The Fun Part
Writing isn’t any fun. At least, that is the impression I often get from listening to earnest young would-be and beginning writers discussing their work. There are all these decisions you have to make and things to pay attention to, from word choice to plot twists. It takes forever to finish a novel (and sometimes just as long to finish a short story). And then you have to do the marketing (I have never once met a writer who claimed to enjoy the submission process, not even the ones who are very, very good at it).
There are intense arguments over slanting stories for different markets, whether to look for an editor or for an agent first, the value and risk of multiple submissions, and traditional publishers vs. small presses vs. e-books. It all sounds so enormously exhausting and unpleasant that I wonder why anyone would want to get into this business at all, ever.
And then I run into someone who is so excited about their current project that they are nearly incoherent, or someone bouncing with joy because they found the absolutely perfect thing for Chapter Eight, and I feel better.
Any writer who wants a professional career does have to worry about all the things that go into getting such a career off the ground (and keeping it there), but there’s a down side, especially for those who get so caught up in the mechanics of writing and the procedures of getting their stuff sold that they forget why they’re doing it. I’ve seen more than one writer revise all the shine and sparkle out of a story in hopes of making it saleable. I’ve known more than one early-stage writer who has acquiesced to an editorial request that gutted a finished novel, or twisted the writer’s story totally out of shape.
None of them were having fun, and it showed in the finished product. It is therefore demonstrably worthwhile to sit down occasionally and remind oneself just why one is doing all this anyway.
When you sit down to write a story, what’s the thing that you’re most excited about? The coolness of the idea? The fascinating characters? The incredibly twisty plot? The history and setting? Getting to play with your nifty new Autocad program to draw maps?
When you are just gearing up on a project, what are you looking forward to writing? Is it a particular scene, or something longer like the arc of the unorthodox romantic relationship? Are you excited about a new writing challenge, or happy to be getting back to something you think you know how to do? (You are going to be wrong, if it’s the latter, but you know that and you don’t actually care.)
What is it about this particular book that is jumping up and down in your backbrain screaming “Me! Me! Write me now!” so loudly that you don’t care that nobody will want to buy a space opera about super-intelligent rabbits fighting against vampire carrots and their allies, the telepathic chickens? (Do not ask why your backbrain is excited about rabbits and chickens and vampire carrots. Just don’t.)
What, in short, is the fun part?
The fun part can stay the same for a twenty-novel series, or it can change from chapter to chapter, but ultimately, it’s the thing you have to keep an eye on. Because in my experience, if the writer isn’t having fun, it shows…and a lot of readers end up not having fun either.
Your idea of “the fun part” is unlikely to be the same as mine, or as any other writer’s. It may be something that your agent and editor frown at and politely but firmly categorize as “not commercially viable.” It may be something that your crit group, which is usually not as polite as one’s agent or editor, tells you bluntly is unsellable. They may be right, but fun is still fun, and sometimes you can make the fun part work in spite of the nay-sayers. Even if you can’t, it is often still worth writing the thing just to be able to have that particular bit of fun. You can always stick it in the back of your hard drive somewhere if you don’t want to make it a publicity give-away or self-pub it as an e-book.
Writing is work, there is no denying it. But if it isn’t fun, what’s the point.
