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CREATIVE PROCESS
Write first, Wince later
How putting our feelings into words makes us self-aware — and occasionally crushed
✒️ Dear Diary, apparently I have feelings …
Does writing make us better people?
As we put pen to paper, do we suddenly become emotionally aware? Really aware? As in, ‘Good Lord, I have feelings. Who knew?’
Does writing solve our problems, or does it simply give us a more eloquent way of documenting the mess?
Yes, our emotions may be burning up as we set fire to the keyboard. We write about that time when… and suddenly, every suppressed feeling we’ve carefully ignored for the last decade comes bursting through the door like it’s been waiting for its cue.
We unleash. We write. We feel liberated. Then we re-read a certain paragraph.
Arghhh!
There it is, the truth.
We’re face-to-face with the real us.
✒️ A cure for the cringe
Isn’t it easier just to fictionalise? To create some comfortable distance between ourselves and that burn of a memory, that…
