Creative writing is a way to externalize our fears and heartbreaks, our inner apocalypse – and it can satisfy longing, ease sorrow, relieve pain, release stress.

This is true for fiction, as much as for creative nonfiction.

Think about this:

Stress isolates when we most need connection.

Creative writing helps, try it.

Writing prompt: take a stressful experience or painful memory and transform it creatively into a story that serves as metaphor – give it a beginning, middle, and satisfying end. For example, a childhood experience of being bullied may provide the kindling for a story of redemption. Place that story in a world under water, on a distant planet, in a small neighborhood in Cleveland, or in your own back yard. Fiction or nonfiction, it doesn’t matter.