Writing = Living: Here's Why

Ten Ways Creative Writing Intersects With Building A Better, Richer, More Meaningful Life

Beyond the subtlest shadow of the slightest doubt, I know that writing truly is a metaphor for life. Also clear: the study of creative writing—in particular a basic understanding of narrative structure—can help us live better lives in every possible way.

I mentioned this in an offhand way to my son, Max, a 32-year-old architect, and his fiance, Kaela, a meditation teacher and human resources professional, at our little wilderness cabin last summer. Max is an intense conversationalist who, like me, has little interest in small talk and a strong pull toward the kinds of conversations that leave you both inspired and tired. So, again, my “writing = life'“ bit was just a casual remark during a conversation about lots of other things. But it caught Max’s attention in a way I wasn’t expecting. He really wanted to hear more. We spent the next hour in animated discussion of a topic that fills me with passion, drive, and hope.

The following morning, after we boated Max and Kaela to the landing to say good-bye, Jon and I continued the writing = life conversation in relation to our own life, the question being, what’s the story we’re writing ourselves into as we hurtle into the third and last act of our lives (Jon is 61, and I’m 56)?

See what I just did there—a three-act structure is one way very useful way to think bout narrative, but also an important tool for thinking about life. And I’m saying that in a general way, because I want this to be a general conversation, just like it was with Max and Kaela in our one-room log cabin with the fire flickering beside us. Because you do not need to be an academic, a writer, a writing teacher, an English major, or an editor to be able to understand the big shapes of how engaging with the principles of writing, especially narrative (but also poetry and lyric prose!) help us live better lives.

Today’s archival post is a breakdown of 10 ways you can use this line of thinking to move past the idea of “writing better” toward the idea of “living better.” By this I mean, living a life that is unique, particular, and yours, driven by desire and fortified by an understanding of how humans—as a language-based species—see and understand ourselves and others through the lens of story and language whether we realize it or not.

Bringing that tendency to light changes everything.

I could have written a longer list, because the more thought I give to this, the more inexhaustible the topic becomes. Maybe you’ll help me add to this list after you’ve given it some thought, and we can perhaps create a WITD vault of the ways in which writing and life intersect.

A disclaimer, as well: these ways of thinking about story and life don’t always apply fairly to situations of distress due to poverty or violence or illness or injury. Life can be cruel. People are born into or fall into circumstances that rob them of agency and autonomy, in which case creative writing may not be like living at all.

That said, many of you know I teach writing in prisons, and I can tell you that without a shadow of a doubt,, by students tell me that writing is the one thing that saves them—the one thing that changes everything. They thank me again and again every time I walk in and out of those prison doors.

So, here’s my imperfect list of 10 ways writing is like living, created with love and curiosity. I hope you find these ideas as helpful and empowering as I do.

10 Ways Writing Is Like Living

“Doing Language”

Good writing depends on language that is precise, vivid, and imagistic—language that wakes us up and makes us feel something. Inevitably, when we devote ourselves rigorously to “doing language” in this way, we also reshape the way we hear language and how we use it to tell stories to ourselves.

Heightened awareness of language on the page creates heightened awareness of language in our lives, which makes us more aware of our lives in a precise way. Heightened awareness of the difference between this word and that one, this phrase and that one, brings us closer to radical self-honesty, which gives us more agency and opportunity to live more fully while we still have the chance.

Dominant Narratives

Every culture has dominant narratives—stories people absorb about how to live a life. In the United States, one such dominant narrative is “the American dream”: success through hard work, determination, going to school, going to college, choosing a major, getting a career, getting married, having a child, buying a house. Different subgroups of people create other, alternative dominant narratives.

Either way, people are variously aware of how much or little impact these dominant narratives have over their lives. Studying the shape of stories and essays—including unconventional shapes—amplifies our awareness of the shapes of stories all around us, the stories that subtly (or not so subtly) influence the choices we make, and the choices we might fail to recognize as available to us due to not seeing past the dominant narrative.

This amplified awareness, in turn, gives us more agency to shape our own life narrative, independent of the dominant narratives around us.

