If you can't write it down clearly, you don't understand it. That is not a metaphor — it's a diagnostic.

The page is unforgiving in a way conversation isn't. In conversation, vague gestures pass for thoughts. On the page, "the thing" has to become a thing.

This is why I distrust ideas that have only ever lived in my head. Until I've tried to say them, they're suspicion, not knowledge.

See: [[the-collector-fallacy]], [[how-i-take-notes]]