Self-Help For Cynics #28: Writing To Reach You

Elvis Costello & The Attractions - Everyday I Write The Book

I was up in my mum's attic a few months back and I found a load of my old writing. Novels, TV scripts, comic book scripts... all things I wrote before I owned a PC, so I guess it dates back to the late 80s and early 90s. Everything I've written since getting a computer has been saved on memory sticks and external hard-drives, but back then all I had was a crappy word-processor with a tiny screen that used an early form of floppy discs to save my work. (Prior to that, I wrote on a huge, clunky old typewriter... those really were the glory days.)

Fionn Regan - The Underwood Typewriter

I've been scanning these old texts (many of which are not very good at all, though they still mean a lot to me) so that I can keep them digitally - I haven't got room for all this mouldering old paper that's been stuck up in an attic for 30+ years... but I wouldn't want to throw any of it away without preserving it somehow. 

Father John Misty - I'm Writing a Novel

This process has reconfirmed for me the fact that writing has always been something I've used for Self Help (therapy!): to help me work out my feelings, deal with life experiences, try to make sense of the big mystery. 

The Good Rats - Writing The Pages

Back when I spent hours and days and weeks of my teenage and twenty-something life writing all this fiction, I told myself the goal was to be published (or produced)... the mental health benefits I received by putting my words down on paper were an unwitting bonus. I didn't realise how much writing was helping me, but clearly it was - everything I wrote had my own thoughts, feelings and life experiences as its core (no matter how fantastical other elements of the plot might have been), and the sheer amount of time I spent on it speaks for itself. 

Lynyrd Skynyrd - All I Can Do Is Write About It

The University of Bolton tells us...

Writing can be a self-care method for many; helping to unwind and de-stress. 

Writing about difficult situations can help us release our feelings in a healthy way. In a study conducted by psychologist James Pennebaker, researchers encouraged individuals to write about their darkest emotions and thoughts regarding a terrible incident. The findings revealed that individuals who wrote about their encounters had considerably fewer physical problems, such as migraines and gastrointestinal issues than those who did not write at all.

The Rare Earth - When I Write

This makes me wonder what might have happened if I hadn't spent so much of my youth writing. Would I have been significantly more depressed? Would in turn that have led to physical symptoms? Or... might I have spent more time with friends, trying to build more of a social life and immerse myself in the tribe? Would I have pinged off on a different tangent altogether? 

Paul Simon - Rewrite

Creative writing forces you to arrange your ideas and put them into words. This can assist you in putting things into perspective and making better judgments. Writing also assists you in becoming more conscious of your own ideas and emotions. 

It's worth pointing out that while I was doing all this writing, I wasn't a complete hermit. I did have friends and a facsimile of a social life - just not as wild/busy/varied as many teens and twenty-somethings enjoy. I even stumbled into a couple of romantic relationships. I fit the writing around all that. But I definitely lived in my head - and on my pages - far more than the average bear.

Lloyd Cole - Writers Retreat

However, the boffins from Bolton continue...

Some may also use creative writing as a way of connecting with others. Sharing tales and perspectives while also learning from, and supporting one another.  

Stevie Nicks - Has Anyone Ever Written Anything for You?

Back when I spent so much of my life writing those stories, they were rarely read by anyone else. Occasionally I'd submit one as part of my English degree (the tutors weren't my biggest fans) and one or two other people might have read something I wrote. 

John K. Samson - When I Write My Master's Thesis

And then there were all the agents, publishers and production companies I collected rejection letters from. But I'm not sure they count - clearly they didn't read my submissions in the correct way, otherwise I'd be talking to you while sitting on a huge pile of cash right now.  

Jerry Leger - She's the Best Writer You've Never Heard Of

(That was a joke, by the way. Even when I was an aspiring writer, I was aware that published writers often don't make a lot of money. That never stopped me, so clearly financial reward wasn't high up my list of aspirations. I just wanted to earn enough that I could keep on writing, and make it my life.)