Conflict

Stories are driven by conflict, and the conflicts that drive stories fall generally into one of four categories: person vs person, person vs self, person vs society, and person vs nature. Understanding these categories of conflict can help us understand ourselves and our lives, including the people we care about.

When I explained this concept to my son, who, incidentally, is standing at the threshold of many life transitions of his own, I gave a simpler account, saying there were three categories: person vs. person, person vs. the world, and person vs. self. He looked deep in thought, then said, “I think many of us are caught up in person vs. self, don’t you?” I agreed. Wholeheartedly.

Understanding conflict in stories helps us understand conflict in life, and, as a result, navigate it more intentionally and skillfully, even, or especially, when our greatest adversary is ourself.

Desire

If stories are drive by conflict, conflict is driven by desire—that is to say, the protagonist needs to want something in order to encounter a conflict, which, generally speaking, is simply an obstacle (person, society, nature, or self, or some combination thereof) in the way of attaining that desire.

If a writer sends a novel manuscript to an agent for review, and the agent cannot discern what the central conflict of the novel is or what the protagonist wants, the manuscript is likely to be rejected. These are considered major flaws in a manuscript because they relate directly to the plot of the story and whether it is working.

Likewise, not coming to clarity about what we want in our lives and what kinds of conflicts/obstacles are standing in our way muddies the plot of our lives. Granted, we can (and should) change our minds about what we want in life. That’s allowed and encouraged! But failing to identify what we want in this story, or in this chapter of the story, can leave our lived life as aimless as a manuscript that’s sprawling all over with no clear desire or momentum.

Dialogue

The best dialogue in stories is said to do at least one of two things, and preferably both: reveal character, and drive the plot forward. This is also true in life. Spending words on small talk and idle chatter can feel fine and obviously we are going to do it to a degree (sometimes it’s even required in certain social or professional situations!). But too many wasted words without any awareness can dull our sense of the power of dialogue in our lives.

Many spiritual traditions, including Buddhism, teach that more awareness of our speech serves us well in our lives. I tend to agree. As with in writing, dialogue in life can be an opportunity to enrich the character we are revealing ourselves to be, while also moving the trajectory of our lives forward.

Attention & Accuracy

You might know I teach a rigorous attention practice as the bedrock of any creative writing endeavor. Without paying attention, we cannot hope to craft stories that feel real, alive, and affecting. However, when we begin to pay close, patient attention to the physical world around us, we will also begin to notice much more richness, detail, variation, specificity, and change from day to day.

Observing this way—like scientists—trains our powers of attention in ways that profoundly improve our writing, but also our living. There is no other way. This is a time-tested truth and none of us are exempt from it. Paying closer attention to our lives will provide us with a better and more realistic understanding of the world, its inhabitants and forces, and our small but essential place within it all.

Attention & Metaphor

In the very best creative writing, metaphor arises organically from imagery that is precisely conveyed in language so distinct, real, and visceral that it takes on another layer of meaning. Achieving this effect on the page requires that we observe the world with patience, care, and a rigorous honesty, while selecting the exact right words (usually simple, concrete ones) to convey the thing we’re writing about.

As we practice this skill as a strategy for better writing, we will also begin to recognize, almost effortlessly, the way in which everything always stands for more than the sum of its parts. Everything in life is already a metaphor, a poem is always writing itself, as a deeper story under the story of the physical world is always forming itself in the wilds of our imagination.

A knife is never just a knife. A river is never only water. The sky is more than air—but we don’t “make” this metaphor out of words. It just is. It existed before we arrived and will exist after we leave. Our job is to write knife or river or sky in a sentence that allows it to exude its metaphorical power all by itself, without linguistic tricks.

Curiosity

We can’t write well if we’re not curious. Good writing is a discovery, not a recitation. Likewise, a protagonist who wants something and must slog (or blaze, whatever the case may be) through some central conflict in order to get it needs to be at least curious enough to follow the desire, otherwise the story won’t work.

