The power of the written word

Start with ten minutes and no rules.

Pen and paper if you can, because slowing down is the point.

Don’t edit. Don’t punctuate properly and don’t write for a reader.

If the blank page is the barrier, answer one question instead: what’s going on right now?

Writing works because it slows thought to the speed of a pen, and you can’t write two thoughts at once. Forced into single file, they become visible; and visible thoughts can be questioned.

Before I was a counsellor, I was a guy with a notebook trying to make sense of the breakdown of my life as I knew it.

I’d written things down in the past. I journaled as a teenager, and it helped me sort through things I had no other way of processing.

Then in my early twenties a partner read my journal without permission, and I stopped. For over a decade I didn’t write anything down. I told myself I didn’t need it. I could have kept going without it, and I did, but it came at a cost.

I picked up a pen again as my world collapsed after separating with my ex-wife. Foot in a moon boot following surgery to repair a ruptured Achilles. Career change underway. Financial situation in limbo. Living between the gym, my uncle’s place, and out the back of a car while I tried to find somewhere more permanent to live.

That’s what rock bottom looked like for me, and it was fairly clear nobody was coming to dig me out.

So I wrote. Not for an audience. Not with any plan. Just getting the noise out of my head and onto the page, because my head was full and the page had room.

That practice changed the trajectory of my life. It became a website, written for my two young nephews. It became the raw material for a memoir, which happened because my therapist suggested writing my story might be a constructive exercise, an idea that both excited and terrified me. Eventually it became part of the reason I retrained as a counsellor. But long before any of that, it did something much more basic.

It let me hear myself think.

Your mind moves faster than your understanding. Thoughts loop, overlap, and interrupt each other, especially under stress. That’s why the 2am spiral feels so convincing: the thoughts are moving too quickly to be examined, so they get believed instead.

Writing slows thought down to the speed of a pen. Visible thoughts can be questioned. Half of what terrorises you in your head looks flimsy in ink. Some of it dissolves the moment it hits the page, because it turns out it was never an idea. It was just a feeling wearing an idea’s clothes.

Writing also creates a record. After journaling for a while, you can look back and see, in your own handwriting, that the thing you were certain would end you six months ago is now a paragraph you barely remember writing. That evidence of your own resilience is worth more than any amount of reassurance from someone else, because you can’t argue with your own archive.

There’s solid research behind all of this, but I didn’t come to it through research. I came to it through a notebook and a kitchen table, with no other options. It worked.

Everyone I’ve ever recommended journaling to says the same thing: I don’t know how to start.

The good news is, there’s no wrong answer, and there are no rules. But if the blank page is the barrier, here’s how I suggest starting.

Ten minutes. Pen and paper if possible, but type if it’s easier. Nobody will ever see it. Ugly writing works fine.

If nothing comes, answer one question. Something along the lines of:

– “What’s going on for me right now?”
– “What am I feeling and why?”
– “What’s stressing me out at the moment?”

Write whatever arrives, including “I don’t know what to write and this feels stupid.” That sentence has opened more journals than any prompt I know.

Stop when the ten minutes is up, even mid-sentence. Especially mid-sentence. It makes tomorrow easier to start.

That’s the whole practice. It costs nothing, requires no appointment, and is available at 2am when the loop starts.

I’ve put together a free journaling guide with prompts, structure and everything I wish someone had handed me at that kitchen table. You can download it here or via the Resources page.

• Ten minutes, pen and paper. Slow down. If you’re typing, no problem, just find a way to get the process started.

• Don’t write for a reader. The moment you imagine someone reading it, you start editing, and the useful material is exactly what gets edited out.

• Answer one question if the page is blank. Start with the first question the comes to mind around what’s going on for you at the moment and see where it takes you.

• Keep it, and go back to it. The record is half the value. Six months from now you’ll need proof that the thing you were certain would end you is a paragraph you barely remember. It’s that proof that builds reference points for the future illustrating our resilience.

• Protect it. If a past breach is the reason you stopped, decide where it lives before you start rather than after.

This week: ten minutes, one sitting, no rules. Don’t read it back until at least next week.

Ten minutes, no rules, no editing. If the blank page is the barrier, answer one question and go from there. There’s no wrong answers, which is the part most people find hardest to believe. Put your judgement aside and see what happens.

There’s solid research behind it, and the mechanism is straightforward. Thoughts move faster than understanding, and thoughts moving too fast to examine get believed instead of questioned. Writing forces them into single file, where they can be looked at.

By hand if you can. Typing is nearly as fast as thinking for some people, which removes the ‘slowing down’ element that makes the exercise useful in the first place. But if typing gets you started, then go for it.

That’s a real concern rather than a paranoid one, and for some people a past breach is exactly why they stopped. Decide where it lives before you start. The point of the practice is that you can be honest, and you won’t be honest in a book you think somebody might open.

Some of it’s immediate, because getting the noise out of your head onto the page has an effect on the same day. The bigger benefit is the record, and that takes months rather than days, because it depends on having something to look back at.

No, and it’s not meant to be. It’s one of the most useful things you can do on your own, and it works well alongside counselling rather than instead of it. If something surfaces that’s bigger than the page can hold, that’s worth taking to someone.

The free journaling guide is on the Resources page and it gives you a structured starting point. If something has surfaced that you’d like to talk through, I offer a free introductory call. No cost, no pressure, no obligation. Click the banner above or get in touch on 0422967392.

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