Creative Writing for Personal Development
Writing Regularly can help you to feel better both emotionally and physically. To get started with your writing all you need is a pen that flows easily and that you enjoy writing with and some paper. You might like to make the activity special with a notebook that you enjoy writing in. Other than that a place in the house where you will be undisturbed is good. Remember to switch your mobile off...On this page I'll give you ideas to get you started. These are changed regularly.
Laughter
1. What makes you laugh? Try making a list or carry a notebook around for the day and record everything that brought a smile to your lips. Did you learn antything new about yourself?
2.Have a look through your DVD collection or find a favourite comedy/comedian on the TV. You need something that will make you laugh out loud. Before you watch the comedy record how you feel on a score of 1 to 10 with 1 being really low/sad and 10 being on top of the world. Watch the comedy and then record your score again. Describe the effect it had on your mood. How did it feel to laugh ot loud?
3. Write about an incident that made you laugh?
4.Imagine meeting someone who has never experienced laughter. Describe it to them.
5. Think about someone you know well. What makes them laugh?
6.Do some research into laughter and find out something new.
'd love to hear how you got on. Please e-mail me with any comments.
To read some poetry and to have your own poems published online please go to :
Poetry Space
You can work with me individually via e-mail. Fees are payable at £60 per month for which you will recieve four writing tasks and unlimited e-mail correspondence during that time.
I month writing therapy subscription
I think that creative writing can be of benefit to everyone, however during difficult times it can also be therapeutic. Your journal or notebook is always there when you need it at any time of the day or night.
To read articles on the therapeutic benefits of writing visit Lapidus
New creative writing groups starting all year round or I can work with you individually. Ring e-mail or click on the link above for information.
Ballpen Refills
Great range of pen refills including Montblanc, Cross and Parker Re fills from www.penrefills.com
Related Articles
Use Writing to Improve Your Health and Productivity
By Ellen Taliaferro, MD
Stress and trauma come in all types of packages, including good ones. Consider the plight of a woman who bumped into an old college sweetheart, married him, and then experienced the agony of abuse so profound that it ended their relationship.
When it was all over, college lover boy plunged into a torrid affair and never looked back. Not so with the now-single woman. She felt like a disoriented failure. What went wrong? And now what? A journal and pen turned out to be her savior. As she struggled to put her life back together she wrote in her journal whenever she could.
She wrote:
• To find out how her marriage had gone wrong.
• To understand the person she had now become.
• Most of all, to learn how to rebuild her life and jumpstart her career.
Later she told friends and family that these excursions into her journal had literally saved her life. Turning to a journal may have been the best thing she could have done: inexpensive, accessible, and rewarding.
Research involving controlled study groups now reveals that writing about past traumatic experiences can improve the health and well-being in many individuals.
We know more about the fact that writing about emotionally charged events works than we know about why it works. I put my money on two reasons why expressive and autobiographical writing works: disclosure and living the examined life.
There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you
-Trauma survivor, Maya Angelou
From the secret gospel of Saint Thomas we learn: "If you bring forth that which is within you, then that which is within you will be your salvation. If you do not bring forth that which is within you, then that which is within you will destroy you."
Socrates and other Greeks said, "Know thyself." Socrates also cautioned that the unexamined life is not worth living.
Show me a pen and paper (or a computer keyboard) and I'll show you how to use an expressive writing method to "know thyself" and to "bring forth that which is within you." I think that all writing is therapeutic. If nothing else, I usually feel better when completing dreaded writing chores such as writing checks to pay monthly bills.
Writing therapy using expressive, and focused autobiographical writing has been shown to improve numerous health conditions. This form of writing is easy to do, inexpensive, and requires no research other than self-exploration. This form of writing has helped many people who are recovering from traumatic events, enduring severe losses, and suffering from chronic diseases.
Three major reasons to use writing as therapy for those in the healing and helping professions include:
• To discharge the "vicarious traumatization" that comes with the territory.
• To help victims and survivors who are safe accept and deal with the aftermath of the violence and trauma they experienced.
• To promote self-healing by writing personal stories or books and help others - a beneficial and therapeutic version of "bearing witness."
Start you own therapeutic writing practice today. Write for just 15 minutes about whatever bothers you or about any emotionally charged event in your life. It would be great to do this every day, but if time pressures prevail, write a minimum of three times a week for at least six weeks. At the end of six weeks, take stock of your progress.
Speaker and author Ellen Taliaferro, MD lives in Half Moon Bay, CA and serves as the Medical Director of the Keller Center for Family Violence Intervention at the San Mateo Medical Center in San Mateo, CA.
She is the author of three books: WellWriting® for Health After Trauma
and Abuse, The Physician's Guide to Intimate Partner Violence and Abuse, and A Handbook: Respond to Intimate Partner Violence - 10 Action Steps You Can Take to Help Your Patients and Your Practice. Dr.Taliaferro can be reached by calling 650-393-3660 or through her
websites www.healthaftertrauma.com and www.wellwriting.org
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ellen_Taliaferro,_MD
http://EzineArticles.com/?Use-Writing-to-Improve-Your-Health-and-Productivity&id=913625
Five Ways to Benefit from Keeping a Diary
By Patti Testerman
Everyone who has kept a personal journal knows that writing is a therapeutic process that helps integrate seemingly unconnected life events. Some believe the process works because the physical act of writing (using your hand-eye coordination) occupies your left brain, leaving your right brain free to access emotions, intuit connections, and create new insights.
