In today’s world of Grammarly, ChatGBT, Siri, Alexa, and Zoom calls, why should you write anything? I mean really, besides texting, why do you really need to write anything? I mean in all seriousness writing can be so painful and difficult and laborious and boring. And that’s just the mechanics of writing. That’s not even touching on the pressure we all face from our internal monologue like “Is this really any good?” “Where do I even start?” “Will anyone really like this?” “Will anyone even read it?” But, even with the pressure and labor of it all, yes, yes you should still write something today. Because it doesn’t matter if your writing is on par with your favorite novelist or if you need to carve out time in your busy schedule to do the labor of writing, writing is worth it. Writing is worth it because it helps you in so many ways that we often overlook. For example, writing helps you remember. 

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Writing Helps You Remember 

For example, right now, I’m writing in a cafe, and my friends are here with me. We talk about life, and I tell them what I’m doing, which leads us to trading stories of finding pieces we had written over the years and how each word is special to us now. All of these diaries, journals, grocery lists, and random thoughts jotted down as we traveled are now treasured snapshots of a prior life, sometimes a prior person. And they’re better than a real snapshot, a real photograph, because they’re more alive somehow. 

Many of us take photographs to commemorate the special moments of our lives. But how often do we accompany those static pictures with the rounded out life of language? I’m sure you can think of a photo that completely failed to capture what was really going on at the time. Everyone’s smiling. Everyone is posed. Click. End of story? I don’t think so. The photo doesn’t show the frustration, joy, angst, giggliness, the stew of life. The photo captures the image, but not the story, not the narrative, context, or meaning. 

So if you really want to remember, if years from now you want to look back and see your past self, write. Writing is a window into your mind, a glimpse of how you see the world at that given moment in time. A photo just shows the outside, but writing reveals your whole inner world. A random Post-It note can become a timestamp of the person you were in that very moment. A brief iPhone note can become a window into the first time you met your new best friend or future partner. Writing is also a type of living memorial once we’re gone. It’s one thing to see photos of my grandparents but it’s something else entirely to be able to read their journals and diaries, to get a genuine glimpse of how they thought and felt and experienced the world. 

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Writing Gives You Empathy 

Speaking of experience, along with memories, writing gives you an immersive experience. It helps you experience what it’s like to be another person, be from another culture, and be in a different time. In other words, writing teaches you empathy. It teaches you what it’s like to see the world from another person’s point of view. And I think we all know how much we need more empathy in today’s world. 

Writing can show you how to be empathetic to other people and even how to be more empathetic to yourself. Looking back on my own writing, I’m transported back to different times in my life, and I’m able to see how I’ve changed and grown. I’m able to see the different versions of myself and have more understanding and compassion for who I was to each stage in my life. 

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Writing Gives You Experience 

With how much I’m waxing on about writing, it might surprise you to know that I was not a writer as a child. In high school, I never thought twice about writing. I just wrote what was assigned, one quick draft which I handed in and promptly forgot about. But then, years later, I became a teacher and my relationship to writing changed dramatically. 

It wasn’t until I taught writing to young children that I really fell in love with writing. In my class, I used a process known as writer’s workshop. Writer’s workshop is a way of guiding students to work independently while still providing time for short group lessons, individual conferencing, sharing work, and celebrating finished pieces. As you can imagine, it took time to get the kids to a stage where they could work like bees in a hive - each doing their part with minimal direction. 

And to really get the kids into the routine, I had to model the behavior. See, during the writer’s workshop, everyone writes. Everyone. No exceptions, no interruptions, and no distractions. Which meant I had to write too. I had to model the desired behavior, so I put my head down, avoided eye contact (but still always aware of what was going on around me, I mean I am a teacher after all)...and I wrote. Which to be honest, I did not enjoy. At that time, I felt the same way about writing as I did back in high school, so I scribbled down thoughts without any preplanning, conscious more of what I looked like as a model than what I was producing. I would set a timer to encourage stamina, and we would write until the bell rang, then breathe a collective sigh, and talk about the experience. In short, none of us were really having any fun. 

So it may surprise you to know that, now, I treasure each of those scribbled sentences. Today, I read them and am transported into another time and space. When I read them now, I am taken back and see myself as a young mother (my children are now 31 and 34 years old), and I instantly re-live all of the classroom experiences I had, like seeing the childrens’ excitement when a dragonfly flew into our classroom. There’s no way I could have known it then, but those tiny bits of writing, that were boring and laborious at the time, are now tiny windows where I can see my younger self, my classroom, and my students, and re-live so many cherished memories and moments. 

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Writing Gives You Tomorrow  

So yes, writing is hard. Writing many times isn’t fun or exciting. Sometimes it’s plain old fashioned work. And yes, A.I. makes things easier and so much more convenient, but you lose more than you realize when you don’t write, when you hand it off to A.I. When you don’t write, you don't know what memories you're losing. You don’t know which little notes years later will become a window where you can see your former self. You don’t know which scribbled sentences will later become a whole vista of memories and a looking glass to visit this specific part of your life.  

So, please think of what a joyous gift you give yourself when you offer yourself the time and space to write. You give yourself the precious gift of gaining new experiences and new facets of empathy. You give the gift of memories and perspective and legacy and in so many ways the power to travel through time, to be able to talk to your future family and your past self and to experience far more than a picture could ever show. So, yes, you should really write today, because you never know what it will mean for you tomorrow.