The Power of the Pen By Gwen Moran My fascination with writing started when my best friend gave me a diary for my tenth birthday. I would write in the little book each day, confessing my crushes, heartbreaks, discoveries and news. Placing my pen to the tiny ruled paper was wonderfully cathartic and I always felt better after I clicked the tiny lock closed. Later in my life, a college professor had my class write our goals for five years from graduation. Full of the arrogance of a soon-to-be grad, I imagined myself having it all and wrote several lofty goals. Much to my surprise, five years after graduation, an envelope was mailed to my parents' house. Enclosed, in my own handwriting, was the list of goals. While I hadn't accomplished as many as I had expected at the time, I had either reached or nearly reached about 80 percent of them. From jump-starting our life plans to exorcising our demons, writing has always had an undeniable power among humans. Historians estimate that the practice of writing began approximately 5,000 years ago. Since then, we have been telling stories, keeping records, influencing thought and exploring ideas through markings, pictures, letters and words. What is the force that drives us to expression through markings and symbols? In an August 1999 article for National Geographic magazine, Joel L. Swerdlow writes, "Since writing's invention, people have used it to combat loneliness and establish a sense of self. In the fourth century B.C., Aristotle saw writign as a way to express 'affections of the soul.' Recent studies have documented that writing about feelings can alleviate depression, boost the immune system and lower blood pressure." "It's a way to give a proper burial to some of our emotional garbage," explains Christina Baldwin, author of "Life's Companion: Journal Writing as a Spiritual Quest." Baldwin's text is considered the landmark text in the subject of journaling. "By writing about our feelings, we can get them 'out' in a manner that is self-respecting." Although Baldwin believes that writing with a pen and paper creates more of a connection than typing into a computer, she says that the most important thing is that we do find time to write. "You don't need an hour or two to write," says Baldwin. "Today's women are so busy, that may be out of the question. You can set the kitchen timer for five or ten minutes. Close your eyes and when the timer starts, open them. Begin writing about the first thing that you see. Then, let that lead you to some of your deeper concerns. It's a great way to overcome writer's block. In the course of a week, a month, a year, you can fill a notebook while you're waiting for the kids to get out of school or you're at the baseball field - in your down time. And you'll have a chronicle of your life." Some find writing such a powerful force that it becomes a major part of their lives. Such was the case when Roberta Rosenfield Wells, a former newspaper columnist who just finished her first novel, "Moonshadow," began her career as a scribe. Divorced, with two small children, Wells was working and taking college courses when her psychology professor complimented her writing. "I had never really thought of myself as a writer," she says. "It had always come so easily that I didn't give credence to it." Later, Wells took a job as a stringer for a local weekly newspaper. After several years of diligent writing, she landed a spot on the second largest daily newspaper in New Jersey. It was there that she pitched her editors a first-person column about life experiences. "I wrote a sample as if I had already gotten the assignment," she recalls. "That piece was the first column that ran." Over the next several years, Wells wrote about intensely personal experiences from a first-person viewpoint. She wrote about the death of her parents and her own battles with depression, airing her viewpoints and personal life to nearly a quarter of a million people each week. She says that often the reaction to her work was so powerful that it carried her past the fear. "We think our experiences are so unique because they happen within our own bodies," she says. "But when you push an experience out onto paper, people read it and they realize there's a connection there." Wells, whose novel was inspired by the death of a former lover, equates writing about our feelings and dreams to making a list. She explains that making a list allows us to objectify the situation somewhat and not feel the need to keep it in the front of our minds, lest we forget. "When you put something on paper, you don't have to constantly think about it," she continues. "You can go back and visit it if you want to. You can share it with other people. But you don't have to worry that you're going to forget about it." Also see: • Dare to dream • The confident woman Gwen Moran is a freelance writer and entrepreneur. E-mail her at gwen@BoostYourBiz.com.