Just start writing. It doesn’t matter what. Sooner or later what you really think will appear on the page. It’s all a matter of intuition.

Don’t stop for a minute. The work is the work of communication. The tools of communication are many. The desk is covered with them. Paper, pens, pencils of different colours and kinds. Quick, pick up a writing tool and start to scribble. Capture your thoughts as they arise.

Thoughts become messages. Write a note for the milkman, a shopping list, a memo about something it is important not to forget. Write a letter to your aunt, choosing a good quality notepaper and pop it in an envelope. Where’s that book of stamps? There, in the little desk-tidy, how useful.

In the morning, write a journal. Write a few pages every day; they call them morning pages, isn’t that clever? What, you don’t feel like doing it every day? That’s fine, you don’t want it to become a chore, so do it when you feel like it and if you don’t feel like it, don’t do it. What do you mean, discipline? Doing what you ought to do isn’t good for the soul. Making a lot of effort is stressful. I recommend making no effort, playing at it, having fun. You could call it writing for pleasure. You might think that that isn't exactly communicating, but it is, you know. Before you can communicate with others – even the milkman or your aunt, you have to be able to communicate with yourself. You have to know what is in there. No, I don’t mean you first have to know what is in there and write it down. I mean you have to write it down in order to find out what it is. You could surprise yourself. I mean it.

People get hot under the collar if you tell them this sort of writing is therapeutic. So why tell them? They think therapy is for someone who is sick or has problems. But this is therapeutic in the sense that gardening and listening to music are therapeutic. It’s relaxing, it’s delightful; exactly what you need to help you recover from all that has happened to you or been done to you that was harmful and hurtful, during the day to day struggle to earn a living and maintain some reasonable sort of rapport with those around you. Afterwards read what your pen has told you, ponder it, learn from it, be enriched.

Not everyone writes by hand. It can be part of the pleasure, choosing a favourite writing instrument, sharpening your pencil with care, preferring blue ink for financial matters, black for legal business, green for your ideas about nature, or purple when your thoughts take a spiritual or philosophical turn. Over the centuries people have used sharpened sticks, chisels, feathers, charcoal… all manner of ways of leaving their mark. When the typewriter was invented, some writers were horrified. They found it noisy and soulless. But it caught on because it was quicker, and the writers’ souls found their way through the neat black rows of letters somehow, and shone out on their pages. Now that we use computers, the same can apply. Your true self will find itself displayed on the page whatever the production technique – so long as you are willing and able to let that happen. The main thing is not to get in the way.

Having written, what then? The choice is very great, and it is yours alone. You can tear your page up immediately – or even delete your words before they reach any piece of paper. You can hide your pages away in a drawer, or file them in ring binders to fill your shelves. You can leave them there until you die, when your relatives may read them, or, more likely, burn them, to save themselves the embarrassment of finding out what you really thought of them.

You can read your work aloud at a class. You can encourage people to tell you their reactions, or you can scuttle away quickly before they can utter a word in response.

You can try sending your poems or stories to magazines. How will you feel if they are rejected? Finding that out is an interesting exercise in itself;it is enlightening to notice whether you care, and if so, how much, and why. Perhaps the editor reminds you of a critical parent or teacher. Perhaps you think, ‘I’ll show them!’ and renew your efforts. Or perhaps you just shrug and send your creations off again to seek their fortune elsewhere. It’s worth noting that the process at this point can get stressful, competitive, creating tension instead of relaxation, and there’s another choice for you to make – do you really need it? If so, why? Are you compensating for some unconscious lack within yourself? Are you convinced that your ideas really are of great value to the world? They may well be, and even if others do not seem to think so it is worth persevering. It would be awful to reach the end of your life without having offered what you have to offer, regretting that you did not share your thoughts,feelings and ideas while you had the time and opportunity to do so. So, get on with it, get those words down quickly, print them off and rush out into the world with them, saying, ‘This is what I wrote this afternoon.’

This article appeared in ‘Connections', Winter/Spring 2001