My friend is having trouble writing a paper, so I offered to help him. He was hesitant, which I first assumed was not wanting to share his ideas or his writing. When I talked to him more about it, explaining that I can help him put his ideas onto paper, he said he didn't know all the content of what he was going to write until he sat down to write it. But, he said, "sitting down to write is painful." I believe he used the word "torturous," too. It made me think about how much the act of writing is also an act of collecting one's thoughts. Having to come up with ideas is a brain stretch, requiring that the thinker access old and build new connections in the brain. Many people find that in talking with another person they can build their ideas more effectively. You've heard of the concept of "bouncing ideas off of people." It's the same thing. Talking with others about your nascent ideas can provide a scaffold for building the rest of the structure. Yes, I just called myself scaffolding.