Don’t Forget to Find the Fun in Storytelling

As writers, we must learn to be self-motivated. Having a supportive community of fellow writers is an amazing resource. However, at the end of the day, it’s all up to you. If you don’t tell your story, who will? It can be so tempting to get bogged down with word counts and page numbers. Today, NaNoWriMo participant Clairisa Phoinix reminds us how important it is to play and have fun with the art of storytelling:

Ever since joining NaNoWriMo for the first time last year,  I’ve been using it as a motivator to get the story ideas that were in my head onto the blank page. And now I’m NaNoWriMo’s biggest fan! so I decided to do the same with a short story idea I had for my blog. I joined Camp NaNo for the first time last April! The excitement was there as well as the motivation.

The first week went great, and the second. But by the end of week two/beginning of week three, I lost steam and momentum. I didn’t want to give up, but I didn’t know how to go forward either. I still wanted to finish the story. So, I took a break to think on what was missing. Was it writer’s block, procrastination, or have I written myself into a wall? And then it hit me—I wasn’t having fun anymore.

 I was making a chore of something that should be enjoyable. 

I was so fixated on reaching a word count every day that I forgot to enjoy myself. As writers we put so much pressure on ourselves that we forget to do the most important thing. We are storytellers. And somewhere along the line, I’d forgotten the most important thing is just to tell the story.

As a young child, my grandmother used to tell us stories about her life: where she grew up, what she went through, and occasionally a ghost story. She enjoyed the telling as much as we enjoyed listening to her. She didn’t need a word count goal or any other means to tell her story. She just loved to do it.

So just enjoy the art of storytelling and have fun with it. It could be about anything. For example: a lost sock searching for its other pair; a character who haunts a writer in his dreams, unless the writer finishes the story he’s in; talking animals that stop talking to humans because they lost faith in them. And the list can go on and on.

But the point is to enjoy the art of storytelling again.

You can cosplay your characters and do a performance for your family. Or you can make a story game with a group of people sitting at a campfire or while having dinner with your family. Someone could start at the beginning, and the next person continues with the story until you have reached the end. I know it may feel ridiculous, and you might wonder how this will apply to writing a story. But that’s the best part of storytelling. It’s to play make-believe. You can be as ridiculous as you want while having fun doing it!

Clairisa Phoinix is a fantasy writer from sunny South Africa. She is not yet published, but still learning the craft and the business side of being an author. Her love for writing started with her love of reading. She has been writing for six years now and is still loving the joy it brings. She likes meeting new writers. Follow her on Twitter or on her website.

Top photo by Pineapple Supply Co. on Unsplash.