How To Start Writing As a Hobby (For Self Love And Creativity)

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Have you ever tried writing for fun? If YES, stick with me to learn how to start writing as a hobby. If NO — all the more reason to learn about all the benefits!

It’s not just your average hobby. No-no.

I’m not trying to downside any hobby whatsoever, but writing is pure magic.

No matter what you do, who you are, and how much writing you’ve done before in your life, writing for fun can be totally life-changing.

It can significantly improve your life, help you cultivate self-love and unlock your potential, and on top of all that, become the most fun pastime!

This post is all about how to start writing as a hobby for self love and creativity.

Table of Contents

🤓 Should I start writing as a hobby?
🖤 How writing can help with self-love
✏️ Other perks of writing as a hobby
👧🏻 How it started for me
📝 How to start writing as a hobby: best tips

🤓 Should I start writing as a hobby?

Yes, yes, YES.

As you can see, I’m not even asking you any questions.

Writing is amazing for absolutely ANYONE.

You SHOULD try writing as a hobby if:

You’ve always secretly wanted to be a writer.
You’ve always loved reading books as a kid.
Your friends would ask you to tell stories because they loved the way you did it.
You’ve written poems or little stories in school.
You are an introvert.
You are a highly sensitive person (HSP).
You are a scanner personality.

Start writing RIGHT NOW if you want to:

Try a new hobby
Add a new fun way to practice self-love
Learn more about yourself
Hone your communication skills
Learn to express yourself better
Create your own art

Find inspiration
Improve your imagination
Add some creativity to your life, but your job is not creative
Improve your art and your job is in a creative field

You totally CAN try writing if:

Writing has always been the last on your list of things to try.
You’ve always been forced to read a book as a kid.
You’d always be the one to listen to stories rather than tell them.
Literature class has always been your worst nightmare.

You can benefit from writing no matter what background you have.

Now let’s talk about all the advantages of writing for self-love.

🖤 How writing can help with self-love

1. It inspires, improves your imagination, and enhances creativity

Your own imagination is capable of SO much more than you think.

Once you tap into that “idea pool” in your head, it’s hard to stop.

The more you write, the more creative juices are flowing through your mind. The more you use your creativity, the more creative you become.

The more you train the imagination muscle, the stronger it becomes, and the easier it is to use it.

2. It helps you overcome difficulties

When you write about things that concern you, your subconscious reacts as if you were talking to your best friend.

You vent, let it all out, feel much better, AND it might actually turn into a great story that you will have forever from then on.

Did you know that J. K. Rowling had a very rough childhood, and she used her experiences a lot while writing the Harry Potter series? Did you know that dementors are a representation of her own depression that she went through as a teenager? Thrilling!!

3. It’s empowering

When you are writing, whole new endless and wonderful worlds are emerging.

And they didn’t exist just ten minutes ago!

It’s a very powerful feeling: realizing that you just created a whole new realm. There’s so much freedom in it.

It also provides a feeling of accomplishment, which in the long run contributes to your healthy and strong self-esteem.

4. It’s liberating

Think of this: have you ever wished you had multiple lives or bodies so you could pursue all your dreams at once, without having to choose one? If you are anything like me, you have (and you still do).

Then let me tell you: there is the answer to this, and your wish can (partly) come true!!

Just start writing. You can become whoever you want in your story!

And you don’t need any special equipment — just your imagination.

At some point, you might even forget about your writing, and then find it years after in your dresser, and that will make your day magical.

5. It helps you discover more about yourself

After the thoughts and ideas are born in your head, they are brewing in your conscious for some time, refining and sharpening. And then you throw them on the paper (or computer app) in the form of words.

And sometimes you get very unexpected results.

It’s especially interesting to read your old stuff years later.

You get to understand yourself better. All the skeletons in the closet get revealed. Powerful for self-reflection and forgiving yourself.

Whatever you are writing, it’s coming straight from your head. So it’s your experiences, your imagination, your visions, your beliefs — all of them combined together.

There are a lot of hidden things that you might not be aware of. And that’s where writing comes in.

6. You learn to express yourself better

You practice your communication skills since you are working on getting your point across while writing.

You grow and improve your vocabulary, and learn to phrase your thoughts.

By the way, are you a text person or a call person?

Sometimes it’s much easier to express something through writing.

Take an opportunity to choose the time when you are calm. Take all the time needed to process your thoughts and put them together. And then write a letter.

You can either send it in an email or text, read it to the person, or memorize the letter more or less to be able to talk to the person later on.

✏️ Other perks of writing as a hobby

One of my favorite things about writing is its flexibility.

First of all, you can write wherever you are.

You can write in a coffee shop, at the dining table in your kitchen, in your bed under the covers, enjoying the hot sun at the beach, in the line to the bakery, or in a tent in the woods.

You can also choose any tools that you prefer. Whatever fits your needs.

It can be a blank exercise book and a pen, a document file or an app on your computer or a note-taking app on your phone. In some special cases, it can even be a napkin.😉

👧🏻 How it started for me

I started writing when I was five.

