Writing To Express Yourself And Your Feelings

1. Introduction: Hello. My name's Anna Scoyles. I'm your tutor for this course, writing to Express yourself and your feelings. I'm a children's author and singer songwriter, and I'm going to share from my own experiences I hope will help you with writing to express yourself. It's something I really enjoy doing, and I hope that you will find this workshop useful. You'll see in the video lots of examples of things that I have written, book covers of my various novels. I've also written a debut novel. It's women's fiction. And if you want to know more about my work, visit my website that's in my bio. I also have a membership with different tiers where you can get exclusive access to various things. That's my Bymeacffee page, bymcoffee.com, forwardslash Anna Scoles. My books are available as paperback, eBook, and some of them in audio book format. And I have a more in depth writing course called Happy writing course. And you can find all the information on those things in my bio. So let's get started. 2. Journaling: There are loads of ways of doing writing. And today, I'm going to be talking about why writing is great for expressing yourself and your feelings. Have you ever had something on your mind that you can't seem to stop thinking or worrying about? Well, writing's a good way of expressing yourself, getting them out of your head and onto the page. If you haven't done it before, there are a few ways you might want to try writing and see what works for you. Writing, especially creative writing is great for expressing yourself in a new way. It can be a really relaxing experience taking you out of yourself, away from your problems and into another world where anything is possible, and you can make anything happen with just the power of your words. So probably wondering what are the ways that you could have a go at writing? Maybe you already write at work, sending emails, maybe you've got a creative job, or you're doing writing at school or university. But I want to talk about ways that writing can be fun and using them in a more personal way for yourself. The first way you could do this is by journaling. Journaling is a bit like writing a diary. And if you like stationery like I do, then it's a great excuse to buy yourself a nice notepad or a journal or diary. You don't have to write in it every day. If you don't want to, you can just do it when you feel like it. When you've got something on your mind or something you want to express. When you've had a difficult day or something's bothering you, spending some quiet time to sit down and journal might help. Don't worry about spelling, grammar or punctuation. Just write whatever comes into your head. It doesn't have to make sense. The important thing is getting it out of your mind so that you feel better. Things you could include are if you're talking about something in particular that's bothering you, maybe something that's happened. You could write about what went wrong, how you'd like to do things differently next time. If the situation happens again, takes some time to reflect on what you'd like to do differently. Then you can go back into your journal at a later date and reread what you wrote to help you think about what happened so you can learn from it for next time. So that's journaling. 3. Stories: Then we get on to number two, stories, which is obviously a favorite of mine. You can make up a story. Doesn't mean you don't have to write a novel. It could be a really short story, you don't need to worry about it being any good or that anyone's going to see it. It doesn't have to be something that's going to be seen by other people. It could be just for you. And that way, it feels more personal and private and you can feel more free to express yourself and play around with your writing and have fun. Have fun thinking up a main character if you're writing a short story, a fictional one, who think about who they are, what's happening to them that you'd like to write about. The main character could be based on you and what feelings or situations you want to express. That will give you some inspiration and starting points to work from. Jot down a few ideas and a general outline of what you want to happen in your story. Don't worry about it being perfect. The important thing is to just start writing and let the story flow. You might find that whatever you're experiencing in your own life seems to make its way into the story, perhaps in an unexpected way. That's really interesting when you read the story back to see what's crept into your writing. If you write a story that you're really pleased with, you might want to consider entering it into a competition. Now, depending on your age, if you're a younger listener, or know a young person or child that would like to enter a story because they enjoy writing, then there's a competition called the Short Story Competition, 500 Words. It's run by BBC Radio two, and they do it each year for children aged five to 13 years. It's free to enter, and children can write about anything they like. Entering a competition is great. I really love competitions, and it's a good way to boost your writing confidence if you win. So if you've written something and you want to know if other people think it's good and you're feeling a bit shy about your writing, have a go at entering a competition. There might be an exciting price that you can win. And for adult writers, there's the opportunity in many competitions to win cash or a publishing deal or an agent. So there's loads of stuff out there. Some competitions do charge you to enter. I