I practice a form of stream-of-consciousness writing that has saved my life. Over the years, writing out my thoughts is the single most important tool I’ve used towards becoming a fully functioning person, a person with solid relationships, meaningful work, and a sense of fullness and purpose. I wrote my way out of confusion and darkness into a life worth living.
It’s happened slowly, but it’s happened intentionally. I have done many things that have made me into a person I am glad to be, and the way I’ve figured out what I need to do is by writing.
Stream-of-consciousness writing for me is like thinking aloud on paper. I don’t have any idea what I’m going to say before I start. I have no destination in mind. That’s why I refer to it as a process, or sometimes a tool. It isn’t an end or a goal in itself.
There’s something about writing like this that allows me to see and hear my thoughts reflected back to me. That gives me this bit of distance from my thoughts. It’s almost like talking them out with another person, but I never get interrupted, and I never have to worry about being judged. And my notebook is ready and available at 2:00 a.m.
Process, Not Product
In my early twenties, I said that I wrote so much because I needed to talk more than any human being was able to listen. I was going through hell, and I needed to get it out of my head, so I got it down on paper. A journal or diary would suggest that I’m writing about events that happened and my feelings about them in a semi-coherent manner that creates a thing: a journal. My writing is not remotely about creating a thing. It’s about process, not product.
My husband calls it “clearing the pipes.” My thinking get stuck somewhere along the line, and then all the emotions get backed up and overflow into my actions. Clearing the pipes helps me think, feel, and act in a smoother, more present way.
And I never read what I just wrote. Reading it is like examining the contents of the drain clog under a magnifying glass. It’s both gross and a waste of time. My intention is to keep the drain free flowing, not to dissect the clogs. If I read my writing too quickly, I bring up all those emotions again and basically trigger myself. It becomes counterproductive.
Another way to think of it is washing clothes. The act of writing, keeping the hand moving, washes my brain. I throw in smelly, dusty, dirty laundry, and when I’m done I have clean laundry – a clear mind – and feel more like myself. The words on the page are the dirty water and lint. I’m not interested in high quality laundry lint. The words on the page are the same. Some days there’s more or less of it. It changes in color and quality. But the words are not important, and definitely aren’t the point. The clean clothes are the purpose of doing laundry.
Write It Out
When I’m in a powerfully bad mood, I go to my notebook and write it out. When I’m restless or bored, I write it out. I write down whatever thoughts are going through my head at the moment. Forget backstory and context, I start with whatever I happen to be thinking. When I’m doing stream-of-consciousness writing, I keep my hand moving. I write what comes up, as it comes to me.
This has the effect of slowing my thinking down when I’m angry or anxious and my thoughts are boiling over like a pot on the stove. When I’m depressed or sad, and my thinking is moving slow as molasses in miserable little circles, keeping my hand moving and writing what comes to me loosens and awakens my faculties, like stretching out stiff muscles after spending too much time in bed.
Once my thoughts are moving at a manageable pace, I start to feel the first hints of relief. Whatever I’m feeling becomes bearable. Once I’m writing everything out – it might take several pages first – I eventually find I have started to write about what’s really bothering me. I almost always surprise myself. I didn’t know what was behind my bad mood or wild train of thought until I sat down and wrote it all out.
Writing about what’s behind the surface thoughts and emotions, I start getting somewhere. I explore whatever it is that comes up. A new insight. A new connection. An old memory. Feelings that were hiding under the feelings. And as I get it out of my head and onto paper, I start to feel better. It’s like a good therapy session. I feel heard. And I’m also listening.
Mindfulness by the Page
For me writing is a form of mindful awareness. As I write, I not only feel my emotions, thoughts, sensations, and memories, I notice myself feeling them. That bit of distance from the emotions gives me a slightly different perspective. It gives me a taste of what I might find doing meditation practices or mindfulness exercises. I awaken an ability to observe my inner workings. And when I can observe them, I can avoid becoming overwhelmed by them. When I observe parts of myself in action, I have the opportunity to interact with them, engage with them, dialog between parts of myself and work out the differences. My inner conflicts become conversations.
At best I reclaim parts of myself, but at worst I’ve let the bad mood run its course on the page. The torrent of negative emotion has washed through, without doing further damage to my relationships. I feel like I do after a workout. A good kind of tired. Sometimes I walk away with insights and a new perspective. That’s the beginning of an awakening to a facet of myself I didn’t have awareness of before.
Those moments are key to growth in my life. Those moments give me the capacity to change. I love those moments.The clarity writing brings, day after day, year after year, has allowed me to chart the course of my life. Writing has made it possible to know myself, one word at a time.
Right to Write
There is a little book by Julia Cameron called “The Right to Write.” It’s about giving yourself permission to write down your thoughts and ideas that you hear in your head instead of trying to think up what to say. What I love most about this book is that she describes something similar to my process for writing to right myself, no matter what mood I bring to the table.
I’ve customized my process over time to suit me. But I also encourage you to try it, and to be willing to adapt this form of writing to your own needs and vary it over time. For example, I rarely write first thing in the morning, and I don’t always write every day. But when I’m anxious or depressed I’ll write several times a day in short bursts. But Cameron swears by writing first thing in the morning, every single day.
I have developed a sense for how much I need to write and when I’m done. But her recommendation of three pages of longhand is about the right length to get somewhere. If you want to type it, that’s about 750 words, and if you’re on a format that doesn’t lend itself to word counts (like emailing yourself) about 40 minutes is a good length of time for working through something. Don’t use the length as an excuse, though. If you have ten minutes to write, then take that ten minutes. It’s better than nothing.
Sometimes, though, it needs to be longer. Earlier this year, before the pandemic, I had a heartbreaking day where I was helping people I love make literal life and death decisions. I couldn’t sleep the night before, so I wrote for four hours straight. I went into the next day tired, but calm, clear, centered, and able to be present in a way I couldn’t have if I hadn’t written out all the junk in my head.
Primacy of Privacy
Don’t undermine yourself by sharing your writing with someone who might not understand the context in which it was written, and don’t write for an audience. That’s a pressure that will keep your censoring yourself as you write, which is the opposite of the effect you’re going for.
Just remember to stick with the two major guidelines: first, keep your hand moving – writing or typing whatever comes up. Second, don’t read it yourself for awhile, and don’t let anybody else read it at all. You’re not creating a piece of writing, you’re clearing the pipes or unclogging your filter. The change in your mood or perspective is the end result, not the words on the page.
Cue the Excuses
I find people are very slow on taking my word for how healing writing can be. It’s easy. Its cheap. It doesn’t have to take long. If you already can’t sleep, its not taking any extra time to do it. If you’re doomscrolling on your phone because you’re anxious, that time would be better spent writing.
My feeling is that some people give all the excuses in the world to not write for one reason: they secretly know how powerful it will be. Rather than what they say – that writing risks wasting their time – they know that writing will eventually unlock the secrets of their own minds. And then they might have to change. And change is hard and scary. But change is the only way to set things right. Write to right.