How else can journaling help?
1. Journaling reduces stress by getting “monkey mind” thoughts out of your head. Mind chatter is a powerful stressor, stressor is a powerful health-buster, and journaling the chatter is a proven chatter-buster.
2. Writing about problems gives your right brain food for creative problem-solving. It’s amazing what happens when the creative part of your nature starts working on a problem—you’ll soon find solutions bubbling up from your subconscious.
3. Keeping a daily diary is one of the best techniques for discovering patterns, particularly those that are self-defeating. For example, a diary kept over the course of several months will clearly show any reoccurring difficulties like overeating, stress eating, poor (but similar) choices in relationships.
4. Want to better know yourself? Journal. Writing can help clarify your thoughts, your emotions, and your reactions to certain people or situations. In addition, as you read back through past journals, you’ll have ample evidence of the things that make you happy and those that are distressful.
5. Journaling can help clarify events, problems, or options. When you’re beset with a mind full of fuzzy, disconnected thoughts flitting here and there, writing about the event or issue will help bring focus and clarity. It will also help you decide on which action to take, or option to choose.
Patti Testerman is content manager at JournalGenie.com, the only online site that analyzes your writing and then gives you instant feedback. Want to discover self-defeating patterns, or find better ways to communicate in a relationship? Check out our site.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Patti_Testerman
http://EzineArticles.com/?Five-Ways-to-Benefit-from-Keeping-a-Diary&id=1551
html>
Self Discovery Through Journal Writing
By Kevin Sinclair
Keeping a journal isn't just for teenage girls. The benefits of writing in a journal on a daily basis are various and great. You can get true insights into hidden parts of yourself, look back and notice patterns or habits, and receive wonderful therapeutic benefits. It's a wonderful way to release anger, or other emotions that you need an outlet for. Let's take a look at some information about self discovery through journal writing.
What is Journal Writing?
Journal writing is when an individual keeps a log of his daily or weekly activities, thoughts, feelings, emotions, and dreams. This can be done in a fancy leather bound journal, or an ordinary spiral notebook. The result is the same whether you use expensive writing tools or cheap pens and a notebook. You don't have to write everyday, although it is an excellent thing to do. You could write every few days or every week.
You simply write as if you were unloading your troubles or thoughts to your best friend, except you have the added benefit of your journal not being able to squeal to anyone you write about! Need to blow off some steam about your boss? Is your spouse driving you up the wall and back again? Get those feelings out, without compromising wonderful relationships. Writing about your problems is therapeutic, and can become one of the highlights of your day.
How Journal Writing can help with Self Discovery.
Writing in your journal will help you express wonderful emotions of happiness, love, fulfillment, and peace. It can also help you to shed your feelings of anger, hate, depression, anxiety or stress. It's a great way to let go of things that are bugging you, or driving you nuts! After writing for a while, you will begin to notice patterns within yourself.
You can track the things that make you feel a certain way. For example, reading your journal, you've noticed that you usually become really upset and depressed around a certain time each year. Further reading has helped you to realize that you get upset and depressed around the anniversary of your job. Why are you becoming upset around this time? Are you subconsciously thinking, 'Another year in the same dead end job." Do you have unresolved issues about your job, or are you unhappy in your job?
Another example could be that on some days you seem to be absolutely elated for no reason. Reading further, you realize that you're always happy and ecstatic the day you've seen a certain 'someone.' Uh oh. What's going on there? Writing in your journal can truly help you discover things about yourself that you never would have known otherwise.
What Process Should One Use?
Simply write about your most prevalent feelings in a day, what your thoughts were, any important events, things that you thought were interesting. Just write what you feel is relevant or that deserves to be noted. You are your own guide, and it doesn't matter what you write, because no one else is reading it. Most importantly, try to write at a certain time, like once every day or at least once a week. This will help you discover things about yourself more easily.
The Benefits one can Experience.
There are so many great benefits of journal writing. You can really use writing as an outlet to let go of anger, depression and anxiety. Don't let anger build up inside of you until you blow up and create a potentially terrible situation. Write about it. You can let go of stress about certain things, and we all know how damaging stress can be. Use journal writing to discover things about yourself that you never knew. You can learn so many things from writing in a journal. The benefits are wonderful, and there's really no reason not to do it.
You can write in a journal even if you're not gifted as a writer. You don't have to make the words pretty or descriptive, because you will automatically feel the feelings associated with the writing. No one else will be reading it, so you don't have to write a certain way, just write what you want. Good Luck!
Kevin Sinclair is the publisher and editor of My-Personal-Growth.com, a site that provides information and articles for self improvement and personal growth and development.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kevin_Sinclair
http://EzineArticles.com/?Self-Discovery-Through-Journal-Writing&id=653124