The joy of writing for yourself…

There was a time when writing used to bring me enjoyment and peace. The feeling of producing something for myself was incomparable. It got me through a career crisis, COVID, falling in unrequited love, and my mum getting cancer. 

In the frigid cool of the early morning, I’d sit hunched over my old Windows laptop and punch away at the keyboard like my life depended on it — and it actually did at the time. It was either “let it all out” or let the pain and resentment fester. 

Even as a kid, I scribbled away in my diary. I begged my mum to buy me more and more journals and filled them with sentences that hardly made sense. Just the act of writing was therapeutic. 

But then I grew up. I stopped writing and focused more on getting a degree I hated, trying to fit in with people I didn’t even like, and worrying about the future. 

And then of course, 2020 happened. It didn’t just fuck me up. It fucked the world and forced me to question the false beliefs I had adopted. And something incredible happened in the midst of that existential crisis: I started writing again — in between lockdown and my mum’s chemo sessions. 

To cut my story short, that eventually led to me becoming a full-time writer. I didn’t earn anything amazing, but it didn’t matter because I could finally get paid to do what I loved. 

I’ve been a copywriter for the past 4 years. I’ve written SEO copy, web copy, YouTube scripts, B2B blog posts, and posts on how to clean white trainers (riveting stuff, basically). 

But writing commercially, while fulfilling (to a certain degree, as I’m helping clients), has become a chore. I can barely write a sentence in my journal now, when I used to pour my soul into pages. 

I didn’t write a word for 10 months when I was an SEO copywriter. That job sucked all the creativity from me. I’d let the act of writing become something I do for others, and I’d forgotten what it can do for me. I was happy letting go of my humble hobby and monetising it for others’ benefit. 

But the pure happiness of having created something born out of my own heart and brain, not out of researching financial terms, following a content brief, or asking ChatGPT for assistance, is heady. 

So, I’d initially written about 300 words for this post and called it a day. Writing professionally taught me to let go of a piece fairly quickly. My 3 golden rules for writing: Don’t fixate and perfect. Lay your inner critic to rest. Move on to the next thing. 

But I kept returning to this piece for 2 weeks. I felt like I wouldn’t be doing justice to a post about writing by just leaving it half-assed. It’s disrespectful because nothing has brought me a greater sense of joy than writing. It is the very essence of who I am. 

So if you needed to hear this today: 

To write for a reader is fulfilling, but to write for yourself is magic. 

The pressure of showing people your work, getting a draft out by a certain date, or just feeling intimidated by a stuffy editor doesn’t exist. It’s just you and your words. 

Writing for yourself comes with these irresistible benefits: 

• Helps with long-term creativity 
• Frees up pent-up stress
• You experience similar benefits to therapy (but it’s cheaper) 
• You don’t feel so lonely 
• You build self-awareness
• You’re less likely to repeat mistakes if you write about them 
• You pause and you’re in the moment — it’s wonderfully meditative. 

And if you write for a living, then writing for yourself is even more crucial. Because you forget what writing without a script, brief, or end result feels like. It becomes work — something you feel forced to do. 

So if this was the sign you needed, just write 50 words on the page that solely belong to you. You don’t have to use them for a project. 

Forget the perfectly formatted 2000-word listicle and the stress of using 59 LSI keywords. There’s no need for heavy research and sources to back up your point. You don’t need to prove anything. You just need to write. 

And it doesn’t even matter if it’s utter crap. 

I also believe that AI has messed up a writer’s brain. We don’t think anything we create is good enough now. But it is…it’s better than any subpar, recycled ick a robot spews.