Someone once asked me how I could write in times of trouble. To say it’s my passion and I have to write isn’t enough. Those not interested in my writing (or anyone else’s writing, for that matter) just don’t understand. After my mother passed away from cancer, a family member accused me of spending my time “writing books that no one wants to read” instead of being with my mother in her final days. It was a cruel comment, but the one who spoke it just didn’t understand. Without my writing, I wither inside. I had to write to remain sane. Plus, what this family member failed to recognize was that I was, at the same time, nursing my son as he fought his own battle with cancer.

Why is writing so important to writers? Because our minds are full of stories bursting to be told. And there are so many stories waiting to be told. For me, sharing my stories, writing them down for others to read, is very therapeutic. I hadn’t realized that writing, whether it’s writing poetry, short stories, novels, memoirs, or journaling, is not only clinically proven to be therapeutic, it’s also used by professionals to help people heal. In fact, studies have proven that it strengthens the immune system as well as the mind in a unique way as writing helps people learn to manage the balance between positive and negative energies.

Wow! Pretty technically scientific stuff, even for me. Therapists and medical professionals may not always agree, but the fact remains that writing, in some form or another (often answering endless mundane questions on a lengthy questionnaire), is part of the initial and ongoing diagnosis as well as the ensuing treatment. When you think about it, every time you visit anyone for help, you have to fill in a questionnaire. In other words, you’re writing.

However, writing only the negative elements of your existence is probably going to accentuate your negative energies. When I dealt with the multiple cancers in my family and the two years of family members dying, I didn’t write about cancer. I didn’t write about death. In fact, I wrote another piece of creative nonfiction: the story of a close family friend. The result, The Whistling Bishop, became a work that received considerable attention and won some awards. While I sat by my son’s bedside while he endured another round of chemo, I watched him sleep and wrote. Or, if he was awake, I would share with him what I’d written. At one point, he was so uncomfortable, I had him help me sort through the immense collection of correspondence from Jamie Clarke (The Whistling Bishop) and we read the letters to each other. It was a soothing way to take his mind off his discomfort.

How can we write in a time of great emotional, physical, or irrational terror? If we look back through history, some of the greatest works were created during times of stress. Some historians believe Shakespeare wrote King Lear during the plague; John Milton wrote Paradise Lost during the plague; Anne Frank wrote her personal journals while confined to a tiny, crowded apartment, hiding from the Nazis during the Second World War; and there are so many others. Why and how could they write? They wrote because it was their escape; their means to find some mental equilibrium in a difficult time. These writers wrote because writing heals. In other words, writers write because they have to write. For themselves and for those who read their work.