1fa5

Grief is not always sad and depressing, but can be inspiring and encouraging. Everyone deals with grief differently. Writing is an avenue through which healing begins. Something inside is unleashed, as a creative literary embryo develops and is born. This newborn combines tear jerking memories and a dash of optimism to turn melancholy into joy and productivity.

After tragic events like 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, Hiroshima, The Tsunami of 2004, The Space Shuttle Challenger Explosion of 1986 and The Vietnam War, many novels and documentaries were born. Despite these single disasters, so many eclectic, emotionally charged voices were heard through the written word.

Your “best seller” doesn’t have to be a novel, but can be an essay, article, poem or a piece of writing so compelling, that others are sold by your sheer poetics. Some of the positive attributes that therapeutic writing invokes, but are not limited to, includes:

1. Creating documented history with frequent and better journaling

2. Unleashing your creative juices by writing personal unedited emotions

3. Your story can help others get through their grief period.

4. Writing will make you sit down and slow down

5. Helping you realize the importance of spending quality time with those you love

6. Never take a person or situation for granted, including you.

7. Bringing closure to a grief stricken circumstance

Prior to my mother’s death, the joy of personal, developmental writing took a back seat to the writing projects for my career. After my mother was buried and everyone returned home, I dove back into my job thinking that staying busy was the best remedy for me. How very wrong I was. As I began journaling about the pain of loosing my mother, the quality and quantity of my writing increased. You have the ability to turn an apparently debilitating situation around, after experiencing some form of loss and grief, such as:

? A divorce or major breakup of a relationship

? Loosing someone you love through death, disappearance or abandonment

? Finding out that you or someone very close to you has been diagnosed with a terminal illness

? Surviving a natural disaster or an unexpected occurrence

? Loosing a job after years of dedicated work

Journaling or simply picking up a notebook and pen, then candidly begin writing down your struggles, memories, anger, joys, the pain of your loss, or any epiphany, can evoke the healing process. Writing out your emotionally charged grief, may not be shared respectfully by many, but there will be a considerable amount of your reading audience who will applaud your willingness to share something so personal that probably inspired them to do the same.

Although writing can possibly bring closure to a grief stricken situation, this doesn’t mean that you will forget. The words won’t let you. As the final chapter of a novel brings closure to the book, you certainly won’t forget the story. Once you close the book and put it on the shelf with other classics, you move on to the next book with a new set of chapters yet to be lived. Where there is no closure, the wound remains open. This metaphor compares to the scenario of the last few pages of a novel being ripped out, leaving you to wonder what the end would be.

Read some classical literary compositions and notice how they were written with life experiencing emotion, good and bad, drawing you into the story. Whether the author’s sentiment was personal or one they lived through someone else, you travel with them to a time and place where the journey meanders through an unpredictable path.

If you’re writing fiction, changing real character names to protect the innocent, relocating a venue or placing the time in another era, can still allow reality and emotion to permeate through your pages. Who knows where therapeutic writing can take you? So many wonderful and positive projects, as well as healing, can bloom from just one grieving experience.

Popularity: 53% [?]

One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. – Hart Crane

Some of the best advice for writers in the 21st century comes from those who have seen their successes and offer advice from their own experience. Let’s draw from that brain trust.

On Writing Well

Show don’t tell. – Henry James

Don’t say the old lady screamed — bring her on and let her scream. – Mark Twain

Cut out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own joke. – F. Scott Fitzgerald

First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. – Bernard Malamud

Usually, when people get to the end of a chapter, they close the book and go to sleep. I deliberately write a book so when the reader gets to the end of the chapter, he or she must turn one more page. When people tell me I’ve kept them up all night, I feel like I’ve succeeded. – Sidney Sheldon

Don’t mistake a good setup for a satisfying conclusion — many beginning writers end their stories when the real story is just ready to begin. – Stanley Schmidt

On Inspiration

Nighttime is really the best time to work. All the ideas are there to be yours because everyone else is asleep. – Catherine O’Hara

I know writers who write only when inspiration comes. How would Isaac Stern play if he played the violin only when he felt like it? He would be lousy. – Madeleine L’Engle

If you wait for inspiration, you’re not a writer, but a waiter. – Anonymous

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. – Jack London

The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from. – Gene Fowler

Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. – William Faulkner

The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes. – Agatha Christie

So this is always the key: you have to write the book you love, the book that’s alive in your heart. That’s the one you have to write. – Lurleen McDaniel

In the second part in this series we will look at a few words of wisdom from authors regarding writer’s Block, motivation and editing skills.

Popularity: 25% [?]