Is writing good for your soul?

If I could, I would write everyday. It is unfortunate that life does not want to allow me that gift. If I could, I would squeeze a couple of more hours into the day just to quiet the desire of my soul, but with school, full time job, three grown kids, a boyfriend, four dogs and (I’ve lost count) cats, I am not able to pinpoint when those hours will be available. Writing is my art. I find I write best when I have been upset, or if my heart is sad. The emotion swirling like a tornado up from the essence of my being, the impressions of the discord inking the paper with feeling. Writing is an outlet, my words parallelling the disjointed life which I live. It is good for my soul. As a form of expression, it is an outlet for the damage from which my soul has traveled through, bringing forth healing.

I once had a fellow writer tell me that he admired my stories.  He commented that I wrote with heart, and that was very rare to find.  I’ve kept those words tucked away.  If I feel that I am writing to just to please the audience, I take them out and review them again, reminding myself to find the words of my heart – and my soul.  I try to encouage my children to be the same way about their art.  All art is good for the soul.  I believe our children have strayed from creativity because of so much stimuli with TV, video games, computers, etc.  Our technological world is making our next generations distant from art.  Without art, we have no beauty, no solace, no repair of injury to our souls, no magic of imagination.

Technology can make us machines, without feelings, without creative awareness, if we do not connect to our souls and feed our essence by our art.  Tolkien wrote his famous books because he felt the same way after WWI.  He saw the new weaponry, new machines used by humans against humans, saw the evil it brought.  Writing my series “Legends of Green Isle” I use the metaphor of technology replacing the soul, thereby destorying art.  Uthal, the Black Warlock is the machine, advancing on human kind, seeking to elimate all magic and magic creatures.  His spell is all powerful because it steals the life force of all, magic creatures as well as humans.  While writing my books, I wonder if that is our destiny?  Will we allow technology to consume our world, feeding off our souls, and procuring us to become slowly inhuman? Or will we stand to write, paint, sculpt, play our instruments, create for the benefit of our souls and the healing of the people of this planet?  I chose to do the last.