Something to Say

By Nichole Giles

After Karen’s post about her mother, and then Darvell’s about his father, I’ve given a lot of thought to writing as a therapeutic exercise. During times of extreme emotion, I’ve found that writing, above all else, has the ability to help me sort through my feelings and find the words to express my pain, anger, joy, or happiness.

We all use different forms of this therapy. Karen has her letters, Darvell has been known to express grief through fictional means, and others write in journals. We blog, we email, we write entire books as tribute to our feelings. More often than not, the writing that comes from our deepest emotions turns out to be our best work, even if it will never be publishable. Because whatever words we use are true to us at the time we write them. They are the most true words we know, and so they become our best.

Writing, for most people, is an expression of a deeper person who lives far below the surface of our outside faces. I’ve heard several times that a writer’s first book is autobiographical. I’m going to disagree on that point. I think every work that comes from an author is autobiographical—not because the characters are modeled after the author, but because there is a piece of the author in everything they write.

My twelve-year-old daughter has a private blog. She only posts once a month or so, but when she does, I continue to be impressed with her ability to express herself, and to describe the things happening in her adolescent life. I see in her writing style and voice—while she’s too young and inexperienced to understand she has them—that are unique and descriptive. She isn’t writing for the joy—of all my children, she’s the least likely to grow up and chose to be a writer—she’s writing because she has something to say. That’s all.

And sometimes, that’s the only motivation we need. Writers or not. In all it’s forms, writing is the truest expression of self. Just like art, music, and dance.

On a more humorous note, I told my visiting teachers the other day that I sometimes hear voices in my head. One sister grinned and chuckled, expressing her amazement at what I do. But the other one—newer to visiting me—looked at me in alarm. She didn’t say anything, and I hope I didn’t scare her with the truth. I was only trying to explain that as I was driving to a seventh-grade basketball tournament, two full-fledged scenes for a new book thundered into my mind, and I was grateful for my handy-dandy notebook because I got the idea on paper before it could vanish. I took the scenes—which I turned into a full chapter—to critique with me the other night and it was well received. Looks like I know what will be my next project.

I realize that these new scenes are the manifestations of a culmination of events that occurred over a two-week period. And this chapter is my way of expressing feelings about those events. No one in my life died. I don’t have a giant source of grief or a life-altering problem. But I do live in the world, and because our world is far from perfect, my emotions scream to be heard. I have something to say. That’s all.

And so I’ll say it through writing. Why not? It’s way cheaper than therapy.