Joe Henry - I Will Write My Book

The exception to the "Nobody reads my writing, but I keep on doing it anyway" rule that I lived by back then were the small press comics I put out. These did have a readership, and a particularly vocal one too. I had about 30, 40 regular readers from all across the country, having made a name for myself in the small pond of amateur comics and used the limited outlets available for self-promotion in the pre-internet days to the best of my abilities. 

Deborah Harry - Comic Books

Many of these readers would provide written feedback - I use the term "fanmail" very loosely, but a few folders of glowing handwritten correspondence was among the treasures I discovered in my mum's attic. I even ran a letters page in my most successful book,The Jock, and this would often run to 5 or 6 pages of tiny-typed feedback and discussion. By contrast, when I returned to making small press comics in the new Millennium, though the internet made it far easier to promote your wares and the print quality was far superior to the grainy black and white photocopies of the 90s, I hardly received any written feedback on my work. I sold more copies, but hardly anybody had anything to say about what they'd read - even though an email would have taken far less effort than posting a handwritten letter... such is the world we live in now. 

The Gaslight Anthem - Handwritten

Back to the University of Bolton for one final word about the mental health benefits of writing...

It can make you feel better about yourself as it allows people to see what's going on within your thoughts. You may even earn praise from friends and family after sharing anything you've produced with them. If you don't share your writing, then writing about yourself and the events in your life provides an artistic outlet to express your thoughts without fear of criticism from others. Writing about yourself allows you to ponder on who you are as a person and how much importance each human being has.  

Stars - Write What You Know 

Which all sounds great, doesn't it? This writing malarkey sounds like a true panacea - the cure to all our ills! Why isn't everybody doing it?

Gilbert O'Sullivan - I'm A Writer, Not A Fighter

And this is where we have to take a step back, to last week's post, and the week before's. Remember our old friend Tiberius? Remember how worried he was about other people's opinions? Remember how we discussed "externalising his self-worth", how Tiberius received a tiny little feel-good dopamine hit every time someone smiled at him or complimented him on his work? Remember that article from the Harvard Business Review that advised Tiberius to Stop Basing Your Self-Worth on Other People’s Opinions? Well, here's a little more from that...

Externalizing our self-worth, when it works, can yield short-term benefits. We get emotionally and chemically rewarded when we succeed. Our hypothalamus produces dopamine, often referred to as the feel-good neurotransmitter. Our self-esteem gets lifted, leaving us feeling safe, secure, and superior.

But dependency on external validation and social approval has a dark alter ego that reveals itself over time because outsourcing our self-worth undermines the basic human needs of competence, autonomy, and relatedness.

Bill Callahan - Writing

If, as a writer, you live for your readers' responses, that way lies madness. Because what if they don't like what you've written? I was lucky back in my small press comic days, because almost all the letters I received were positive or at least offered constructive criticism. The folk who didn't like my writing, frankly, couldn't be bothered to go to the trouble and expense of mailing me a kicking. Meanwhile, the rejection letters I received from publishers and agents... while every one of them was a heartbreaking kick in the balls... most went out of their way to be bland, neutral, faintly encouraging and inoffensive. 

OV Wright - I Could Write A Book

Nowadays, the only writing I have the time, energy or inclination for is this nonsense right here. I still get all the mental health benefits mentioned above, along with the added dopamine hits of a tiny group of discerning readers who occasionally drop me a kind word in the comment's section. But if I was in a small pond when I was self-publishing comics, I'm in a miniscule lagoon right now... though it's a relatively safe and warm lagoon, compared to the vicious, unforgiving ocean of the internet at large. Many people - especially young people - are living their whole lives on the cruel seas of social media, desperate for a bright wave of dopamine, but ever too often pulled down into the murky depths of... well, you get the picture. I extended that metaphor much further than I intended to. Hack writing.

Gerry Rafferty - Whatever's Written In Your Heart 

When SHFC returns after its Easter break, we will finally confront THE MENTAL HEALTH TIME-BOMB of Social Media. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Because my inside is outside
My right side's on the left side
'Cause I'm writing to reach you now
But I might never reach you
Only want to teach you, about you