Recently, I read that, in David Copperfield, Charles Dickens was exorcising childhood trauma. I also read that Isabel Allende's The House of Spirits began as a letter to her dying grandfather when she could not reach him in time. There is also no doubt in my mind that WW1 played an enormous role in shaping the work of, among others, both Robert Graves and Ted Hughes. With regard to Graves, I suppose he tried to deal with the psychological problems he experienced through combat by "writing them out." It seems that Hughes' skeleton in the cupboard was his father's combat stress after Gallipoli. It was a skeleton Hughes tried to exorcise, perhaps, in his poetry.
Reflecting on my own literary efforts I can say that writing has had several unexpected benefits. The first is that I have developed the ability to more easily empathise with others in a way that was not so easy in my life before writing. This should be no surprise really. Imagine a conversation between two main characters in a book. In order for the conversation to feel real, the author has to get right into each character's heart and head. The author can only do this by asking questions, for example: How does X feel right now? How would s/he respond? What does s/he think at this point? And so, the author goes from one character to the other and over it spreads into the "real" world.
Writing has also sharpened my ability to reflect on my choices. Many of my books deal with the impact of the past on the present. This should have come as no surprise to me but the novels give me a chance to reflect on my choices, explore possibilities and, perhaps, to create coherence, to heal, to examine, to make sense of some past event. Writing also offers us the ability to see the past through the eyes of a fictional character. The shift of perspective can be cathartic. It can enable the writer to acknowledge negative feelings and to let them drift through his/her fingers - up, up and away. And if it is fear you are writing about, you may discover that the fear will also disappear on exposure to daylight.
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