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Engage Your Thoughts: Advice & A Reading List From A Social Scientist

Annie Cosby

December 16, 2024 | 4 min read

Scientists, academics, and researchers write constantly for work and study. Writing is essential to recording work and sharing new finds with the broader world.

So why would a social scientist take even more time out of their busy day to do a different kind of writing?

Meet Mitch Stallman, an ecological economist based in Philadelphia and an avid Freewriter. When Mitch won our recent NaNoWriMo Leaderboard Giveaway, we were immediately taken with Mitch's dual experience of scientific writing for work and simple writing to think.

Let's hear directly from Mitch...

When I first heard about this opportunity, I was initially hesitant to say much of anything, questioning whether what I had to share was the "right fit" since I'm not a seasoned author in the traditional sense.

Yet, writing my response to provide some context for this spotlight reminded me of the universal nature of writing — it’s one of the most essential human experiences and an immense privilege, and we could all benefit from doing it more, no matter our end-game.

Writing my response ... reminded me of the universal nature of writing — it’s one of the most essential human experiences and an immense privilege, and we could all benefit from doing it more, no matter our end-game.

How did you get started writing?

My path into writing was not charted through intentions of publishing but instead as a natural extension of my academic pursuits in ecological economics and a need to understand the world around me.

While I appreciated the rigor of academic research, I found that its traditional mediums of communication — academic papers and the occasional news article — often lacked the accessibility and narrative needed to inspire real change. So, as I wrestled with this, writing started simply as a personal exercise to explore and actually articulate some more “philosophical” musings, allowing me to step outside of the confines and limitations of modern social-scientific research and develop a new understanding of our world and how to best live in it together.

I then adopted the practice of "Morning Pages," writing daily to explore my thoughts and emotions, which helped me clear the fog in my internal world.

Over time, my writing routine has evolved but has always centered around a commitment to daily writing, though the time and place for this has been a moving target. Whether scribbling in a notebook by the bath, typing away on my Freewrite Smart Typewriter in a cozy corner of my home, or reflecting in a quiet park, writing has become a grounding ritual. The Freewrite, with its dedicated service to writing, has been instrumental in maintaining my focus and enthusiasm for the practice.

As my writing practice deepened, so did my understanding of its power. Writing, like all art, has the power to move us, challenge our perceptions, and offer new perspectives on our world and our place in it.

Writing, like all art, has the power to move us, challenge our perceptions, and offer new perspectives on our world and our place in it.

Today, I engage in various forms of writing beyond the rigidity of the academic article, from nonfiction essays to works of fiction, poetry, and songwriting. Influenced by the likes of Ursula K. Le Guin, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Octavia Butler, Amor Towles, Herman Hesse, and Vonnegut in fiction, and Lewis Thomas, Donella Meadows, Wendell Berry, Michael Pollan, and Ta-Nehisi Coates in non-fiction, my writing strives to bridge the gap between intellectual discourse and emotional, artistic storytelling.

Historically, I haven't shared my work broadly, but now I’m embracing a new direction to make my creations more accessible and (hopefully) impactful, sharing them at my (not yet launched) site, mitchellstallman.com.

This venture into sharing more publicly is both exciting and daunting. Writing has been a solitary activity for me, a way to sort through the cacophony of daily life and find some clarity and calmness of mind. However, I’ve realized the importance of sharing these reflections to contribute to the broader conversation and connect with others on a similar path.

Do you have any advice for other writers?

My advice for other writers, so much as I'm qualified to offer such advice, preached by seasoned authors ad nauseam, is to write daily.

It’s not about the volume of words but the regularity of engagement with your thoughts and the world around you, connecting with others through time and space through the written word.

It’s not about the volume of words but the regularity of engagement with your thoughts and the world around you, connecting with others through time and space through the written word.

How can people reach you and follow your writing journey?

Thank you to the Freewrite team for this opportunity and the community for engaging with my story. I am eager to learn from you all and continue growing as a writer and thinker in this vibrant community.

