Anna Quindlen is an author that makes you better because you read her work. My own goal is to read her latest book, whatever that is, each year to recharge. She shows us how anyone can write and why everyone should.

In her book, Write For Your Life, she tells us what matters in life and where we can find our humanity. She answers that we see what matters to us through our writing. Quindlen says she wrote this book for “civilians,” who use the written word to become more human, more themselves.

Write for Your Life shows how writing connects us to ourselves and those we love in our lives. She encourages us to record our daily lives in writing.

Those thoughts resonated for me, having recently written the book: “Why Life Stories Change: As You Look At Your Own Life Story You See Yourself Differently” The book presents the thought that “We have a choice in putting together the narrative of who we are and who we become. We can pick which of the events we connect with, what we conclude about them, and then weave and reweave them into our story. As my story changes with the retelling, it changes me. I become different because of how I see the story.”

Writing gives you something to hold onto in a changing world. “To write the present,” Quindlen says, “is to believe in the future.