Writing was invented there 6000 years.
Since that time, humans have always needed to write outside of the workplace to put down on paper their ideas, feelings or anger. The desire to write has never been stronger than today when scientists are beginning to realize the therapeutic benefits of the practice.
The purpose of this article this week is to get you to write, to give you the desire to write.
The writing is accessible to all. I want to help you with creation, with your creation. You will learn to write by writing, How to start a Wikipedia page for someone by practicing regularly. I cannot recommend enough to read, write, look around, listen and live. These are the basic ingredients for any writing practice.
Anyone can write
To write, you have to start experimenting. The big question: what am I going to write about?
You can already start by writing about what you know. Anyone can write, about memories, anecdotes, about their family, about their work, about their passions, etc.
As such, you will find ideas in my eBook “111 writing games” published in free access on this blog.
Writing is not an activity reserved for an elite. Writing is a means of expression and creation that everyone can appropriate, use and develop. You can write with whatever baggage you have, whether or not you have studied further. You will learn little by little.
Your goal now is not to become a professional writer. But good to practice an activity that you have dreamed of doing for so long!
You are going to write to please yourself, to express what is in your head, what hurts you. Or to exist otherwise. Or to leave a trace. All reasons are good for writing. Just stop constantly procrastinating or telling yourself that you can’t.
You will believe me if I tell you that learning to write is still easier than the piano!
We are beings of language. Let’s use the language for us.
To write, over time, you will need tools, such as grammar, spelling, syntax. But, to start, you don’t need that. To write, you don’t need to be a scholar.
To start writing, I wrote a travel diary about my holidays in the Basque country last July. This eBook has no pretensions, but at least it forced me to write down daily in my notebook our facts, our actions, and my feelings.
I offer it to you in free access:
How did my desire to write come about?
Personally, I started to write because I read a lot. From all kinds of books, from past centuries or more recent.
Over the years, I have stored a lot of stories in my head. Like the threads of a tapestry, which interlock, intertwine, knot, unravel.
I made up stories as a child. I made up stories for my children at night before going to sleep.
I read to escape, to experience something else. I wanted to keep these bits of life in my head.
I own bookcases as furniture; but, it is also that in my head.
Of course, the desire to write comes from somewhere, from the depths of my being. Something happened to me that ran for decades before I decided to put my ideas and desires down on paper.
During my studies and the time spent educating children, I had very little time to write.
Quite simply, living and taking care of my children took up all my time.
Until recently.
Writing, for me, has been and still is a school affair, through my professional practice as a teacher.
But, precisely, I take this activity out of its dusty drawers to make the students write differently, through writing games, so that they see writing as a pleasure and not a chore.
I now want to put writing in my life, because it always seemed normal to me in fact.
I wrote a lot of poems as a teenager like many of you.
I also wrote a diary, which I stopped dead when my mother found and read it.
I listened to a lot of singers with texts, such as Jacques Bred, Georges Brasses, and many others, like Grand Corps Malady.
I have always loved school, writing well, French as a subject, foreign languages too.
I’ve always loved the notebooks, notebooks, book summaries, soap opera stories, or series now.
I also wrote, because of a lack of sufficient financial means, I had no extra-curricular activity.
I wrote and I read because there was nothing else I could do.
I’ve always looked for stories, taking models from clothing catalogs, and inventing a life for them.
During my studies, I learned to identify what was rich in texts.
Why am I writing?
Because, at 56, it has become a necessity, a need.
To be good with me. I’m not looking for fame, money, or recognition.
To calm anxieties, to find answers, to answer my questions.
Because my oldest son encouraged me to do so this year. I needed that helping hand to get started.
As an act of resilience. My adult life, like many of you, has not always been easy, nor harmonious. Writing rebuilds me, allows me to move forward after these moments of turmoil, ruptures, of questioning.