WRITE TO KNOW YOURSELF

Did you know that by sitting before your keyboard and letting your thoughts and experiences and dreams flow onto the screen that you can experience one of the most enlightening periods of your life? I would not have believed it either, but it's true. When I began keeping a daily log of my activities some twenty-five years ago, and later attempted to write a biography, and still later a short story, I was amazed at what I learned about myself. It was a kind of psychoanalysis that uncovered repressed fears and conflicts.  I found, while logging early memories of my life, why, though I had always refused to admit it to myself, I had some pretty negative feelings about my mother. I analyzed my relationship with my father by putting our relationship in writing, and learned that although he finally drank himself to death when I was only sixteen, I was not to blame. I had always felt a certain amount of guilt for not paying more attention to his life style, or spending more of his last days with him, but I was in no way responsible for the heart attack that killed him. [I learned a lot more about my family and my own insecurities through EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing), but that's a story for another time.]

Try writing of some past experience that has troubled or exhilarated you. The quality and quantity of the words that you write will surprise you. If you want to take a look at some of my early (and hilarious) efforts at writing short stories, take a look here. There's not a serious word in the book, but merely my attempt to write some nutty science fiction.