Writing Practice Prescription

The melting pot of the writer’s mind calls forth childhood hurts to rise and haunt us in our troubled adult lives. The good news is that these childhood hurts may improve your story writing. After all, who wants to read about happy people with no ills or obstacles sailing through a golden life? No conflict, no story, nothing to learn.

Improve your writing by including information about troubled childhoods poisoning life by becoming acquainted with with the decades-long, ongoing ACE Study. When you learn about the ACE Study, you will know what problems might plague your adult characters.

ACE stands for adverse childhood experiences (ACE) associated with addictions as well as adult health and well-being problems. To date, ten such experiences have been identified in children younger than 18 who grow up in a household with:

• Recurrent physical abuse
• Recurrent emotional abuse
• Sexual abuse
• An alcohol or drug abuser
• An incarcerated household member
• Someone who is chronically depressed, suicidal, institutionalized or mentally ill
• Mother being treated violently
• The loss of one or both biological parents
• Emotional or physical neglect

Any one of the above ten items receives a score of one, no matter how many times it occurred. For instance, if you were sexually abused once or many times as a child, your ACE score is one and only one. The higher your ACE score, the more likely you will be to experience a wide range of health and social problems in your adult life.

Recently, Dr. Felitti, one of the founders of the ACE Study, spoke in San Mateo, CA, and presented an overview of the findings from the ACE Study. He noted that the official questionnaire for determining an ACE score was several pages long and needed to be professionally evaluated. However, recently the ACE Study Group developed a “self-test” version of the questionnaire. This survey has only ten questions and can be explored and taken by clicking the link below.
Click here to download a copy of the ACE survey