What can make wounds heal more quickly and improve your chances at a job interview?
The surprise answer is creative writing. We already know that engaging in any kind of creative activity is good for our mental and physical wellbeing. Creativity is hardwired into us: as soon as a toddler walks she dances, as soon as she can hold a crayon she draws and as soon as she has words she wants stories.
However, there’s now a growing body of evidence to indicate that writing our own stories has a range of unexpected benefits
HEALING WORDS
As a writer, who also teaches writing, I’ve seen the results in the classroom in increased confidence and renewed self-belief. So, I wasn’t surprised to learn there are also tangible physical benefits.
One New Zealand study found 75 percent of otherwise healthy senior citizens who wrote about a traumatic event healed more quickly than those in a control group. In the early 1990s, Texas researchers divided redundant engineers into three groups:
group one didn’t write, group two wrote about time management, and group three kept a journal of their feelings.
Three months later, less than five percent of groups one and two had new jobs, but over a quarter of group three had found work – they weren’t going to more interviews, but they were better at getting the job.
Similar results have been repeated again and again.
One study conducted at Bristol Royal Infirmary, found that any kind of creative writing reduced anxiety and the need for tranquillisers.
Sometimes we need to write about things which we have never encountered and go beyond our own experiences. In my latest book Back to Creative Writing School,
I use the Wikipedia feature that allows you to select articles at random, to show how magic can happen when unconnected ideas rub against each other in surprising ways.
The Lord Mayor of London, an insignificant brown butterfly native to India and a list of Gambian diplomatic missions can became the main ingredients in the plot of a poignant love story.
Imagination can go anywhere and do anything, but like a muscle it has to be worked!
Writers don’t have to reinvent the wheel however. In another exercise I explore how one of the world’s oldest tales, which is found in most cultures, can be easily transplanted to today,making it new and relevant
and exciting.
Creative writing isn’t just a workout for the imagination.
It can remove mental blocks and allow you to better understand yourself, others and the world around you. And when that happens there’s a positive physical reaction.
It’s win-win... before you even think about publication, bestseller lists and J K Rowling!
TRY THIS
Not sure how to begin writing? See where this very simple exercise takes you...
* List all the names you’ve ever been called (the ones you liked).
Think about the playground in the first school you ever attended, your first kiss, your first job.
* Pick a name from your list and write about why your parents chose it or why friends fell into the habit of using it. If you aren’t sure, speculate. Write about the world where that name was first spoken. Write about the questions it throws up. And the answers you don’t always have.
* The only rule is that you have to write it down, because something happens when you think with a pen in your hand.