Real Words

I had a dream last night about writing. Normally I don’t remember my dreams. If I do, they’re usually about something that has actually happened in my real life. This time, though, the dream was all about me writing something. It started out with me writing the lyrics to country music songs. This came from the fact that I just took a road trip with a friend and was marveling at the radio because of all of the mundane topics that get turned into songs on the country station. I was telling him that I needed to start working on writing country music lyrics because I think it would be a really interesting writing challenge. So my dream was mostly about that. However, at the end of it, I had some grand realization about how writing things down turns bad things into positive experiences. That’s what I woke up thinking about this morning.

Here are some of the ways that I think being a writer makes it easier to tolerate negative situations:

• Annoying situations become fodder for stories. I recently went on a trip to Yosemite during which everything that could possibly go wrong did. The trail we wanted to hike on was closed, it started to rain during the hike we did do, it hailed on us, we climbed straight up a mountain to get a great view and saw nothing but fog, we had to trek slowly through the rain because we got stuck behind a group of tourists on mules, the second half of the trip was canceled because there was snow in the mountains and we couldn’t pass through … It could have been a terrible trip. However, as a writer, you’re always thinking about these things in terms of the story they provide. Whether written or just told to others, these things become not so bad because you find the humor in them as you think about the story.
• Writing provides understanding and eventually resolution and peace. Bad things happen all of the time. People who write get the chance to work through those things on the page. Whether you journal or write creatively, you spend a lot of your time writing about whatever it is that you’re thinking about. You may be going through a tough time but you are able to understand the situation (and your own feelings) better because you write through it.
• Writing can create connections with other people. In the worst of times, what we often need most is to know that others understand and support us. Although writing can be a solitary endeavor in many ways it is also something that has the potential to create connections with other people. You can share your writing in blog posts, social networks, writing groups and by offering lectures or seminars to your readers. All of these things allow you to build connections with others who know some of your deepest truths because you share them in writing. This makes the bad times bearable.