How can writing help you?

I’ve been writing stories since I was about nine or ten. I started on Wattpad and my pieces have ranged from horrifyingly terrible fiction ones when I was nine or ten, then I wrote goodness knows how much fanfiction, and now I’m onto writing articles for TWE and I also work on ideas I would like to get published one day.

I don’t just write because I enjoy the idea of it, I write because there’s so much it can do for you. You can reflect your emotions through characters, create your own universes and change it at your will. You can tell if I was dealing with stuff, just by reading my stories.

For example, the things I was writing this time last year were all very dark stories with sad endings, whilst my writing now is (or, so I hope) much happier and less twisted and morbid.

Even if you’re not very good at English, or you struggle to write and read, it doesn’t mean you can’t do it. If you can open a word document (or even hand write it with a pad and pen) and let your imagination run free, you can produce things that will surprise you.

I have entire universes in my head that I’ve created through writing, and if I’m ever walking home from school alone, or I can’t sleep, I can decide in my mind what’s going to happen next, or develop and create characters.

It’s something there that’s in your head to distract you from falling into that place of over thinking and questioning, and when you’re actually writing it, you’ll be surprised by how quickly time goes, and how much you can produce without realising.

You can channel your emotions through your characters - If you’re feeling down, you could create a character who deals with depression. If you’re feeling happy, you can create a character with a more positive outlook. It’s a way of getting things out your system and coming to terms with it, and these characters you’ve created can make you feel slightly less alone.

I, for example, was going through a very, very rough patch about a year ago. I created a character in one of my stories who dealt with the same things as me, but I wrote the storyline so that she defeated it, recovered and got on the road to being happy. And from that day on, I’ve thought to myself, ‘If I can make my character do it, I can do it too.’

Another major example is JK Rowling - She was dealing with a lot of stuff (a divorce, depression and much more) and she turrned everything around when she wrote Harry Potter. Seven books, eight films and a lot of hard work later, she’s created one of the biggest franchises in modern history. Her writing has inspired and helped hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people around the world, including myself.

For me, writing is sort of an escape. I’m in an okay place right now, but no one can go without bad days. And when I am having a rough day, I write. Heck, when I’m having a good day, I write. I do it all the time, and I can see myself doing more of it in the future. I’d like to be a writer, maybe a journalist or an author, when I’m older.

So, simply pick up a pad and a pen. You can write down your feelings, about your day or simply anything, because the benefits are endless. Never tell yourself you can’t do it, because not unlike drawing, singing and dancing, writing gets better as you do it more. Just give it a try.