We grew up in a world that values written knowledge and, for the most part, dismisses visual knowledge.

From the moment we enter the education system, our learning is focused on words. We learn the alphabet, how to read, and then how to combine letters into words, sentences, paragraphs, essays, research papers, etc.

"So it is no wonder that we think the written word is the ONLY, VALUABLE source of knowledge," writes Laura Evans Hill in her Pencil Pirates e-course. Evans Hill is an ex-social researcher who grew frustrated with academia's reliance on words. She's now on a mission to "help thought leaders make knowledge more accessible through the power of pictures."

The professionalization of visual storytelling can be intimidating. But as Evans Hill argues, it doesn't have to be that way. There are all sorts of toxic myths that prevent us from ever picking up a pencil and visualizing our thoughts.

"Drawing won't make me look credible. Doodling is for kids or artists."

"I can't draw. I can barely draw a stick figure!"

I am an inaugural course taker in the Pencil Pirates course – led by the Queen Pirate herself, Laura Evans Hill. You can follow our work using the #sketch30 hashtag on Twitter. Her Twitter thread about "atomic visuals" is a great summary.

As a longtime writer of words, embracing visual knowledge requires new skills and habits. I am working a lot of new creative muscles.

But given that we know people learn best when exposed to information through multiple modalities, isn't visual storytelling more of an imperative than a nice-to-have? In a digital world where audiences are "wallowing in words," visual storytelling has to be part of our toolkits.