think it's best to enter the ones that are free, find those ones. My favorite tip that I've learnt from all the writing that I've done is to keep writing until you get to the end of whatever it is you're writing. So if it's a short story or a book or article, whatever you're doing, poem, make sure you keep writing until you get to the end. Don't stop and read what you've written already because it will interrupt the creative flow, and then you'll start worrying about the little details like, Oh, should I have used that word instead of that one? Would that sound better? I don't like that bit do I need to put a comma in there? Is this any good? This is really useful to remember when you write something longer, especially with novels. That's what I did with my novels. If you don't do this, then you'll get caught up in if it's any good and what I've just mentioned, and then you won't get on with the process of the actual writing. 4. Poems And Songwriting: Number three is poems. Try writing a poem if you haven't written one before. Exploring your creativity in a new way is really good for self expression. Poems are great fun and they don't have to be long and they don't have to rhyme, even if you don't want them to. You might enjoy the challenge of trying to make your poem rhyme, though. Finding different words and you can use a thesaurus or if you've got one or use one online to find out some rhyming words. Really put your feelings into your poem and the words you choose. Get it all out and onto the page. If you're worried, someone will read it, perhaps do it on your computer and put a password on the document, one that you'll be able to remember easily, or you'll get locked out of it. Or you could get a lockable diary so you can hide the key to your creative genius. Yeah. Number four is songs. There's another favorite mine. If you've written a poem, then you might want to turn it into a song because you've already written the lyrics. That's what the poem could be. Have a go with a friend or family member who can play a musical instrument if you can't play one, as long as you've written something that doesn't feel too person. This one's great for people who are musical, but if you're not, don't worry. Just have a go anyway. As adults, we worry about something being good or not, but the important thing to remember is to just have fun with it. You don't have to write a bestselling novel or a hit song to enjoy it. And no one has to hear it or see it if you don't want them to. You like singing, then you might want to come up with a tune to put some words to. You could do it that way around or write the words first, and then try and put a tune to it. If you haven't written any lyrics or a suitable poem already, just open your mousing and see what comes out. Try and record yourself when you do this so you can capture what you've sung. When inspiration strikes. That's a really great thing to try and remember to do as you never know when something great is going to come out. You might even write a hit song. Who knows? You could develop a new talent. If you're not a singer, you could try making up a rap, maybe like rap music, do a bit of funky beat boxing to go with it, do different parts, see what happens, see what you think would work. You can take it a step further and get into the music recording side of things if you're really enjoying it and something that you're interested in exploring further. 5. Jokes, Writing Prompts & Conclusion: Number five is jokes. Have a go at writing some little jokes, maybe a limeri or one liner. Maybe you enjoy comedy. So those are my five suggestions of different ways you could try writing. There are other things you could do as well, like write a thank you note to someone that's been kind to you or you could write a love letter to someone you care about or even write it to yourself. Write a list of things that you love. If you like stationery, you could do it the old fashioned way, get a fun colored pen and a lovely notepad to make it a special experience. Rather than just sitting typing on your phone or your computer, I think doing it the old fashioned way with pen and paper is really good for getting the creative juices flowing. And then if you write something that you want to do more, you can then go onto the computer. Maybe you'll start off just jotting down a few notes in your notepad of something that you would like to write about and the characters or what it's going to be, and then you can take it further by going onto the computer and actually start the writing there. So that's writing to express yourself. Once you start, you might find that you want to do more and more of it. If it's something you're getting into. There are so many options and ways of writing, things that you can write about, including the ones that I've covered today. If writing isn't your thing, then maybe you could try expressing yourself in another creative way, such as art, do a drawing of how you're feeling or just choose a word that describes your mood and write it down. Writing is really good way of getting your feelings out and expressing them, so they're not bubbling up and around inside you. It's really good for mental health. So I want to share my experiences and help and inspire the listeners to maybe give writing a try. See where your writing takes you. It doesn't have to turn into, as I said, writing a best selling novel or a hit song. It could be just something you do a little bit now and again. And remember, don't worry about it being good. The important thing is that you enjoy it. Enjoy the process and it makes you feel good. So that's writing.