Since I started writing seriously 4 years ago, I’ve noticed a big change in my personal growth. Most of it has happened in the past 2 and a half years, but I still count the years before then because that was when I was just getting started as a full writer.
Why is this important? I’ve grown through my writing, and I believe that every author can as well. It doesn’t matter what genre you write or how long your books are, or even how long you’ve been writing for! You can still grow as a writer even if you’re newer to the craft. And three ways of growth include this: You can help discover different people and understand them, you can improve your confidence with sharing your work, and you can write themes to explore and strengthen your own beliefs.
Discovering Different People
Whether those people are fictional or real, writing can still allow you to discover people who are different from you.
Characters
You want your characters to be unique, right? And making them unique means making them have different personalities, appearances, beliefs, cultures, illnesses, or anything else! If you take the time to research these different backgrounds, then you’re learning information that you can very well apply to the real world. For example, if you have a Muslim character, then you would (hopefully) do some research into Islam. Now you know more about another religion and maybe you’ll even feel more comfortable to make friends in that religion.
Authors/Writers
Now, you might write a character who’s an author, but being a writer also allows you to meet other writers!
There are paid, specific-to-writer curriculums and communities such as the One Year Adventure Novel program and the Young Writer’s Workshop (both of which I am part of), but you can also just look around on social media! If you’re willing to invest further, you can also attend writing conferences such as Realm Makers or World Fantasy where you can meet new people and learn more about writing! There’s growth in so many areas there.
Improve Confidence in Sharing Work
I know, I know. As a writer, you kinda have to show your work to others. Not always, if you just write for yourself, but if you want someone else to read it, you’d have to show it to them.
And the only way to improve your confidence in sharing your work is to actually share your work.
Maybe you’re in a critique group where you have to read your excerpts out loud every week. Maybe you have some beta readers that you’ve sent your entire novel to. Maybe you have some friends who have been reading a few chapters every so often.
Even if it seems like such a small thing, improving your confidence in your work can help boost your confidence everywhere. It also gives you something to talk about when someone asks you about what activities/hobbies you do! I know that I can definitely go on a lot of tangents if someone asks me about my hobbies, and before I started writing seriously I didn’t really mention my writing that much. Now I feel more confident when it comes to sharing the work I’ve written, and not worrying that it has to be perfect (I still worry about that, but I’m more willing to share it with other people). This has applied to my schoolwork and other projects as well.
Themes
This is my favourite section of the post!
Every story has a theme, whether you know it or not. And as writers, we tend to write themes that we ourselves struggle with or really feel passionate about. Our stories can help us through difficult times. Our stories can help us express feelings we were too scared to show before. There are so many ways we can put ourselves into our writing without explicitly saying it. And I’ve found that putting a certain issue that I’m dealing with into a story can help me think about it from a new perspective. I’m thinking of it like “how can this character deal with this?” or “how can their friends help with this?” instead of focusing on myself.
Themes are powerful. We get to express our beliefs through them without having to just say what they are. And when we explore the themes we feel passionate about, we’ll experience personal growth.
Conclusion
There is so much more I could have touched on in this post. It’s definitely a shorter one today, but I hope it made you think and encouraged you to keep writing.
And the only way to grow is to work at it. Dive in. Put in effort. You’ll reap the rewards soon enough.
See you next week for a list of my favourite genres that I like to read!
Alyssa
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