You see where I am going here: in this same vein, we cannot live well if without a minimum amount of curiosity about the world, ourselves, our desires, our conflicts, and the story we’re making of our lived lives. We need that curiosity to bring the story to life, whether it’s the story we’re writing or the one we’re living.

Agency

This is a biggie! Stories require a protagonist who moves forward in the direction of their desires. Stories with flat, passive protagonists to whom things happen—rather than protagonists who do things—don’t generally work very well. We want to root for the protagonist, and in most cases, we need that protagonist to be making some kind of effort toward the goal in order to cheer them on.

The same is true in life. In order to root for ourselves, we need to claim some agency and act in our own best interest, in the direction of our desires, otherwise the story we’re living will start writing itself and we’ll slip into the role of a passive character in a person vs. _______ story in which external forces (or our own self-sabotaging habits) are doing all the acting while we get tossed around and/or stay stuck.

This dynamic does not tend to work well in stories or in life. Being aware of the need for agency in story can help us stay aware of it in life.

Revision

When we do the hard work of assessing our story for its effectiveness—structure and plot, character development, action and pacing, dialogue, language, surprise, etc. etc. etc., we will find many ways to improve it. When we set about taking our story apart to put it back together again, we will discover new elements of the story and its world of characters that we had never seen before, even if the story is about us. This is quite miraculous, and it holds true for our lives, too. The more we actively—and with agency—reflect on the story we’re making of our lives, the more opportunity we have to revise the narrative in the direction of our desires, by which I really mean, our purpose, that thing that we’re compelled to row toward as part of our one journey in a human body living a human life on Earth. And when we revise a story in any significant way, we learn how radically a story can change, how elastic it is, and how much its new trajectory can surprise us, even though we wrote it. That happens in life, too—and stories help us see it and channel it more intentionally. That’s so beautiful.

Bonuses: Play and Strange Containers

You know I teach the necessity of playfulness as a portal to the profound. This is true on the page, and in life. Without play, the writing and the living can never open up to and reach full potential. One way to enter into a state of playfulness is to experiment in open mode, with as little attachment to the outcome as possible. And one way to experiment in open mode is to try unconventional techniques and strategies that throw us far out of our comfort zone and make it difficult or impossible to control the outcome, which in turn makes it easier for us to let go of our paralyzing, self-defeating perfectionism. That was part of the last summer’s Strange Containers intensive, and by god it did not disappoint. Not only did writers publish their work from that intensive journals and magazines (some for the first time!), I saw some of the most playful AND profound work imaginable, and it’s a testament to the urgent necessity of play as an element of our creative practice.

Love,

Jeannine

PS Writing for joy is one way to live more joyfully, and that’s what we’re going to do in our first WITD intensive of 2025, starting January 8:

”For the Joy & the Sorrow: A 12-Week Intensive for Writing the World."

This multi-genre, all-level intensive, inspired by Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights, will draw our attention—and our most alive writing—towards the “extraordinary in the ordinary” by helping us to see and illuminate (and write!) the innate duality in all things.

Using the power of close, clear-eyed attention, we’ll learn how to vividly capture the beautiful and the broken with the eyes of a photographer and the heart of a poet.

A wonderful way to start a hard new year. Intensives are for paid subscribers. If you need to upgrade, you can do that any time.

PPS If you liked this post, you might enjoy some of these posts that dive deeply into these topics and contain writing exercises to further explore them (you can find many more in the WITD Curriculum Index):

• How to Be A Writer (It’s not what you think)

• The Things Themselves, Alive With Metaphor

• A True Metaphor is a Swift & Violent Twisting of Language

• On Desire (I wonder whether with a slight adjustment ... [desire] could be cherished as a sensation on its own terms, since it is as inherent to the human condition as blue is to distance? ~Rebecca Solnit)

• Depicting Desire (What exactly does it mean to want?)

• On Dialogue (The heart of dialogue is simple. The profoundness is to listen. — Lolly Daskal)

• Revision (9 Questions and 26 Craft Keys for revising our writing to be stronger, clearer & more alive)

• Teeth in the Art of Revision