POZ Community Forums
Main Forums => Living With HIV => Topic started by: Peaceful1 on September 02, 2007, 12:33:00 pm
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Hey all,
I'm new to the Forums, so this may have been discussed previously (and I apologize if it has). Are there others out there who use writing as a form of therapy or expression as it relates to their experience (sexuality, Poz/Not, etc.)? What are the types of things you like to write? Do you write just for yourself or do you share your work with others? Any Zine Editors/Publishers or self-publishers out there?
I'm interested in connecting with other poz writers to share ideas and thoughts - or those who have thought about it but haven't made the leap yet. I'm somewhere in the middle and would love to make new writing/publishing friends.
Thanks.
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Hi Brian, welcome to the forum.
I write a lot - personal journals, mainly. Been doing it since I was around ten years old. I have a blog on the Blog pages here at AIDSmeds but unfortunately, I've been languishing at the bottom of the pile since February. I have a bad habit of starting a blog, then getting distracted by something shiny before I finish.
Lately, I've been spending so much time on forum admin stuff that by the time I'm finished I just want to get away from my desk and the computer. I've tried keeping journals on the computer, but I always resort to pen/pencil and paper. I can do that anywhere! (no laptop yet, that may change the situation a bit)
I've got some ideas for short stories - in a poz context - percolating in my head for quite a while now, but nothing on paper yet.
Ann
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Hi Brian
When I was diagnosed I started writing and later I made it into a blog. I know it sound naiive but I was completely unaware of how many blogs there were when i started it. I think I haden't even seen the blogs on POZ at the time. I wrote what I called a Guide to Surving the First Year of Diagnosis, which again sounds horribly naiive, I just wast aware of any guids or books on the mental/emotional side of HIV. i vowed to write every day for a year and if things don't get better, kill myself. Initially I didn't even have internet so I just wrote in Word.
Now I have kind of let it go, mostly b/c of the forums, where you can get instant response and also see what others go through and how similar that might be and also give support.
There is a collection of HIV-related writing published monthly and it's called the Intenrational Carneval (sp.?) of Positivities, you can google it to see writing by poz people all over the world.
I would love to write more but I think I am blogged-out. I think I might need to find another medium than blogging. Or maybe get back into it, I dunno.
I often thought it would be cool to make a collection of stories written by poz people, which can be biographical or semi-biographical or even fictional, and publish it. That would make people understand us a bit more. Maybe it's already been done though, I wouldn't be surprised. There is a certain depth in real writing which I think can't be reached in a blog, forum post, or in an article.
I know I am definately not the only blogger/writer who uses these forums, and there are other here who write, on various blogs which I sometimes read. But I think I should leave it to them to tell about that.
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Thanks Drag, I'd forgotten about them!
International Carnival of Pozitivities
http://internationalcarnivalofpozitivities.blogspot.com/
http://blogcarnival.com/bc/cprof_363.html - scroll down about half-way for the current issue.
Ann
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I've kept personal journals ever since I was a teenager. I wrote in English, but I used the Hebrew alphabet so that my mother's prying eyes would not be able to read my personal thoughts.
I got my first computer in 1992, and since then, I've kept the journal on the computer. It's currently around 500 pages long. Sometimes I go through past entries to find out what I was thinking at a particular time. I've dissolved a couple of friendships in the last 15 years, and it is interesting to go back and see that there were strains in the relationships years before they actually ended and that the breakups were actually the culmination of a long string of events.
I haven't always been regular about keeping this journal. Sometimes I go for months between entries. I tend to write more frequently when I'm depressed or upset.
I don't share my writing with anyone. For me, writing is a good release for tension. Also, putting my thoughts in writing often helps me understand my feelings better. When I feel like lashing out at someone, I usually do it in my journal. I may later talk to the person, but having thought it through in writing makes it easier to talk in a calmer and less confrontational manner.
Allan
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To quote myself:
I'm a huge proponent of writing - free style, stream of consciousness writing. Screw the punctuation, the grammar and any narrative worries and grab yourself some paper and write down everything (no matter how esoteric) your mind gives you when you put the pen to the paper.
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I write like crazy I have tons of composition books filled with writing computer flash drives filled with stuff. I do not know what to do with it. Sometimes I think it is great and other times I think it is crap.
Peter
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Bucko, myself, Daddy Tim, Hermie and JK are all blog sisters at the notorious Spin Cycle. (http://thespincycle.blogspot.com)
Hard to say if it's therapeutic.
MtD
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Even as a kid, I would write as a form of therapy for myself. I would write poetry when I was younger, journals, and stories for school. I was proficient in school and loved doing it. But as I got older, I got away from doing that. Occasionally I would write when I was feeling down or when I had something stuck in my head. And in the last two and a half years, I've taken to writing in an online blog.
To me, it helps. I sometimes look back on earlier posts in my blog, and wonder in amazement at how far I have come in the last two years. Back then when people told me I was strong, I laughed in their faces because I didn't feel so strong. Looking back, I know in my heart I was very strong, and am even stronger today.
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I have been keeping journals for years. I have now gotten so lazy that I just started keeping a tape recorder and use that instead of writing. I am not sure if doing this is helpful but I am trying everything to keep my sanity (next is Yoga) :-)
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ever since my diary got stolen in high school and then invaded at home by my sister i have avoided putting my thoughts on paper. i hate the idea of someone knowing my innermost private thoughts and especially when they have not been invited to share them with me. so when i do write i write in shorthand , problems is my shorthands so rusty that when i go back and read what i was writing i have problems figuring out what it was i was writing. but it does help when i write to let my feelings out. writing and music, thats what i do for therapy