Why Write?

Most people imagine a writer as a lonely individual hunched over a desk in a dimly lit room with crumpled paper strewn about working on their next novel. However, writing is so much more. It is thought put to page, even if we do it in a blog, a letter to a friend or a journal for our own memories. In most cases, writing is most useful as a tool for thinking and expression as well as creativity.

Writing can also be good for us. In what ways? Let's think about that.

To improve your mood

There has been research on writing and happiness. It deals with expressive writing, or even just jotting down what you think and how you feel from time to time. It has been shown that even blogging affords benefits similar creative or expressive writing in terms of therapeutic value. Expressive writing has also been linked to improved mood, well-being, and reduced stress levels for those who do it regularly, so there is little doubt that wrting can be beneficial for happiness.

To clarify your thoughts

It can be difficult to describe your feelings, explain your experiences, and communicate with others if your vocabularity. This is why being able to write down your thoughts so that you avoid them stumbling out when you speak is very useful.

To improve gratitude

Lots of people have noticed that those who reflect on the good things in their life once a week by writing them down were more positive and motivated about their current situations and their futures. Strangely, the benefits were minimal when they wrote about them every day. This makes sense; any activity can feel disingenuous and just plain boring if done too often. It seems like the key is to reflect and write about gratitude regularly, but not too often.

To clarify your mind

Have you ever had too many Internet tabs open at once? It can be very distracting. It is true of my mind too. Sometimes my mind is so busy I feel like my brain has too many tabs open at once, for me it happens when I'm trying to juggle too many thoughts at the same time.

I combat this by writing. It gives form to my thoughts gets them out of my head. It may work for you too. If you write down important ideas it can alleviate the stress of having too many thoughts or your mind being overcrowded. I find I’m more likely to continue developing ideas because they have been committed to writing. I also find I sleep better if I don't have too many ideas rattling around in my head.

To recover from grief

This may sound like a strange one. But when my mother died, although it was not unexpected, it was a source of deep sadness. I found that writing her eulogy calmed my spirit and helped me cope with my grief.

Writing about traumatic events may make you feel depressed initially, but I have found that about six months later, the emotional benefits started to stick and the benefits of being able to reconsider my written thoughts provided a positive framework for me to heal.

To assist learning

Information often sticks better when it’s learned as though it needs to be taught or re-written in your own words. At high school and also at university when I was studying for exams, I used to take notes in class, then re-write them. After that I would summarise what I had written into my own words and I found that then I would remember the salient points more easily. There’s a certain discipline required to create interesting written work that demands you to be receptive and focused on finding new sources of inspiration and insight.

In conclusion

The benefits of writing are many and varied. Writing around a certain topic for some time will allow you to build your thoughts, utilizing what you’ve already written to develop ideas on a grander scale. I’m sure many writers have written a paragraph that leads to an essay, which leads to a series of articles, which leads to a book.