Here's where I am online:

Postbox
Website (coming soon)
LinkedIn

Mitch's Suggested Reading List

Fiction

Ursula K. Le Guin: The Lathe of Heaven, The Dispossessed, The Telling
Ray Bradbury: The Illustrated Man, Fahrenheit 451, Dandelion Wine
Arthur C. Clarke: Childhood's End (my favorite sci-fi novel), Rendezvous with Rama
Octavia Butler: Xenogenesis series (especially Adulthood Rites)
Amor Towles: A Gentleman in Moscow (my favorite novel)
Hermann Hesse: Steppenwolf, Siddhartha
Kurt Vonnegut: Cat's Cradle, Welcome to the Monkey House

Nonfiction

Wendell Berry: What Are People For?, The Art of the Commonplace
Robin Wall Kimmerer: Braiding Sweetgrass, The Serviceberry
Lewis Thomas: The Lives of a Cell
Donella Meadows: Thinking in Systems, Limits to Growth
Michael Pollan: The Omnivore's Dilemma, This Is Your Mind on Plants
E.F. Schumacher: Small Is Beautiful
Ta-Nehisi Coates: Between the World and Me, The Message

Annie Cosby

Writer

Annie Cosby is the Marketing Manager at Freewrite, a former fiction editor, and the author of seven books — and counting. Her work deals with Celtic mythology and has twice won the YA Indie Author Project in Missouri.

"In Ireland, novels and plays still have a strange force. The writing of fiction and the creation of theatrical images can affect life there more powerfully and stealthily than speeches, or even legislation."

So we decided to go on a mission to learn from some of Ireland's greatest writers.

Here are just a few of the quotes that struck us:

"A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave."

Oscar Wilde cuts right to the heart of creativity here. What is creativity but the mind striking out of the grooves of regularity?

"I love communicative problems. They always introduce just enough friction for me to feel drawn into a scene, when there’s some slippage between what somebody is trying to say, or feels capable of saying, and what the other person wants to hear or is capable of hearing."

If you've read any of Sally Rooney's award-winning books, you'll recognize this device in her plots. Try the same in your work when things are feeling a little dry or slow.

"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again."

Nobody presents writing truths as concise and witty as Oscar Wilde. Who among us hasn't agonized over a comma for hours?

Sounds like Oscar needed a Freewrite.

"I don’t ever plot. And I do very little research, as little as possible. I prefer to use my imagination. Language is older and richer than we are and when you go in there and let go and listen, it’s possible to discover something way beyond and richer than your conscious self."

Claire Keegan's a freewriter! In this interview, Claire explains that the main character in her award-winning book, Small Things Like These, completely changed over the course of rewrites and revisions.

"The novel space is a pure space. I'm nobody once I go into that room. I'm not gay, I'm not bald, I'm not Irish. I'm not anybody. I'm nobody. I'm the guy telling the story, and the only person that matters is the person reading that story, the target. It's to get that person to feel what I'm trying to dramatize."

Colm Tóibín perfectly sums up the disembodied experience of writing here. The writer disappears and the characters take center stage.

"The important thing is not what we write but how we write, and in my opinion the modern writer must be an adventurer above all, willing to take every risk, and be prepared to founder in his effort if need be. In other words we must write dangerously."

James Joyce was certainly an adventurer, and though his notion to a "modern writer" predates ours by about a century, we don't think all that much as changed. Writers still need to take risks!

"I don’t say I was ‘proceeding down a thoroughfare.’ I say I ‘walked down the road.’ I don’t say I ‘passed a hallowed institute of learning.’ I say I ‘passed a school.’ You don’t wear all your jewellery at once. You’re much more believable if you talk in your own voice."

Maeve Binchy's own voice is apparent in every book she wrote. Her characters speak like real people, and that makes them all the more endearing.

"Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry."

What a poetic way to encapsulate the experience of writing poetry. Yeats certainly knew a thing or two about using that internal quarrel to create beautiful, timeless work.

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