When was the last time you wrote creatively just for yourself?

Without any brief or pre-requirements from anyone else, without any word count you had to meet or structure and form you had to adhere to?

Without any restrictions on how you wrote, what you wrote about, why you wrote it and where it lead to?

When was the last time you just wrote for the pure enjoyment of writing?

The reasons you don’t write just for yourself more often are varied. Here are 3 of the most common, and the benefits that show these reasons just don’t stand up:

1. Writing for myself is self-indulgent. This is a common concern, we don’t write just for ourselves because we’re told it’s selfish or self-indulgent. What’s easy to forget, is that time we invest in ourselves reaps benefits far and wide. We not only become more at peace with ourselves, more calm and understand ourselves better, this then radiates out to the people we’re close to and spend most time with. Put simply, if you’re a happier bunny, it’s going to be more enjoyable and pleasurable for all your bunny friends to be around you as well.

2. I don’t have time, I’ve got other writing I need to be doing. You need more articles for your business, more content for your website, and you were supposed to finish your new book weeks ago. By taking the time to write just for yourself, to flow freely and explore whatever comes, it actually unlocks your ability to write. Which makes you a more fluent, prolific writer. Then all those other things you feel you need to be writing will become all the more easy to write and all the more enriched and full in content.

3. What’s the point if there’s no end product I can use? You always feel you need some measurable or tangible product to show for the time you spend writing. Sometimes you can’t measure the benefits of writing by the number of words or pages. In terms of creative writing, it’s often the time you spend trying out new voices, new styles, new structures and new techniques that enhance your writing the most in the long term. Even if you have nothing “concrete” to show for it at the end of that session of writing, the experience gained is invaluable.

Personal creative writing – writing just for yourself – has many benefits, 3 of the main ones you can see above.

So just try something new today. Put aside your concerns about personal creative writing being selfish, or you not having time, or not allowing yourself to write unless you have a strictly defined outcome in mind. And just write…