How Writers Can Help People

Good and evil are not decided by the tool.

Both Harry and Voldemort wield wands, but the power that they create are dramatically different. The tool, the medium, is a platform, a totem, wearing the face of those who use it.

And words — there’s nothing that retains more power than a word, said with intention, and for a reason.

Which is why I intend to wield mine for good.

But that’s easier said than said, right? Most of us writers write for the purpose of spreading joy, providing escape, creating worlds, enchanting readers, maybe spooking them a little if you’re a horror writer, not to mention the emotional turmoil of fantasy novels and the fact that all authors, the sadistic storytellers that we are, have a tendency to kill off epic characters leaving the reader feeling dead inside. But other than that, we just want to do a little good!

Because words are a tonic. A remedy. They heal people.

Problem is, words aren’t a literal tonic — just literary. They aren’t a store-bought remedy. They’re not prescribed by doctors as healing practises.

It’s not like a writer can stroll into the ER, read a couple chapters of The Fourth Wing and suddenly everybody’s back to full health again (I mean, that would work on me). Right? We writers can’t help people in the most literal sense — so how can we?

How can a writer use their words for good?

Before I delve deeper into that, I just want you to know something. My mission statement in life is this:

• To be a good person
• And to be a good writer
• (To also be a fast walker, but that really only applies if I was writing about slow pavement people)

To be a good person means to do donate to good causes and draw hearts on the mirror and smile at strangers they pass on the street. They make people feel good, feel empowered, feel alive. A good writer does the exact same thing, but through the specific medium of: stories.

Though they’re pretty simple, probably super common existential endeavours, they take work, practise, persistence. Sometimes I’m a bad person (I don’t always round up my McDonald’s order to donate the rest) and sometimes I’m a bad writer (some days I just cannot be arsed to write).

But every day, it still remains. That innate desire to do good, to write good (clearly it’s working) prevails.

And then one day I thought:

“Wait. What if I combined the two?”

So I started mind-mapping. Page-purging. Brain-barfing. Thinking up all the ways in which I can write and help people, simultaneously. And this is what I came up with:

1. Write for the dying

It stands to reason that those who have lived longer lives, experienced everything, seen more, evolved and changed and grown and loved and lost and won and lost and survived right until the end — they’re going to have some stories to tell.

Which is why some writers write those stories on their behalf. They go to elderly homes and note down their greatest adventures, their not-so-greats, their regrets, their messages. They create biographies of those who lived. And sure, it’s typically volunteer work — but it helps those people more than you know. It immortalises their lives. It helps them live forever.

The same applies for the ill. You could write for those that are dying from a terminal illness. Give them a place for their memories to survive.

Or you know, write the stories of the living, too.

2. Write on behalf of those that can’t speak

Create a cat magazine. Do voiceovers for wildlife. Learn about endangered species and write about them, so the rest of the world knows about them, too.

Use your words in place of meows and moos, so that those who can’t speak, can be heard.

I wrote something not so long ago, about a kitten on a wall in a warzone. I mentioned the charity who found the kitten. And I tried to bring to light the poor furry souls that get swallowed whole in the fallout of conflict. Maybe nobody read it. Maybe the charity didn’t get any further support. Or maybe they did. And that maybe is worth everything.

3. Write whatever, and donate your earnings to charity

Write fiction. Write erotica. Write about the parallel lives of Cillian Murphy. Write anybloodything you want to write about — and whatever money you make from it, donate a percentage to charities of your choice.

This might be a more indirect way to use your words for good, but it’s silver-lined on both sides. It means you’re more likely able to write about any topic of your choice and still do something meaningful with those words.

4. Write about important topics that need talking about

Talk about the gory sides of mental health. Interview the homeless and share their thoughts. Be a journalist, but one that is actually motivated by good. Ask the questions nobody is asking (not out loud, at least) — and answer them, because the truth is, we all want to know.

Write about things that matter. Things that make people feel less alone. Things that people didn’t know they needed to know until they knew it.

No scare-mongering. Don’t depress anybody without offering some kind of resolution. If you’re following doom and gloom, then at least make a little room for the light to bloom.

But it’s got to be done. Maybe it can be done by you.

5. Be a volunteer writer for a charity or organisation that needs more recognition

Social media is the digital equivalent of a poor soul stood in the middle of a busy high street, desperately trying to hand out leaflets and hang onto a conversation without being shunned, just so that they can spread the word of their purposeful organisation.

Bless them. It’s tough out there. Their words get as spread as chewing gum on a bench.

The same applies to their online presence. If not done in the right way, their mission and messages will be nothing more than a whisper in a warzone. But you could change that.

You’re a writer. You know how to tell a story — a good one, at that. Tell theirs. Help them engage others. Help them to help people see how to make the world a better place, together.

Spread the word, using yours.

Word to your mother

Imagine telling your mom over a mango bubble tea that your words are saving lives. Improving them. Easing them. Healing them. Helping them.

She’d be so proud of you. You’d be so proud of you. I would, too.

And that’s exactly what I want to do. To harness that fulfilling feeling and do something with meaning — that would mean everything to me.

Maybe my words won’t make a person’s financial situation improve. Maybe it won’t health their health or amend their relationships. Maybe it won’t give them a literal home to call their own.

Or maybe they will. Maybe they’ll give a person who’s stuck in a job they despise a reprieve, whilst they sit in the bathroom on their lunch break, escaping to the fantasy realms they can make homes in. Maybe it’ll help a cat charity gain more recognition, take in more donations, and save more litters of kittens than ever before. Maybe my words might make somebody smile for a while — and the gods of ink and parchment know that that is more than enough.

I know I can’t help everybody — but I want to try. Little by little, letter by letter, I want to wield my pen like a wand and watch as my magic entangles with the lives of those it encounters. I hope they feel safe inside my sentences and that they know: I write for them, to do right by them.

Fancy joining me?

Oh! One last thing you should know

You don’t have to write for a good cause. If you write simply because you love it, that’s as good a reason as every.