Reflections on Writing: The First 75 Years
Howard Gardner © 2025
Legend has it that I was an early reader—but I have no record or memory of when I first began to write.
It must have been early, because by second grade, I was producing my own newspaper for my classmates—and I remember setting type on the primitive printer of the day. In high school, I became the co-editor of the weekly news and literary magazine. Happily, all issues of The Opinator have somehow survived. If interested, you can read about my time with The Opinator and more of my thoughts on fiction in my most recent blogs on reading fiction and writing fiction.
Probably because I had “done editing” in high school, it never occurred to me to try out for the college newspaper—the well-regarded Harvard Crimson. That curious lapse noted, I was an enthusiastic writer of papers required in various classes and acquired a bit of a reputation for filling up more exam “Blue Books” than any of my peers. For obscure reasons, my father tossed out most of my college and graduate school papers—so there’s not the record that I’d like of my writing from 1961-1969—though some scattered remnants exist.
The Harvard Crimson
At the very least, writing has never posed significant challenges for me. Indeed, while in graduate schools (1966-1971), while most of my peers were churning out scholarly articles for psychology journals, I drafted three books—and that penchant for penning long(ish) documents has never ceased.
Indeed, as of this writing, when I am 81-and-a-half years old, I have written over 30 books (an average of a book every other year) and over 1,000 scholarly articles (you can do the math). And, more recently, I have written several-hundred blogs—much like the one that you are now reading!
Writing books is a very arduous task—it takes time to research, draft, get critiques, revise, negotiate with editors, scrutinize drafts and correct proof. I don’t think I will write any more books—but as long as I am able, I expect I will want to write…and here are some of my reflections.
I live amidst words…and notes. While most people think (and dream) in images, most of my internal cerebral activity is in words. That’s both because I like language (more phrases crop up in my family’s German language, as I age); and because, owing to genetics, I am color-blind, lack binocular vision, and am prosopagnosic. I am quite auditory—and so most of the time, I am listening to music, imagining it, or playing the piano—strictly for myself. But I have never shown any inclination to compose music.
Ideas crop up all the time. Whether or not I am searching for something to say or to write, things pop up. I used to remember them easily. Now, I jot them down, typically with pencil and paper—increasingly rare these days! (And don’t ask for a pencil sharpener at any hotel!) Not everything that I think of ends up being written about, but lots of these ideas do make their way into legible documents, like this one.
I read widely…and quickly. Every morning, I skim the headlines of a dozen newspapers from various corners of the world. Mostly, I just note the headline, but if an article appears interesting, I will read it or put it aside to read at a later time…and hope I won’t forget that pledge to myself. This wide—if often shallow—reading helps me to become a synthesizer—and it often provides fodder for writing.
From ideas to words to writing. Often the ideas just twirl around for a while. But sooner or later, they evolve into a working headline or, less frequently, a compelling image—and then I search for a time, a keyboard, a writing implement, which can convert the ideas into a working document—typically in Microsoft Word.
First drafts flow…even relatively major pieces of writing! Somehow, I like to get a feeling for what the whole thing seems like—and that means getting a “working draft” as soon as possible. Often, the very experience of drafting provides new and unexpected insights or links.
How has writing changed over the course of a lifetime?
Once I got married, had children, began to conduct and then lead a program of research, started to teach full-time, my days (and evenings) were very busy…as they should have been! I always tried to find time to write, but often writing—except in my mind—had to be shoe-horned in. (Indeed, perhaps that’s one reason why a lot of writing has taken place in my mind!) And while I don’t have a detailed memory of it, for decades, I did a great deal of travel—as my diaries reveal and my family and friends confirm. Of course, there’s some time to write when one is on a plane or train, but usually one must compensate when one returns home and has to deal with the accumulated family, professional and social desires, needs, and obligations.
