TnT: writing as therapy

[pipisafoat]

Don't forget about Contest 55, which asks you to rewrite a well-known narrative (popular movie, classic fairy tale) with a different ending!

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Today, I present for your consideration a quote from Jules Feiffer:

Writing, I explained, was mainly an attempt to out-argue one's past; to present events in such a light that battles lost in life were either won on paper or held to a draw.

Have you ever done this in your writing? Why or why not? Did it work?

Comments

[greyen]

All the time. If I write poetry, it’s usually an attempt to work something in my life out, whether it’s past, present or future. It doesn’t seem to matter what I try to write when I sit down to write poetry, some sort of person, raw, thing comes out. There doesn’t appear to be anything I can do to change that if something is actively bothering me. Everything I’ve written this month for Brigit’s Flame over on LJ has been about issues with one person. Granted, he’s caused a lot of them. But sometimes, I’d rather writing wasn’t how I coped.

It’s very true, I think, but not for everyone.

Does it work? Sort of? If it didn’t work out in life, it’s never won on paper for me. It ends better, in that it has some real sort of resolution, whereas there are large swathes of my past that have no real resolution because some of the people just disappear. It sometimes makes me feel better, sometimes it makes me wonder "what if" a little too loudly.

[pipisafoat]

sometimes it makes me wonder "what if" a little too loudly.

Oh, I can definitely see how that would start happening! Yikes. That would be a big big trap for me, I'm sure.

[greyen]

It's unnerving to say the least. Because then I start trying to *do* something about it...

[pipisafoat]

I once wrote a fictional version of something that happened to me, only to be told that it was a stupid thing to write about because it could never, ever happen. Thankfully, that amused me instead of having any negative repercussions. But in general, no, I don't write my life.