I ’ve Kept an Expressive Writing Journal for 4 Decades —  Here’s Why

This week, at the end of an online poetry class, our on-screen instructor asked, “Why do you write?” Then, she added:  “In writing, what is your greater purpose?” Now, I’ve been writing for myself and for publication since the mid 1970s. And, over the years, as I teach or lead narrative writing workshops, I’m sure I’ve posed that why-do-you-write question to my own writing students. But, shame on me, I had never really posed the question to myself.  Truthfully, for the rest of that day, as I tended to my usual work and deadlines, the instructor’s question niggled at me. Then, next morning, instead of penning my usual “morning pages,” I sat down to write about why, most days, for over 40 years, I sit down to write.  Pleasure: Ever since I was a child growing up in Ireland, I took comfort in words. Song lyrics, poetry snippets, lists and conjugations of regular and irregular verbs. I mentally played with them. Chewed on them. Recited them. Tried them on for size and replaced them with something else. Nowadays, as a grown-up writer in America, it’s still a thrill or a pleasure to find les mots justes or to discover those narrative symmetries that never seem to emerge until a piece of writing is almost finished.   Writing for mental and physical wellness: I started writing as a 14-year old school girl in Ireland. Later, as I struggled to adjust to college, I wrote in a dorm room to offset loneliness and to find comfort. Later still, as a young workin...
Source: World of Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Creativity Habits Personal Self-Help benefits of writing Journaling Source Type: blogs