Well, you couldn’t really call it writing at that point. I was making up stories about the adventures of a little boy, and my mom was typing them on the computer.

Later on, I had a green exercise book which I called “Book About Hamsters” about hamster Lucas and his friends.

In middle school, it was dark poems and short stories about dead men (I was a fan of the Goosebumps series). Then fanfics about Harry Potter.

I also had a diary where I would write every day about everything personal and, obviously, about boys.

Any period of my life was accompanied by scribbled notebooks in my bag or tons of files on the computer desktop.

But probably my favorite memory of my childhood was an endless Universe that was created by me together with my then best friend. We called it Neverland… Yes, Peter Pan was there, along with Harry Potter, Sailor Moon, and god knows who else.

And we were the main characters, of course.🙃

We would try to chat at any given moment — in the park after school, calling each other in the middle of the night, staying over at each other’s places — just to share about some sudden events happening in our Universe.

We would meet in the school hallway during a break, and the first thing she would ask was: “Any news in Neverland??” and I would say “You won’t believe it!” and we would spend HOURS after school just discussing everything.

I was coming up with incredible twists and plots that would take us far away from this reality. We had this second, imaginary life that became my favorite memory.

I’ve also always been in deep and committed love with books.

Every Sunday, my mom and I would walk through a little park to a bookshop, and would come back home with a solid stack of books each.

I would read all day and all night. I would finish one book and start the next one right away. And book’s smell is still my favorite smell.

I also remember having a strange secret that I never told anyone about.

On my first ever mobile phone, I created a text draft, and I listed all the words that seemed unusual or interesting to me in terms of letter combinations. I would sometimes open it and look at them.

For some reason, telling this sounds very intimate…

Anyway, all I remember is that I had the word “cookie” in there.

Finally, to the main part of this post! This is exactly how to start writing as a hobby…

📝 How to start writing as a hobby: best tips

Tip 1. Choose your tools

Whether it’s a computer app or a physical notebook, you have to enjoy using it.

I write blog posts in WordPress app, all the other writing — in the Notion app, and journaling — in a physical notebook.

Tip 2. Set the time for writing

Decide how many days a week you are going to write, and for how long. For example, three days per week, two hours each day.

Add it to your calendar to allocate some time for it, and set the timer once you sit down to write.

You can also try Julia Cameron’s exercise Morning Pages. Every morning, write three pages without worrying about the quality. Just brain dump.

Or you can choose to write a little bit in the morning, and then finish in the evening — why not?

In the morning, you can write down your dream last night, your first thoughts after waking up, the color of the sky, or even combine all these together to create a little story.

In the evening, you can write about what you learned that day or some conversations you overheard. Include them in your morning story for a more unexpected plot.

The freedom is yours!

Tip 3. Try different forms and genres

Try writing a poem, a short story, a long story, an essay, a letter, or just an excerpt of text that you might use later for something bigger, or never use again. If you are ambitious, plan a novel!

If you chose a story, it can be any genre — mystery, horror, romance, drama, comedy, fantasy, spirituality, adventure, and so on — whatever you personally most interested in.

Tip 4. Write down all the ideas

Throughout your day, keep writing down interesting ideas and thoughts coming to your mind.

These usually tend to elude your mind and you will never remember what it was…

But if you keep track of them, you can use them later on in your writing, or just reflect on them.

Tip 5. Read books

Read fiction to learn different styles and mechanics, receive good influence, fill the gaps in your language usage, get more creative ideas, learn writers’ tricks, escape and rest, and get encouraged to write.

Read non-fiction to get inspiration, motivation, and tips.

Read good stuff to learn what you should do, and read bad stuff to see what you shouldn’t.

I heard that if you want to improve your writing, for one page of writing, you need to read at least fifty pages. Because to start writing you just have to write, but to start writing WELL you have to read, read, and read.

For fiction, I love beatnik and classical literature — these books have more talent, real-life stuff, and true emotions in them.

For non-fiction, check out these books about writing and art:

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

On Writing by Stephen King

Tip 6. Observe everything and everyone

It’s important to be observant and curious if you want to get better at writing.

Observation is a key skill in any writing.

By practicing it, you learn to notice even the smallest details which enhances your ability to get across the finest contexts in your writing.

Try to hone your observation skills by watching people, nature, or any of your surroundings. Try to notice as many details as possible, and then write down your remarks.

Tip 7. Use prompts

If you are stuck and don’t know what to write about, try writing or journaling prompts.

Here you can find some great ones:

500 Writer’s prompts to help beat writer’s block (focused on fiction)

My self-love journal challenge (detailed journaling plan for self-love)

41 Journaling prompts for creatives (journaling to improve life)

365 Creative writing prompts (mostly essay-styled prompts)

Tip 8. Don’t seek perfection

You actually gonna suck at first. So just accept it.

It doesn’t matter how good your writing is because it’s going to be your own thing and FOR YOU (at least, at first).

Also, there is no perfection really in this world, so better create a piece of bad writing than no writing at all. The more you practice, the better you become at it.

So embrace a quantity over quality approach (again, at least at first), trust the process, and forget about the result. Just enjoy creating.