Lately, I've found myself writing for just the hell of it. Or, to put it more nicely: Just writing to write, to have fun, create, explore, etc.
It's been a long time since I've done that.
It's been a long time since I've written something that was just for my own pleasure. A long time since I've wrote something without worrying how my critique partners would react to such-and-such.
It's nice.
It's freeing.
It makes me wonder why I ever stopped.
Oh, I've been writing. I've been revising, too. But a lot of the time I've felt stifled or constrained. I've always had to abide by rules and suggestions and the worry if the story I was writing was publishable or not.
It's wonderful to not care sometimes.
And maybe MY story is complete crap. Maybe it is unpublishable junk rife with cliches and filler words and too many adjectives. BUT IT IS SO LOVELY. It makes my heart sing. It reminds me that THIS--the process of just putting raw words on paper--is why I write. THIS is what I've been struggling these past months to regain. To write just to write. To write just because. To write, write, write and no longer CARE that so-and-so editor/agent/critique partner might not like it.
You should try it sometime.
Even though it has been recently sucking away time from my WIPs, my forum based group writing/ roleplaying game has amazingly fun and freeing. Oh how the culture clash has been hysterically fun to write though not so fun for the characters. It's mostly been two of us going back and forth. I had her gasping for breath from laughing so hard at my character's thoughts the other day. This one dignitary basically hit on one of her new allies without knowing whether she was already seeing him romantically. My character wasn't, but she still found it offensive especially in the way it was done. "But to single out and try to shmarm the one possible eligible young man in my group right in front of me is just rude!" I'll have to see if my friends will let me post some excerpts on my blog to share the hilarity.
ReplyDeleteThis project doesn't get my WIPs moving, but it's inspired some awesome insights on culture and the practice writing and revising should help. And like you said about just writing for the love of it, there's no publishing expectations, only the pleasure of it. Now I just have to work my regular writing back in again to do both better.