Writing, much like reading, can be done leisurely. Your writing need not be purposeful or prove a point in some way. You do not have to be George Orwell and construct a fable about corruption on a farm where a pig dines with humans. Your work does not have to discuss trauma and the inter-generational pain caused by warlike Rabih Alameddine in his novel I, the Divine: A Novel in First Chapters. It can be trashy fanfiction like Twilight and Fifty-Shades of Grey were.
You Can Write Aimlessly With No Purpose
Your work does not have to be published. It can be private, bad, and ill-written. Or complete or half-written.
It can be saved as a Word doc or as a PDF file. It can be intimate and secretive. It can be written on lines or dots. It can be hidden on a bookshelf or posted on social media.
Your writing can be about you, or it can be about some alternate reality where humanity is dying. You do not have to be a well-published author to write, and you don’t need to be skilled whatsoever. You also do not have to write fictional works or profit from your writing. Your writing can just be.
The main point here is that the ball is in your park. It is your writing, and you can do whatever you want with it. As long as you feel content with what you are writing about, then all is well. What other people think and do, is not a concern. It is especially important to choose to post it on some social media platform or choose to publish it.
Benefits of Writing
The beautiful thing about writing is that the more you do it, the better you get. You engage with so many theories, concepts, ways of life, writing styles, moral codes, genres, or myths and legends. Your mind expands as you learn all these things and develop as a person. Inadvertently your communication and thinking skills improve.
In addition to expanding your mind, writing has immense healing properties because, during the writing process, we rationalize and make sense of the things happening around us.
When we do that, our stress levels decrease. Writing in this context acts much like a release. It almost feels like you were holding your breath but did not realize it. Furthermore, research on expressive writing indicates a positive relationship with increased happiness and writing levels. As shocking as it is, writing positively impacts our immune system. However, it seems that research into this only shows a moderate relationship between writing and improved immune functioning. Also, it appears to benefit people with previous illnesses or those who have undergone surgery or will get surgery soon.
You will still reap these benefits whether you write about chicken nuggets, candy apples, trauma, or loss. It also does not matter if you write a short story or if you’re simply jotting down your goals for the new year. I understand that sometimes it feels like we have to write about serious topics with great emotion.
We think like this because we have been taught that writing has to be didactic in some way for us to benefit from it in some way, shape, or form. And that is just not true. I know that it is scary to abandon everything that we have been taught growing up but trust me, it is the best feeling ever.
If you don’t know where to start, here are some poems by the poet Irvine. He has dedicated a whole web page to what he identifies as his “worst poetry.” Now the poems themselves are nicely written. I do not think that they are of low quality; they just lack meaning, in the sense that they do not discuss profound emotional events.
The Invisible Rabbit
Carrots make a lot of noise,
crunching and pointing with all their orange joy’s.
Carrots! They take too long to grow, and the rabbits nick them–I think, but no one really knows.
Trixie
I’ve got a little dog called Trixie; she shits all over my lawn.
She laughs before I pick it up and jumps around until it’s dawn.
Trixie always looks for cuddles and licks my face as I yawn.
She loves to dance! And sings a barking song–while waking up our neighbour John.
She farts and runs into the kitchen; her breath smells like a dead prawn.
But in the end, we laugh and smile–at our little Yorkie dog.
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