“I write to find out what I think” – Stephen King
This is exactly why I began this blog. To find out what I think. Because this statement is true, I believe, for most of us. We write to find out what we think.
I can think about a particular subject alone until the cows come home. But I find that as soon as I begin to throw any idea down into visible words, my thoughts really take shape. Often I don’t know what I’m going to say beyond an idea until I take to the page and write. And it’s a fantastic experience. It’s not bad soul-searching either.
Is this true for you?
Whimsical Eclecticist 
Yes, writing can help us discover our thoughts but there is more to it as well because we are more than just thoughts and even more mysterious and meaningful things than thoughts can occur when writing.
“At that instant he saw, in one blaze of light, an image of unutterable conviction, the reason why the artist works and lives and has his being—the reward he seeks—the only reward he really cares about, without which there is nothing. It is to snare the spirits of mankind in nets of magic, to make his life prevail through his creation, to wreak the vision of his life, the rude and painful substance of his own experience, into the congruence of blazing and enchanted images that are themselves the core of life, the essential pattern whence all other things proceed, the kernel of eternity.”
— Time and the Rive, Thomas Wolfe
Wow. You are certainly wise and insightful, Mystic. Thank you for the contribution. There is a lot of truth to be found in that paragraph. I particularly like, “To wreak the vision of his life.” It suggests seeking something more than just the flow of thoughts and the formation of beliefs, but beyond, to an even more fulfilling and substantial claim. Something timeless.