Sometimes, we writers take ourselves too seriously. We’re so busy writing and revising, polishing our jewels of poetry and prose to a high gloss, obsessively monitoring book sales or social media likes, and fretting over audience reaction — will anyone read it? will it even get accepted? — that we forget to enjoy the exciting, invigorating process of the creative act.
We would do well to heed the guidance of Sgt. Hulka from the comedy Stripes and “lighten up, Francis.”
Maybe I’m just giving myself a pep talk here. Maybe no on else takes themselves so seriously. Or maybe you’ve got those worrisome thoughts of perfectionism crawling around in the back of your mind like a cluster of spiders (I envision the daddy long legs variety: creepy but ultimately harmless).
So maybe it would help if you lightened up a bit, too. Even if you aren’t a neurotic writer.
I was reminded of Sgt. Hulka and his sage advice while reading a recent newsletter from Leo Babauta of Zen Habits fame. Leo’s post that day didn’t pertain to writing per se — it was about our human tendency to “force ourselves to do everything we’re supposed to do,” from managing to-do lists to grappling with overloaded inboxes — but I found many of the points applicable to my writing practice. Especially this one:
Bring a sense of play, curiosity, learning, adventure to as many things as possible, so it’s not about forcing but about having fun and exploring.
– Leo Babauta, Zen Habits
As my father-in-law the pastor likes to say, “That’ll preach.”
Amidst all our fretting about getting our writing just right, let’s try to reframe the process less as work and more as play and adventure.
How can we take ourselves and our work a little less seriously? How can we have fun with it?
Photo via Pexels.
Andy writes! 
Making sure it’s fun isn’t something I’ve given specific thought to when it comes to writing. I have in lots of arenas — as you know doubt remember me doing some really fun and wild things during my time “working” at Missouri S&T. I’ve often kind of felt that if you aren’t having fun, what’s the point?
But in my writing, there are lots of things I do that would qualify as keeping it fun. I love music and love exploring “new to me” music. Listening to music and building big playlists for each story is an intricate part of my writing process. My playlist for Jonah of Olympic, for example, is over 10 hours long and has a lot of songs that I’d never heard before I started the writing journey. Mood boards is another way I keep it fun. I’m a very visual person, so finding the visuals to capture a mood, setting, character, or aesthetic is so much fun and a big part of the early stages of pre-writing for me.
“The Book of Jude” which is a short story that will follow up Jonah of Olympic has a character who dances a lot. In the early stages of development, I was exploring songs he could dance to and spent a lot of time dancing to the music myself to see if it fit him. I love dancing so this was a very fun way to explore the character.
Sounds like you have some good practices to help with writing. I love the idea of immersing yourself into an important facet of your fictional characters — such as dancing to explore that short story character. Keep having fun!