You Are What You Write

Some may not agree with this statement, but I firmly believe not only are we what we write, but we can mold and shape ourselves and our outlook on life by writing.

A bold statement, eh? Yeah, I do that sometimes, but think about it, folks. Have you ever stopped and reviewed your past work to see how you’ve evolved? How you’ve changed over the days months or years?

I’m not referring to your writing and whether or not it’s improved at the moment. One thing I know for sure is if you continue to write, you will continue to improve your writing.

But that’s not what I’m talking about here.

I’m talking about the real you inside your head and heart. How you feel about things either happening to you or around you. How you treat yourself and other people. Why you do the things you do when you do them, think them or say them.

Are all these things which make up the Human you still the same when you began your writing career?

Without a doubt, I can state for me they’re not. After a lot of introspective comparisons, I’ve discovered my perspectives have changed considerably. The new me is still the old me, but not if that makes any sense.

What’s even wilder is that these changes weren’t enacted with purpose or intent. Although they all could have been.

We can change all these things through our writing. You are what you write, or at the very least, you can become what you write.

Let me see if I can convey an example of what I’m talking about.

Let’s use, for example, a failed painter back in the nineteen-thirties with a horribly skewed perspective on the human race and world domination.

Let’s say this painter was incarcerated (I’ll not bore you with the details around the incarceration), and during that time, this artist decided to write a somewhat dystopian view of how things should be, of how the world should be. As this view is written, the painter begins to believe more and more in their words.

What if this failed artist soon after becomes a leader of a nation and sets about using war, horrible persecution, and genocide to bend the will of the entire world to his beliefs, and ideas. Ideas that were based on words written while incarcerated.

Actions of a madman inspired by words from Mein Kampf.

I’m willing to bet most of you knew where this was going after the first paragraph, right?

The point is, and I now know from my own personal experience that my writing and my words have changed me, and I’ll be the first to admit I never saw the changes coming.

They were all very subtle and difficult to recognize and it wasn’t as if my brain flipped a very noticeable switch.

In the beginning, I wrote from an extremely protected place, a place where my feelings couldn’t be bruised. I remained aloof and to a degree haughty, which is really another way of saying I thought my s*it didn’t stink.

Even though it did.

I saw myself as an already established writer who was going to simply crush it here. What’s interesting is that my original writing often regurgitated a hard brashness and cockiness, which turned a lot of people off.

The fact that my writing wasn’t immediately accepted by the masses simply blew me away and made me think.

Do I try and force a reader against their will to read what I’ve written, or do I need to change the way I write and give them what they want to read?

Well, I ain’t that smart, but I ain’t a box of rocks either.

I wanted and needed them to read which meant I needed to change.

So I began to change my writing, and over this last year, I began to make some pretty darned good traction.

It’s only now I can look back and understand my perspectives altered subtly. As I wrote, the changes were taking place, unseen, my brain never registering the changes.

How I began to feel about situations and people. With each piece I wrote, the emotional side of things previously buried deep down somehow managed to bubble up and flourish.

It’s only now I have taken conscious notice of how my writing makes me feel, allows me to connect to these feelings and emotions when I write. What’s even more special is the more I write, the stronger the emotions and sensations grow. And the more I change.

I’ve written about my personal anger at injustices. I’ve noted the shame I felt because of my gender’s treatment of women. There were moments when I railed about cold-blooded maniacs who have no problem taking part in mass murders. I’ve even ranted about racial and religious profilers and hate mongers.

Not only do I now think about these things more strongly than I ever have before. Now I feel these things.

Even though I told myself I couldn’t possibly think or feel so strongly about something that wasn’t happening to me, I realized I was.

I was because I wrote about it.

I suddenly realized I’ve become what I write.

I am what I write.

Here’s another bold statement. We writers have within us unbelievable powers no one else has. If you believe the pen is mightier than the sword (which it is), then you understand how much power a writer has.

We can change current events.

We can mold the future for ourselves and our children.

And we can change ourselves just by consistently writing.

If you’re a writer, you’re powerful, an almost unstoppable force to be reckoned with. And all you have to do to change yourself and others is to write.

Write a better future for yourself, a better place for your children, stronger resistance to persecution, a more robust frame of mind.

I challenge you to be what you write.

Thank You So Much For Reading

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© P.G. Barnett, 2020. All Rights Reserved.