Recapture the Magic

Do you remember why you started writing? I’ve lost the exact moment somewhere amid the swing-sets, roller-skates, and Barbie dolls of my childhood, but I do remember that I started writing because I love books. I always have. I love losing myself in a good book, letting it carry me into a world where I’ve never been. I love seeing my own world from a different perspective. I love the music of language and the magic of imagination. And from earliest childhood, I wanted to be part of the world where that music and magic come together.

I started writing as an act of love -- just as I suspect many of you did. We wrote for the sheer joy of letting a story unfold in our imaginations. We wrote for the excitement of creating new characters, making up new places, decorating houses we’ll never own, and dreaming up wardrobes we’ll never wear. We wrote to find different ways to string words together. We wrote journals, or letters, or short stories on lined paper under shade trees on summer afternoons. We wrote poetry in our beds late at night while everyone else slept. We wrote early in the mornings, even before the birds awoke. We wrote while everyone else watched TV . . .

Remember?

Writing was fun!

Ultimately, somewhere along the way -- as we began to dodge the obstacle course of rejections, self-doubt, deadlines, pressure to sell, contract negotiations, the need to make money, the overwhelming desire to see our words in print and our names on the shelves -- we forgot to have fun. We got caught up in reality. In the stress of mixing real life with fantasy.

We stopped playing with words and started fighting them. We stopped finding joy in creating new worlds and started agonizing over them. We stopped having fun with our characters and started battling them. We curse our lack of talent and wonder if and when we’ll ever make that first sale -- or the next one. In short, we’re looking for success somewhere outside ourselves. And guess what? We’re not having fun anymore.

Oh, we might still love to write, but we’ve lost the joy we used to find in the act of writing. Writing has become work.

Now, I don’t mind working. Really. But writing has always been play for me. So when I find myself thinking of it as work, I worry. It happens every once in a while--usually after something particularly stressful in my personal life. The words stop coming.

I’ve learned how to force them from my brain to my fingers and onto the screen, but the words I get that way are empty. Hollow. And words without joy are just words. When a writer loses the joy, when she stops having fun, the words don’t work. The scene falls flat. The story stinks. The characters become stupid. And she wonders if she’ll ever be able to pull it off -- or pull it off again.

Lately, I’ve begun to realize that I’m not alone. Too many of us have forgotten why we write in the first place. Too many of us have lose the joy we once found in writing. We struggle to follow rules, to meet guidelines, to sell, to learn how to write in active voice, to master pacing, to plot, to write believable dialogue, to meet a deadline, to sell that first book, or to sell the next book . . . the list goes on ad nauseum. I’ve become convinced that losing the joy is one of the biggest reasons the words stop coming for some of us.

Over the years, I’ve asked many editors what catches them when they pick up a new manuscript. Why do they decide to buy one and not another? To a person, they’ve all responded the same say: they’re looking for a story with "spark," with that certain something that sets one story apart from the rest. They tell me it isn’t found in the technical stuff -- not that the technical stuff isn’t important -- but if one technically correct book as that "spark" and the next one doesn’t, guess which one they’ll buy.

Since I teach writing workshops, I’ve thought a lot about that answer. I can teach the technical stuff, but I’m not sure how to teach "spark." I might not know how to teach it, but I think I know how to find it. I believe with all my heart that "spark" comes from finding joy in the act of writing, not just in the end result.

Year ago, someone told me that millions of people want to have written a book but very few people want to actually write one. That’s because (as we all know so well) writing is hard! But it’s also fun. Yes, the technical parts of our craft are still important. Yes, we still need to learn how to master them. But they shouldn’t consume us. They shouldn’t rob us of the fun.

Unfortunately, it happens all too often and it can happen to any of us at any stage of our careers. It’s easy to get caught up in externals. To believe that happiness comes from success, and that success comes from somewhere outside ourselves -- from selling, or winning a contest, or getting a great review, or making a best-seller list, or getting nominated for some award.

I’m not saying that each of those things isn’t wonderful, but let’s not use them as yardsticks to measure our success or wait for them to happen before we can be happy.

This year, I’m embarking on a quest for joy. I invite each of you to join me.

Let’s remember how much fun we have starting a new book, meeting new characters and watching them interact. Let’s get back to basics. Let’s find joy in writing the first draft, figuring out what’s wrong with it, and revising it until it works. Let’s start acknowledging each success along the way and recognizing the happiness that comes with it.

Let’s not wait for success anymore. We’ll remember that we succeed each time we sit down at the computer. We succeed each time we finish a scene or the first draft of a novel. We succeed when we revise, when we add a new layer of conflict or discover a new character -- in fact, when we do anything that makes the story better. We succeed each time we sit down to research or learn some new aspect of our craft.

Let’s remember that joy comes from within.

And let’s start having fun again!

[Recapture the Magic! first appeared in the Heart of the West newsletter for the Utah/Salt Lake Chapter of Romance Writers of America, February 1998.)