Finding Our Niche: Writing for Healing--With Tongue in Cheek, sort of

Is there someone in your life who drives you nuts? A writer friend told about an anonymous pastor's wife she knows who writes murder mysteries. Since this dear woman can't afford to unleash her frustations on offending parishioners, she kills them off in fiction.

If you plan to follow suit, don't forget to change the name and identifying characteristics of the person, the circumstance, and the setting. The driving force you want to maintain is the raw emotion you're feeling. You want to hook your readers and keep them engaged. They long to feel with you--to be moved to tears, shock, laughter. If you can somehow capture your feelings on paper, regardless of circumstance, your readers will stay with you. Make them cry. Make them double up with laughter.

It may be healthy to bump off a boss, a "friend" or a family member in fiction, but you don't want to open yourself up to a lawsuit if the person recognizes herself. You don't want to become a "person of interest" if the individual you've bumped off in print comes to an unexpected ending.

We all have negative feelings toward others from time to time. You can always journal negative feelings, but hide your journal. You don't want your mother-in-law discovering how you really feel about her control issues. After you get all your venting out on paper, have a bonfire and destroy the evidence. Feelings change, and you don't want to be embarassed by them later.

Prayer helps. Even though we don't like it, circumstances and offending people in our lives build our own character. Part of the "all things" that work together for good in Romans 8:28 may be people and circumstances that drive us to our knees and teach us patience.

Writing fiction is one way to defuse anger. Journaling also helps. If you choose to journal, spend time writing about your feelings about what happened rather than just the incident itself. Harbored negative feelings create ulcers, hampers our ability to love, and blocks creativity.

Like our anonymous pastor's wife, it may be in our best interest to stay sweet and put our best face forward. We don't want our negative attitudes to leak out through our words, tone of voice, facial expressions, or body punches. We don't want to be the character in a book the author kills off.

Though it would be hard for a lot of us to do since most writers are so nice, if you have a lot of irritating people in your life and you haven't considered writing murder mysteries, you may have found your niche.