Some years ago now, by grandfather died leaving me a diary that he had kept as a prisoner of war in 1944. Inside its yellowed pages and between the pencilled lines, I read things that he had never spoken about to anyone.
Reading my grandfather’s diary affirmed my own belief in writing as a tool for making narrative and meaning from our lives; writing as a process of letting go of negative feelings; and even writing as survival in the most difficult of circumstances.
What did you do as a child to express your feelings?
A children, many of us naturally create drawings and paintings or scribble little poems and stories in our notebooks or secret diaries. I can see my childhood diart no. It had a big solver lock with a tiny key. Just to be on the safe side, I carefully inscribed ‘My Private Diary. Please Keep Out’ on the first page.
As children we often naturally trun to pens and paper to explore, enact and process our feelings and emotions. And yet, as we grow up, we don’t lways remember to create space and time to do this. Our space for this essential creativity can so easily get stifled by our commitments and responsibilities.
But in the writing workshops and trainings that I run, people often tell me that during difficut periods in their lives, they have found themsleves quite spontaneously writing a poem, perhaps getting up in the middle of the night with a story in their head or feeling an urgent compulsion to write their feelings down in a journal.
I too found myself returning to daily creative writing during a turning point in my own life.
Since that time, I have used my creative writing and journaling techniques to work with people in business who feel stressed out, unhappy or that they have lost touch with a vital part of themselves; people who have been through pain, suffering and trauma, including survivors of imprisonment and political torture; people living with long-term illness and their relatives; university students; all kinds of people.
Writing as a daily personal development practice
Many people mistakenly assume that in order to be creative or feel creative, they must dedicate many hours each day to a creative task. However, just ten minutes of writing per day can be enormously helpful in releasing unhelpful thoughts and emotions, gaining insights or simply developing pleasure in the sounds and rhythms of the words on the page.
By cultivating a regular practice of just ten minutes of free-writing, you can find out what it feels like when your mind relaxes, allowing new possibilities to present themselves. You can learn to let go of the more conceptual and analytical ideas about yourself – those exhausting thoughts that buzz relentlessly around your conscious mind – and connect with the flow of your bodily feelings, images and ideas.
What is free-writing?
Free-writing is simply writing for a timed perios without editing, reading back or pausing. The idea is to just keep writing. You may being by writing ‘I don’t know what to write.’ Just keep writing. Keep your pen moving over the page or your fingers gliding over the keyboard. You might find yourself writing sentences or just words down the page. Ther eis no ‘right’ or ‘wrong way to do this. Just keep writing.
At the end of the writing session, simply tear up the page and throw it away.
That’s right. Let it go. It’s no longer useful to you.
Ths is about the process of writing rather than creating a product. Resost any temptations for analysis, editing, post-rationalisation. Just throw your writing away.
Experiment with this for five days – every moring or every evening – and I think that you might be surprised to notice all kinds of little changes and insights into the way that you feel, perhaps even a new sense of freedom and possibility.
What are you waiting for.
Strat writing. Find out what happens next…
By: Sophie Nicholls
About the Author:
Reading my grandfather’s diary affirmed my own belief in writing as a tool for making narrative and meaning from our lives; writing as a process of letting go of negative feelings; and even writing as survival in the most difficult of circumstances.
What did you do as a child to express your feelings?
A children, many of us naturally create drawings and paintings or scribble little poems and stories in our notebooks or secret diaries. I can see my childhood diart no. It had a big solver lock with a tiny key. Just to be on the safe side, I carefully inscribed ‘My Private Diary. Please Keep Out’ on the first page.
As children we often naturally trun to pens and paper to explore, enact and process our feelings and emotions. And yet, as we grow up, we don’t lways remember to create space and time to do this. Our space for this essential creativity can so easily get stifled by our commitments and responsibilities.
But in the writing workshops and trainings that I run, people often tell me that during difficut periods in their lives, they have found themsleves quite spontaneously writing a poem, perhaps getting up in the middle of the night with a story in their head or feeling an urgent compulsion to write their feelings down in a journal.
I too found myself returning to daily creative writing during a turning point in my own life.
Since that time, I have used my creative writing and journaling techniques to work with people in business who feel stressed out, unhappy or that they have lost touch with a vital part of themselves; people who have been through pain, suffering and trauma, including survivors of imprisonment and political torture; people living with long-term illness and their relatives; university students; all kinds of people.
Writing as a daily personal development practice
Many people mistakenly assume that in order to be creative or feel creative, they must dedicate many hours each day to a creative task. However, just ten minutes of writing per day can be enormously helpful in releasing unhelpful thoughts and emotions, gaining insights or simply developing pleasure in the sounds and rhythms of the words on the page.
By cultivating a regular practice of just ten minutes of free-writing, you can find out what it feels like when your mind relaxes, allowing new possibilities to present themselves. You can learn to let go of the more conceptual and analytical ideas about yourself – those exhausting thoughts that buzz relentlessly around your conscious mind – and connect with the flow of your bodily feelings, images and ideas.
What is free-writing?
Free-writing is simply writing for a timed perios without editing, reading back or pausing. The idea is to just keep writing. You may being by writing ‘I don’t know what to write.’ Just keep writing. Keep your pen moving over the page or your fingers gliding over the keyboard. You might find yourself writing sentences or just words down the page. Ther eis no ‘right’ or ‘wrong way to do this. Just keep writing.
At the end of the writing session, simply tear up the page and throw it away.
That’s right. Let it go. It’s no longer useful to you.
Ths is about the process of writing rather than creating a product. Resost any temptations for analysis, editing, post-rationalisation. Just throw your writing away.
Experiment with this for five days – every moring or every evening – and I think that you might be surprised to notice all kinds of little changes and insights into the way that you feel, perhaps even a new sense of freedom and possibility.
What are you waiting for.
Strat writing. Find out what happens next…
By: Sophie Nicholls
About the Author:
Sophie Nicholls is a hypnotherapist, writer and consultant.
Sophie has helped to pioneer research into creative writing as a tool for health and personal development. She is the author of ‘Hypnotic Journaling’ and runs trainings in using creative writing as a personal development tool for health care professionals and the general public.