Using Writing to Make Sense of the World and Life

Writing always has been my haven for self-expression. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember. Even as a kid, I walked around with a mini notebook on a string around my neck, just in case I needed to spew something I saw or felt. It was my way of making sense of the world and working through it.

Now, more than ever, we need to make sense of things. We don’t know anymore where the truth is as we scroll on our phones. We’re not certain if rent will be affordable a year from now. We feel gaslit at every turn until our stomachs don’t know how to not be queasy anymore.

Journalist Katrin Schumann recognizes this. In an article for Psychology Today, she talks with Lynne Reeves Griffin about why she writes fiction. Explaining how her writing allows her to go deeper into topics and explore them in a way that’s more relevant to readers’ lives, Schumann notes that putting words to paper can be a form of therapy:

“Spending years creating characters and situations that grapple with serious, real-world problems lets me explore my own difficult experiences. For instance, I’d been wrestling with the aftermath of dealing with a narcissist when I started writing my first novel. By fictionalizing those challenges, I was able to find the courage to linger in the dark areas, examining them from all angles in order to find where the light might get in.
I discovered greater empathy and resilience in myself while also being able to acknowledge the trauma I’d been through. It’s using my imagination, combined with researching some very real and current psychological challenges, that ultimately feels most powerful to me and an effective way to reach readers.”

Dorothy Suskind offers additional details and explanations about the health benefits of expressive writing in Psychology Today, and I’ve written previously how healing writing can be. But today, I want to make no apologies for continuing to use writing in any genre for the purpose of making sense of myself, my experiences, and the world I live in. If you’re considering using writing for the same purpose, these are my best tips to get the most out of your effort.

1. Let some words be for the reader and some be for you.

Schumann is a lovely example of an author who is incredibly mindful of how her pieces are going to resonate. But you can write fiction that’s not researched. That’s not meant for anybody but you to fully understand. These pieces can be messy and have more plot holes and confusing transitions than a toddler has goldfish crackers. They might not make a ton of sense. You might not even know what’s going to come out of you next. But in the moment, they’ll feel right to you. It’s not about being fully understandable. It’s about saying something, anything, to get comfortable enough to say the next thing.

2. Acknowledge the gray.

As Schumann notes in her interview, some topics have a lot of nuance and gray. So, it’s OK if your characters struggle with all kinds of cognitive dissonances. They can be heroes in some situations and jerkfaces in the next. All that really matters is that it’s clear to the reader eventually where the duality, strife, or complexity is coming from.

3. Hold to the truth.

Hard reality: Others might not like what you write. They might resist publishing you for fear of controversy, leave nasty reviews, accuse you of intentionally causing pain, and so on.

But as I have noted on my YouTube Channel, your job isn’t to please everyone. Some people might not be ready for your message, and they can decide for themselves to DNF. But don’t sugarcoat the reality you’re trying to expose or work through. It is what it is, and pretending that it isn’t won’t benefit you. Just as importantly, it’s not going to help the people who need to see that you recognize the same truth they do. Those people are your target audience, and if you’ve done your homework, you’ll understand how many of them there are.

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Research, research, research.

As with any writing, research ensures that you’ve got your facts straight enough to be believable and trustworthy. That matters in articles and non-fiction, but it also counts in fiction. People might want to read about an athlete coming to terms with the end of a brilliant career, for example. But readers are going to smell a rat if you describe the athlete running a marathon in an hour (a world champion runner hopes for a time around 2 hours (men) or 2 hours and 15 minutes (women)) or still doing professional gymnastics at age 40 (the typical point to quit is now in the early 20s).

But there’s another reason to bury your nose in materials, even those that are not explicitly self-help. Everything you read adds to your understanding of the topic. The more perspectives and pieces of data you gather, the closer you are to putting together a big picture of what happened (or is happening). Just as you can find support in a therapy group, you’ll also start to take solace in what others are sharing on their own pages. On my own journey, I’ve found the following books to be especially insightful:

• Journey Through Trauma: A Trail Guide to the 5-Phase Cycle of Healing Repeated Trauma (2018, Gretchen Schmelzer)
• The Wounded Healer (1979, Henri Nouwen)
• Seeing God as a Perfect Father (2023, Louie Giglio)

But I still treasure my copy of Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, which was the first book that helped me understand that everyone has pain, needs kindness, and is interconnected. Dig into records or clips if you must, but be open to the idea that revelations can come from any genre.

Words are power

Words are power. There’s a reason that’s the tag line of my author site. I fully believe that, through writing, we can change both ourselves and the world around us. We can gain understanding of both who we are and who we might be, and we can dig into both beauty and pain. If you need a place to heal and sort life out, go to the page. No matter what has happened or is in front of you, the push of your pen against your paper will drive you forward.