns, Devi’s pottery metaphors.

AI could serve as universal translators between intelligence domains. A kinesthetic learner writing about economic inequality might start by physically arranging objects to represent wealth distribution, while AI helps translate these spatial relationships into statistical arguments and policy recommendations.

A musical thinker exploring poetry might hum rhythmic patterns that AI helps convert into metrical structures and line breaks. The key is preserving the human intelligence while providing translation capabilities.

Collaborative Cognitive Load Distribution. Different writing tasks demand different intelligence combinations. AI could help distribute cognitive load strategically. A writer strong in spatial intelligence but weak in logical sequencing might collaborate with AI that handles organizational structure while they focus on creating powerful visual metaphors and conceptual relationships.

Conversely, a logical thinker might work with AI that suggests sensory details and emotional appeals while they concentrate on argument construction. This isn’t about AI replacing human capabilities, but about enabling writers to leverage their strongest intelligences more effectively.

Metacognitive Coaching. Poe emphasized the importance of becoming “metacognitive about thinking.” AI could serve as cognitive coaches that help writers recognize their own intelligence patterns.

For example, an AI system might notice: “You’ve been struggling with this paragraph for 20 minutes, and your successful writing sessions typically involve sketching first. Would you like to try a visual approach to this argument?”

Or: “Your most effective persuasive writing tends to use kinesthetic metaphors—might a movement-based analogy work here?” This develops writers’ self-awareness about their cognitive processes rather than making decisions for them.

Constraints and Strategic Considerations:

The Intelligence Hierarchy Problem. There’s a significant risk that AI collaboration could inadvertently reinforce traditional academic hierarchies that privilege linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence.

If AI systems are primarily text-based and trained on conventional academic writing, they might diminish rather than amplify the very intelligence diversity that Poe advocated.

For instance, an AI trained on formal academic papers might consistently push kinesthetic thinkers toward abstract language and away from the embodied metaphors that represent their cognitive strengths.

Strategic Dependency. Chess players who rely too heavily on computer analysis can lose their ability to develop intuitive strategic sense—they become tactically strong but strategically dependent.

Similarly, writers who depend on AI for strategic thinking might atrophy their own capacity to “play the game in their head.” A student who always relies on AI to anticipate reader responses might never develop the empathetic imagination that makes for truly persuasive writing.

The constraint is maintaining human strategic agency while benefiting from AI’s computational power.

Theoretical Synthesis: AI as Cognitive Infrastructure

The convergence of Emig’s and Poe’s frameworks suggests a role for AI as cognitive infrastructure—technology that amplifies human thinking without replacing it. This infrastructure would need to be designed around several key principles.

Preserving Cognitive Agency: AI should enhance the writer’s capacity for deliberate meaning-making rather than automating it away. Instead of generating conclusions, AI might pose questions that help writers think more deeply: “What assumptions underlie this argument?” “How might someone from a different background respond?” “What evidence would be most convincing to your specific audience?”.

The Ultimate Game Enhancement

Perhaps most intriguingly, AI could transform Poe’s chess metaphor from individual strategic thinking to collaborative strategic intelligence. Writers could “play the game” not just in their own heads, but in partnership with AI systems that can simulate complex scenarios, track multiple variables, and suggest strategic possibilities while leaving all crucial decisions in human hands.

Consider a writer crafting a complex policy argument who collaborates with AI that can simultaneously track: the logical consistency of claims across multiple sections, the emotional resonance of examples for different audience segments, the spatial organization of information on the page, and the rhythmic flow of language at the sentence level.

The AI doesn’t make these decisions but makes visible the cognitive work involved, allowing the writer to orchestrate all these intelligence streams more effectively than any individual could manage alone.

This represents not the automation of writing but its evolution into a more sophisticated form of visible thinking—one that harnesses the full spectrum of human intelligence while leveraging AI’s computational capabilities to make previously impossible forms of cognitive collaboration accessible to all writers, regardless of their starting intelligence profile.

The constraints are real and significant, but the affordances suggest we might be approaching a new era in which the “artificial process” of writing becomes not just a mode of learning, but a platform for expanding the very boundaries of human cognitive capability.

The key is ensuring that as we enhance the “visible graphic product” and expand the cognitive “chess game,” we preserve what Emig and Poe recognized as writing’s essential power: its capacity to make thinking visible, deliberate, and collaborative across the full spectrum of human intelligence.

References

Emig, J. (1977). Writing as a mode of learning. College Composition and Communication, 28(2), 122-128.

Poe, M. (2000). On writing instruction and a short game of chess: Connecting multiple ways of knowing and the writing process. Language and Learning Across the Disciplines, 4(1), 33-44.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​