If you’ve ever gone down the “self-help” rabbit hole on social media, you will no doubt have heard of the benefits of journaling.
Don’t get me wrong, journaling is a wonderful practice. It encourages you to dig deep and dump your thoughts and feelings out of your cluttered brain and onto the page, freeing up your headspace and helping you to learn about yourself.
But have you ever hit a blockage, where you don’t know how you feel? You just feel a bit stuck, confused, with a lingering feeling that something isn’t quite right. I know I have. During these times, journaling can be hard, because we don’t know where to begin. We don’t know what we want to say. But something that has helped me in the past is writing stories.
Creativity doesn’t happen in a vacuum... The artist is yearning to understand and process a difficult feeling.
The Power of Stories
The stories we hold deep inside us shape our individual worlds. The narratives we tell ourselves on a day to day basis, often unconsciously or automatically, inform our thoughts and feelings about our experiences. They become self-fulfilling prophecies.
For example, say there are two amateur chefs both cooking souffles. Both of them cock it up and neither’s rise. The first chef is only mildly annoyed as their inner narrative goes something like, “That’s okay. I’m new to this. Each failure is just a step on the road to mastery. People are still worthy of love even if their souffles don’t rise.”
However, the second chef is soul crushed. Their inner narrative runs something like, “I’m so pathetic. I can’t do anything right. If I’m not good at things people won’t like me.”
Same event. Two drastically different responses. All based on their inner narratives.
When we write our own stories, we tap into these unconscious narratives, with all their biases, hopes and expectations.
How Do We Tap Into These Unconscious Narratives?
A handy analogy is the portrayal of dreams in the film Inception. When Di Caprio and chums are in the dream world, it is populated by “projections”, characters that make up the dreamer’s subconscious. When we write stories, we allow certain of these subconscious projections to float up to the surface and to take on a life of their own as characters on the page. They play out their desires, for better or worse, and their desires clash with the desires of other characters.
But remember, these characters all arose from within the same author’s brain. Yours. So when we have the classic goodie vs baddie situation, both the musclebound hero and the sly villain are symbolic representations of some inner conflict raging within. Though we may not want to admit to ourselves that there is a darkness within us, it is there all the same. We are not just the hero fighting against it. We, the author, are the entire ensemble.
So What Might Your Story Look Like?
Say you are reeling from a break up. You might find you’re drawn to writing a romance novel, full of all those saccharine promises of love you are mourning the loss of. Writing a horror story? Perhaps there is some great fear lurking within you that has taken on the form of a poltergeist or masked murderer.
Right now I’m working on a story about a young swordsman trying to live up to his father’s legacy. I don’t think it was a coincidence that I stumbled on this premise for my book!
Writing a horror story? Perhaps there is some great fear lurking within you.
How Does Writing Stories Help?
Creativity doesn’t happen in a vacuum. This is why the best artistic creations tend to arise out of some great pain or angst. The artist is yearning to understand and process a difficult feeling.
Looking back at my previous novels, I can tell they are very much steeped in what I was feeling at the time. The Messiah Caravan was my way of trying to make sense of a world that on one hand is full of such kindness and beauty but on the other is also plagued by selfishness and terror. And MAD MONKEYS! was my way of trying to come to terms with being a new dad and the responsibilities that change brings.
So how does it help? Psychological projection is a defence mechanism whereby an individual projects their own difficult feelings onto an external other. For example, criticising someone else for drinking too much when we ourselves have got a really bad smack problem.
What we’re doing when we write stories is turning this defence mechanism to our advantage. We project our difficult feelings onto characters for them to deal with. Characters of our own creation. It’s easier to analyse our own pain if we externalise it. The understanding and healing comes when we recognise that those characters are parts of us, parts in desperate need of attention and love.
Then, once we've located the source of pain, maybe it is in fact time to get out our journals.
What Do You Think?
This has been my experience of writing stories and I do not assume it will be the case for all who write. What do you think? Would you tend to agree or do you think it's possible for a story to just be a story and not some emotional processing on the author's part? Let me know in the comments.
And if you're looking for some motivation to help you with your writing, why not check out my 5 Top Tips for Novel Writing.
Rick x
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