As an author of five technical books and two novels (for now), it is evident that one of my professional activities is book publishing (which is why I also created Hub de Libros).
However, until now I have never shared the reasons why I always recommend that everyone (yes, absolutely everyone) write in one way or another, whether through a diary, posts (like this), or any fiction or non-fiction project. On this topic, I recommend reading authors such as Julia Cameron and Natalie Goldberg (secret: every time I start a new project, I reread one of their books to refocus on a literary project).
I want to share here one of the chapters from the free guide I launched recently, titled “The Manifesto of the Free Author: How to write a book and publish it in the 21st century”.
Here it is.
Why write
80% of Americans admit that at some point in their lives they have considered the possibility of writing a book.
Almost nobody does, and the most likely reason is that strange special “aura” we impose on celebrated authors and our ignorance of how to begin.
Nevertheless, beyond our judgment of what counts as good or mediocre literature, the reasons for writing go far beyond whether or not you succeed in publishing a work.
“Writing” is a mental process that unloads our perception of the world onto paper.
There is something magical that happens every time we put our thoughts into writing, whether in the form of a story or short story, a diary, or that love letter we write to our partner.
Writing means materializing on paper part of the life we live each day (and digesting its hardships while celebrating its joys).
If it is one of your passions, dedicating half an hour a day to sit alone with yourself, pencil in hand or a laptop on your lap, writing is a wonderful way to easily enter that state of “flow” in which we lose track of time.
When you write, you remember that you are a free person: free to talk about whatever you want, to let out your emotions, to try to make sense of the incomprehensible, to process that argument with that dear person, to entertain that fantasy about the neighbor trainer at the gym or the nurse next door, and even to write chaotically, with spelling and punctuation mistakes, whatever comes to mind.
Understand life and your experiences… by writing.
Eliminate resentment by externalizing it onto paper.
Celebrate life by telling about that happy event in a new diary entry.
No one judges you and there are no rules: it is just you and the paper.
That way, something as apparently harmless as your own diary becomes a faithful companion to whom you go to tell “your things”: how the day went, your deepest worries, or even develop in it those fantasies as libertine as they are necessary.
In a way, when you read, you immerse yourself in the writer’s mind; when you write, you put your inner world into words.
If sometimes everything seems chaotic, when you write you create your own world shaped to your measure, with no one to answer to, in the form of magic schools, love stories, dystopias, or stories of superheroes or astute detectives.
Social life imposes necessary limits, but in writing there are no limits.
Start the day by freeing your creative mind by writing a few random pages, about anything, just your erratic thoughts while your mind wakes up (Julia Cameron, author of “The Artist’s Way,” a book I recommend, calls them “morning pages”).
End the night by returning to those pages to highlight in words the pleasant moments, the new problems, or the events that seem important, and you will realize that you feel a certain release by having expressed in some way all that mental world inside you.
Recover the beautiful habit of drafting an email (on paper or electronically) to stay in touch with friends who now live far away.
Write as therapy about any issue that troubles you. Also write to develop those seed ideas you sense, discovering that as soon as you force yourself to put them down on paper, the diffuse and elusive becomes more concrete and feasible, defined.
Get to know yourself better by expelling from within you, in the form of words, everything that crosses your mind and your life.
The reasons for writing are many; you just have to choose among them those that resonate best with you, and maybe give the rest a chance.
Writing is the best personal development tool I know.
Just as an erratic walk with no direction does not tell us where it will lead, writing will surely take you to unexpected places, and I can assure you they will be surprising.
Meanwhile, that pair of swallows dancing every evening in front of the window in my living room ignore that their beautiful courtship, with those quick movements, fleeting, unique, irrepeatable, has been captured forever in these words.
PS: This article is one of the chapters of the free guide “The Manifesto of the Free Author,” available from the resources section and also on Amazon.