You can understand yourself by writing, and the significance of a text is not determined by its publication, writes Hast.
Writing should not be a luxury that belongs only to those who have been able to claim the power of writing by publishing their texts.
I argue that writing is thinking and therefore a significant social force even when it is done in private. Writing for oneself does not require censorship, pleasing the reader, or the pursuit of an outwardly specific form. It is life writing stripped down to the bare bones, where writing skills and the desire to look at life through language are enough.
I soon found that writing brought me to life in a new way. It was more than survival.
I could let go of distressing thoughts by writing them down. They would be stored in my notebook and I wouldn’t have to worry about things in my head anymore. I was able to tolerate uncertainty and conflicting reality better. I started to like myself more. I started to understand other people better.
I got closer to the truth, which can only be achieved by challenging oneself, by focusing one’s gaze and asking difficult questions. I started the resistance, I ended my submission.
At a time when complex information is avoided; when distortion, loudness, and hostility roll in, I think writing is—perhaps not a salvation—but a tenacious counterforce to fragmentation and superficiality.
Even the reluctance to write is not an absolute obstacle: writing can start with writing because you don’t want to write, then with why you don’t want to write. An unwilling writer can protest against writing by writing unwillingly, destroying and ruining his writing, holding a pen in his hand next to a blank piece of paper. In all of this, the inner world gets a chance to be noticed.
The personal appreciation of writing would be promoted if the disparaging label of ‘confessional writing’ were abandoned in the field of literature. Writing about one’s life is not a confession. All authors write from their own experiences and observations.
Writing shouldn’t be a luxury – it shouldn’t be elevated, mystified, or reserved only for some special talent.
Writing a diary is not something embarrassing girls do, but wisdom, and as Audre Lorde writes, a necessity.
Writing changes you. It’s for you.
*Susanna Hast*
*The author is a writer who just wrote in his diary: ‘My stories seem to last a seemingly endless amount of time’.*
*The column can be discussed on 15.3. until 23:00.*