Writing in One’s Later Years
Over the last decade, as happens with most individuals in their eighth or ninth decades, the pace and rhythm of my life have changed dramatically:
As of 2018, I stopped teaching. And my research enterprise has slowly shrunk, though—as of this writing—it still continues…and happily so.
In early 2020, my wife Ellen (also a developmental psychologist as well as a gifted writer about cognition, art and education) and I moved from our house of four decades to an apartment. Happily, we did so, on March 4 of that year—because two weeks later, the COVID pandemic had struck full force. Had our move not yet been consummated, we might have lived amidst packed boxes for many months.
At the height of the pandemic, Ellen and I spent most of our time indoors, breaking-in our new apartment, occasionally—and always masked—exploring our new neighborhood. Because of our already-launched writing projects, we were quite busy. I completed a memoir (A Synthesizing Mind, co-authored a major book about American colleges (The Real World of College), and more recently, put together two collections of my writings (The Essential Howard Gardner on Education and The Essential Howard Gardner on Mind). Ellen published How Art Works and An Uneasy Guest in the Schoolhouse. Fortunately, Ellen and I discovered—or perhaps confirmed—that we are both quite introverted and so this continued stream of writing was comfortable…though we have both come to the realization that neither of us is likely to launch a new book.
I had begun to blog around 2015, but blogging has taken off, grown, changed. I like the medium. I like the fact that one can simply post the blog (no struggling with editors). Most of the time, the blogs are ignored or at least not commented on. But occasionally, especially if one stirs the pot a bit, one does get some action…and some reactions. At the very best, a blog can stimulate a new strand of conversation—see for example, the recently posted Who Owns Intelligence?
There are no rules about what I do or do not blog about. Anything goes! But I have become much more cognizant of my own predilections, and my own blind-spots.
As just noted, I have not written fiction—not novels, plays, or stories. Ellen and I do co-draft poems each year for our grandchildren, and I enjoy doing so. (Both of my grandmothers wrote poems, much better than mine—interestingly, neither of my parents did.)
For the most part, I avoid essays—see my blog on this, linked here. Or, perhaps to put it more accurately, I do not write about matters that are highly personal. I think that this omission is also a family tradition. Of course, like all thinking and feeling human beings, I reflect regularly on family matters, on crises, on dreams (and nightmares)—but I have perhaps made a conscious decision to keep them to myself, share them with my family…or on rare occasion, consulting someone with psychological or psychiatric skills.
But at least for now, I seem not to have trouble coming up with ideas for blogs or other short pieces. Indeed, at any one time, I am juggling a few dozen “candidates.” And very often, one of them seems timely enough to create a workable draft.
Moreover, as of late, I’ve even begun to organize these ideas/blogs into a few broad categories (like Multiple Intelligences, Good Work, Synthesizing, Creativity & the Arts). And while I doubt that I will even try to create and publish new collections on these topics, I hope that I—or my literary executors—might make these blogs available in a readily graspable tome…for these blogs are, in effect, the successors to my two Essential volumes, on mind and education.
Having an eye on posterity, each of the Essential volumes contains messages for the next generation of readers and scholars. Education concludes with an essay addressed: “To an aspiring researcher: Twelve pieces of advice.” Mind concludes with: “Had I world enough and time…”—musings about work that I hope will be carried on.
When will my own writing slow down, and when it will cease?
Of course, both of these closing acts will occur…perhaps gradually, perhaps prompted by one missed heartbeat or aborted neural impulse. (It may well be occurring already, though I am not cognizant thereof.) When I find myself writing the same blog twice, I’ll know that the moment is at hand. And if I meet the fate of 99.9% of scholars and writers until now, the world may shed a tear or two and then move on.
But of course, we now live in the age of ChatGPT and other Large Language Instruments. It will be possible to give an order like, what would Howard Gardner write about this event, this movie, this book, this idea. And if the program is good enough, I will achieve a measure of eternity.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For comments on earlier versions of this blog, I am very grateful to Shinri Furuzawa, Annie Stachura, and Ellen Winner.
