Expressing yourself in writing can be a cathartic and rejuvenating practice. Whether it's deathless prose or undying tripe, it is often the one thing that keeps otherwise unrelieved emotions from destroying the vessel that holds them. Here are a few suggestions for discovering the power of the pen in your own life:

1. Using attractive bits of homemade or otherwise inspiring paper, write out 20 or more "emergency affirmations" and keep them folded up in a beautiful bowl or basket. When an attack of the "too bad, so sad" doldrums has you down, pull out one or two and let their power buoy you up.

2. Buy a cheap journal or notebook and write out all your worst thoughts and blackest fantasies. Keep it hidden away in a private place until full, then ritually burn it to destroy all that ugliness in the heat of the purifying flames. If it still leaves an "aftertaste," take the ashes outside and bury them under a tree where they can nurture its growth. Likewise, individual negative thoughts or images can be written on individual slips of tissue paper and either burned or flushed down the toilet (where, by the miracles of waste treatment - how perfectly apropos - they will be converted back to healthy materials)

3. Send an anonymous "happiness" note or card to someone you know who needs it - or someone you don't know at all. Either way, you will be sending love and joy out into the world with no expectations or attachments to "spin" the message or weight it down. This is the purest expression of love, and the one that will return to you in the fullest.

4. Using lipstick, eye pencil, grease pencil, soap or some such marking tool with staying power, write your goals in affirmation form (present tense, specific and measurable) on the bathroom mirror where you will see them every day and where, by becoming part of your reflection, they will become part of your imprint in the world around you.

5. Write the story of your life as you would have preferred to have lived it, and then write the story of your life as it has been. Find the spot where they intersect (the present moment in both tales) and let the former take over for the latter. Find ways to live out your ideal story in your real life until the two are no longer distinguishable. Then, if you have time, you can go back and get to all the stuff that "happened" before the joining that you never had a chance to do before.

The pen is indeed mightier than the sword and it can be a powerful force in our lives if we take the time to entrain it to our needs. While not everyone has the Great American (or other country's) Novel in them, we all have a story to tell and a life worth reading about. Open your heart to the page and let the ink of your life write a fine and flourishing line.

Soni Pitts

Soni Pitts is a writer and personal life coach currently living in SE Missouri, US.

As a writer, Soni has two main goals. Her first goal is to use her innate copywriting abilities to rid the world of ambiguous, confusing and boring copy. Her second goal is to use her creative writing skills to make a living meeting cool people and doing cool things, then writing about it.

As a personal life coach, Soni works with people who have reached the point of epiphany (eg: "There's got to be more to life than this") rebuild sustainable lives and lifestyles that work for themselves and for the world around them.

She is also the Assistant Community Coach of the Social Capital and Networking Community of CoachVille, and volunteers on the board of her local Habitat for Humanity Affiliate.