Blog #7

The eighth reason for writing a personal essay is the one that resonated the most with me. It is the one that says:

“Donald Barthelme told us to “write about what you’re most afraid of.” […] Graham Greene explains, “Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in the human situation.” […]”

I have never tried to write about my fears, or about any trouble that I could have gone through. But this is not the first time I hear or read about it, I know that a lot of people that lose somebody do write on the pain they suffer from not having this person with them anymore. I probably never wrote about those things for many reasons. The first one would be that I am lucky I have never had to suffer a loss of a beloved. Of course I have been through less happy phases than others, like everyone does, but I have never felt this need to write and exteriorize that much and that many feelings. And the second one would probably be that I am afraid that if I write about my fears or about things that make me feel sad, I will feel even sadder or it will increase my fears. I think I’ve preferred until now to just avoid bad feelings. Maybe in the future, when I will have some very sad feelings or huge fears, I will try to write about them, but I think I will need to force me to do it, because this is certainly not something that I would want to do voluntarily.

Otherwise, I think that the advice I find most helpful for writing is the one about length. As he says in the text, every word has to “contribute to the essay.” I will definitely follow this advice for my next draft to try to condense the maximum my text. Especially for an article, the text has to stay interesting; otherwise the reader will stop reading it. This hint about the length is a good one for that I think!