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How To Write Your Heart-Out Without Getting Exposed!
Writing a Journal On A Blog and Not Even Showing it!
As a writer, you understand that all you want to tell the readers is what you’re feeling or what YOU have learned from your experiences but it gets hard to express ourselves sometimes. The conundrum of ‘What Ifs’ is what we breathe as humans. ‘What if I sound too personal or vulnerable”?, ‘What if after reading this, people get to know what I’ve gone through?’, and this continues until you decide not to write about it at all! After all, the main purpose of writing is to let it out! Given the chance, we have to take the risk.
Let’s dig in to how to write your heart out without getting exposed or sounding vulnerable.
Journal Everyday
Photo by Plush Design Studio on Unsplash You might be following this one or thinking about opting this habit. Well, let me tell you this: It sounds an easy practice to do on a daily basis but SURPRISE!!!!! It’s not.
The better thing to mention here is, if you do journal daily or alternatively, you will get addicted to this routine. So, Journal as consistently as you can.
How To Form A Journaling Routine:
- Keep a journal at your desk. Whenever you’re working it’ll catch your eye and will tempt you to write in it.
- Get yourself a pretty/classic notebook to journal in. Like the ones in the above image or any kind you prefer, as per your taste.
- Self Talk : This will help you to channelise your thoughts into a single direction and you will get motivated to write it all out to get stress free.
- PLAN: Plan your day, week, month or year. Write down your goals and ambitions you’d like to achieve within a decided time. This is a type of productive journal you write.
Journal for yourself consistently and then write on the blog.
How Journaling Helps to Write on a Blog with Personal Experiences:
Journaling WILL help in writing your heart-out on the blog and that too without getting exposed with your deepest emotions which can make you vulnerable in a reader’s mind! No, I am not scaring you, but it does help.
When you journal for yourself, your heart is already exposed on the paper, which is only accessible to you. Now, what you write on the blog after that will only be using those ‘journaled’ thoughts to curate a story or an article. Those words will now unconsciously be non-personal and non-manual. Hence, you will able to share your deepest emotions to help the reader’s to learn & relate to it rather than judge you. So, journal for yourself first consistently and then write on the blog.
Read What You Wish To Write
Photo by Nadine Shaabana on Unsplash To be a better writer, we need to read like we’re getting paid for it. Of course, reading is one of the best exercises for a writer. To write personal blogs or experiences, reading what other’s have been writing in the genre is a way to learn how we can do it too. Memoirs, struggles, sarcastic discussions about mental health issues, all of this helps in understanding what type of literary language we should use in sharing our own journaled emotions publicly.
Going public with your heart is a brave thing to do and reading helps to make it easier.
Following are some stuff to read ; To understand the concept of journalling publicly:
- On Writing by Stephen King (Book)
- https://seths.blog/ by Seth Godin (Blog)
I don’t have to mention the FACT that how revolutionary and legendary both these writers are! So of course, learning from them is a blessing we have these days with technology. Their work is easily accessible and that is a treat for people wanting to write and learn about it.
Summary: To write on a platform where anyone can read your content, Journaling and Reading are the go to’s. Journaling about your emotions and reading what others have written about their emotions.
Readers should also, always, learn something or at least get something positive out of it.
Keeping in mind the Dos and Don’ts:
Dos:
- Edit the piece after writing.
- Be okay with exposing that side of you.
- Write like you’re writing a letter to someone you want to tell what you’re going through.
- Use the words of gratitude, such as, thank you, grateful, humbly, lucky etc. This helps the reader to connect to it on a deeper level and they’ll relate more to it.
- Write an end-note.
Don’ts:
- Stress over what people will think after reading it.
- Worry over sounding too personal.
- Thinking too much of writing too much. Write as much as you want to. Edit out the things that seems useless.
- Be Negative. A reader should always relate to your write-up, yes. But they should also, always, learn something or at least get something positive out of it. So, don’t end on a negative note.
“Make it less about ME and more about the reader.”
