There is no right or wrong way to feel when writing.
I sometimes have to remind myself to remove the pressure to feel happy while writing. Writing is hard enough without the pressure to feel euphoric. Writing is something I do because I choose to do it, regardless of my mood, over which I have limited control – particularly since I have bipolar disorder.
However, I do prefer enjoying writing to not enjoying it, and there are ways of thinking that, for me, make enjoying writing more likely.
Write What You Want to Write
Write what you love. Most people will smile and nod when they hear this, failing to realize what a radical approach to writing it really is. Writing what you love is not how mainstream society teaches aspiring writers to approach the craft. Most writing magazines are not even about writing well; they are all about how to impress agents, editors, and publishers.
Some magazines and blogs will urge you to do research to see what the agents are “looking for”; study the marketing trends to see what is “hot” with readers; observe the style the publishers use and imitate it; read interviews with agents to discover their personal peeves and preferences; figure out what they consider to be taboo so as not to offend them.
Many writers who follow this advice do get published. However, it is not – in my experience – a way to enjoy writing. Working to fit yourself into a narrow mold of editorial expectation is a quick route to tedium. Instead of harnessing the awesome power of language for yourself and your own creative vision, you end up spending your energy on conforming.
What makes writing intrinsically enjoyable is freedom: freedom to be yourself; to be honest; to speak with your own voice; to create what you want to see exist; to write what you would love to read.
Be patient with yourself
Another quality for enjoying writing is having patience with yourself. Allowing yourself to make mistakes is essential to writing – so much so that they probably should not even be called mistakes.
Rough drafts are called “rough” for a reason, yet they are not wrong. The rough draft is a necessary step that allows you to discover what you want to say. It is not meant to be judged. It has a job to do, which is to help you figure out what you want to say before you determine how best to say it.
Time is another aspect of writing that requires patience. I always work hard to finish my stories, but I can never say for sure when I will be done. Depending on how ambitious my project is, it may take a long time, even years to complete. However, we live in a society where speed is highly prized. Sometimes it cares more about quick delivery than it does about quality. You cannot always have both.
I try to always have a direction or plan for getting to the end, but I am happier when I primarily focus on the experience of writing. To enjoy writing I play with sentences, experiment, and try to be open to learning every time I write anything. A deadline sets me up for feelings of failure; creates a frantic compulsion to rush; and takes away the fun.
Flip the Internal Censor On Its Head
One of the biggest obstacles to enjoying writing is what many writers refer to as “the internal censor.” It is the voice of self-doubt, the mental incarnation of insecurities accumulated from years of discouraging remarks and fears of failure. It offers running commentary as you try to write: “This is terrible. You will never finish this. This is boring and stupid.”
My internal censor used to speak in the intellectually condescending voice often used in book or movie reviews: “shamelessly self-indulgent,” “mawkish,” “cloyingly sentimental,” “shoddily constructed,” “a study in platitudes.” For many years I could have been using my vocabulary and creative energy to write stories; instead I was using them against myself.
It took me many years to tame my inner critic so that it would get out of my way and just let me write. I mourn the years I could have been writing instead of succumbing to self-doubts, which led to despair so painful, picking up a pen seemed as terrifying as diving off a cliff.
To simply stop listening to your internal censor is more easily said than done. You can try, but undoing years of conditioning in a day is difficult; discouraging thoughts are going to come. However, recognizing them for what they can help relieve anxiety and keep you from taking them too seriously.
Fortunately, there are also specific, practical actions you can take to flip the inner critic on its head.
I stumbled onto a technique that can turn a hair-pulling, tedious, and frustrating exercise in self-abuse into something that more closely resembles a pleasant lakeside picnic. I used it only a few days ago when I found myself disapproving of most everything I had written. Then I remembered what to do in that situation.
First I made a copy of my story. Then I put my entire original story in bold lettering. Afterward I identified everything in my story I liked: vivid metaphors, interesting content, or the parts that most supported my theme and the emotion I wanted to create. Every time I identified something I liked, I changed it from bold lettering to ordinary lettering. Before I knew it, I was having fun and I was fully focused.
After reaching the end of my manuscript, I deleted everything that was in bold, so that all I was left with were the parts I loved. The product was fragmented but that was okay; all I had to do was create new transitions or content to support the text I liked and “glue” the parts back together.
We tend to think that revising is about looking for everything bad about our writing but psychologically, focusing on the negative is painful. You are constantly thinking “I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.” Before long, it is easy to convince yourself that nothing you have done is any good.
But when you change your focus to what you do like, the mindset changes to “I like this, I like this, I like this.” Can you guess which mindset is more enjoyable? Not only does liking your writing feel better than not liking it: you are still revising, still accomplishing the task of improving the writing – but without descending into a psychological hell of self-abuse.
Mind-mapping
Another way to evade the internal censor is mind-mapping or “clustering” before beginning to write. Clustering is a free-association exercise. It is liberating because your mind does not recognize it as writing, so the judgey part of the brain stays asleep.
For those of you unfamiliar with clustering, you begin with an idea like a color, say “red.” You circle the word “red” as your nucleus and free-associate. Then you draw lines radiating from the word “red” and write the free-associated words at the end. In this case, you might come up with “lips,” \”apple,” “strawberry,” or “blood.” However, the associations do not have to be logical to others; they can be personal like the red shirt you were wearing when you first saw a circus. In fact, the associations do not have to have a connection to the color red at all.
You take your new ideas such as \”blood” and, treating the word as a new nucleus, draw lines radiating from it, then write new associative words or phrases just as before – and so on. You will end up with a radial web of ideas. It may look like chaos but the mind, which hates chaos, will begin furiously looking for a way to make sense of it all. As it discovers order, a sense of focus and direction will emerge.
The technique is fun. Anything goes. There is no wrong way to do it. And it gives you a way to anchor your thoughts when you begin writing a rough draft – removing the anxiety that comes from the daunting task of creating something from nothing.
Those are techniques that have worked well for me. Most of the time I enjoy writing. But some days are better than others. Sometimes, no matter what I do, the joy of writing eludes me. That is okay. Emotional distractions, headaches, being sleepy, or feeling anxious sometimes make it impossible to achieve a euphoric, immersive state. Writing is a choice; how I feel is not – at least not always.
However, enjoying writing is far more valuable, if you can achieve it, than taking advice from writing magazines. When an activity is rewarding, you tend to do it more often, and when you write a lot, you learn a lot. A cycle of reinforcement emerges because the more you practice and improve your writing, the more enjoyable writing is likely to become.
If you enjoyed this post you might like my other writing. Take a moment and sign up for my free starter library. Click here. Also my new novel \”Remembering the Future\” is available for purchase on Amazon.