End-Note: I have written many things on the blog that are personal but have learnt over time to make it less about me and more about the reader. That is why I wrote this because journaling on a blog and still NOT making it about US is a big deal and I wanted to share it. So, Thank you for reading. You can read more on tarunified.com
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How Anxiety Helps With Productivity
Anxiety has two sides. A black and a white. But only an artist sees the grey area in the middle which is a treasure for creativity. Still, as easy as it sounds, it’s hard to channelise negativity for productivity. You have to master it at will and with self-control. Whenever anxiety creeps in, our brain goes into anticipatory mode which makes everything worse. But what a writer should do during that phase, is to trick the brain into thinking that they’re anticipating but in fact, they’re thinking about the deepest emotion that can create an article, a painting, a song, a poetry or even a quote.
Now , how do we do that?
Stop Thinking
When you’re at the peak of your anxiety, you feel restless and hopeless. Tears are sliding down your face and your breath is racing as fast as your heart is beating. All of this makes so much noise in the brain that some voices pop up in our heads that make it impossible for us to realise that THIS IS THE MOMENT for the creative thinker in me. So, the hardest part is to STOP THINKING. When you think, you imagine the worst and your logical or analytical thinking goes numb. You can stop it. Just close your eyes, take a deep breath and shut the voices down.
Now you don’t think to create or what to create You just pick up your notebook and a pen, or instrument or your laptop and start showering thoughts.
The brain is tricked into thinking that we’re still in the zone to sulk and guilt. But what you’ve done is to use those emotions into something meaningful and productive. That’s how I wrote How it feels to wake up with anxiety everyday! Yes, it’s way to direct. It’s like a journal, but what it did for me was magical.
Anxiety is a monster but only the magic in us can defeat it. The magic of CREATION. We, the Sapiens are most unique and developed beings since forever only because of our capabilities to imagine and create.
That’s what makes us different. Embrace that difference.
After I wrote the above mentioned piece, I felt like an elephant feet was off my chest. That’s what creating something/anything, does for me on a daily basis.
Create Everyday
I know. This habit is not easy to form but it’s addictive once formed. Don’t be mis-conceptualised with writing everyday. It doesn’t mean you have to post your art somewhere. It doesn’t mean you have to meet a deadline or it won’t count. See, the count doesn’t matter. What matters is how you’re using creativity as a healing technique for yourself. So, you can write a poem, a journal, a quote, a story, a song, draw, paint. It’s okay if you don’t want to share it with the world. I understand. When you’re most vulnerable, what you create in that moment is your most personal stuff. So, just create whatever and wherever.
I used to journal it out or write some poetry. It did the trick. But when writing gave me too much of relief, it became a habit. To write ANYTHING but just write. So now, I write everyday in different ways. Sometimes on Quora , on Medium or this blog. If these aren’t the ones, then I write in my journal and keep it to myself. I started this podcast on spotify as well which made me realise the power of words. I just channel my emotions at the right space now. You can try it yourself. It’s a bliss.
Talk About It
I take my words back when I said “stopping to think” is the hardest part.
This is.
To talk about the deepest emotion you feel, whose reason is still unknown to yourself!
The reason people say to “talk about it” is because it is one of the healing techniques for mental health. Yet, for an artist, it’s another exercise. How? Glad you asked. When we talk about anxiety, the words we use, the references we use, even the metaphors we use in the conversation helps the artist in us to understand it better. It’s just a reflection of your art. Talking about it also helps us find ideas to create something new. Try talking about it. I assure, it will help YOU and the ARTIST YOU.
Productivity is channeling negative emotions…
I hope this helps some people who have struggled or are struggling with anxiety to not struggle anymore but to show it, that anxiety messing up with an artist is a BAD IDEA.
Namaste.
This is such an insightful perspective. It’s true—no matter how much we engage with others, our minds are constantly processing,…
Congratulations!! 🌻🌟☀️
👍🏽💯
Thank you so much. Glad you could connect to it♥️
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Indeed! Thank you.