Drunk on Writing

Advice from the Writer's Cafe


I downloaded a program called Writer's Cafe 2.33 (link|review) designed by novelist Harriet Smart. It's a helpful program that offers various tools to help author's during the writing process. Every time the program is opened it displays a screen that offers various tips and pieces of advice. I thought I would share some of those with you:


How to have fun

Here's the thing - you are not doing your taxes. You are not cleaning out the sewers. You are doing something much more glorious when you write. If you are fully using your imagination you should be having fun.

Enjoy your own imagination. Be like a child and play. Indulge yourself. This is one of the few places in life where you can be as wild and fanciful as you like. If you want to have a ballroom scene with a champagne fountain and dozens of liveried footmen, you can. It's your party. There are no budget guidelines. Bring on that superb band!

This is not to say that writing or storytelling is silly escapism. You will not be guilty of that, though other people might think so.

I used to be accused of daydreaming when I was a teenager. I resented the charge. How was it daydreaming when I was imagining myself as a young officer in the First World War, stuck in a trench, facing certain death? Daydreaming was silly wishing for material things but I was facing serious things in my imaginative world and dealing with important questions.

However there was enormous pleasure in this sort of escape. Using that imaginative muscle gives a buzz like no other. Ostensibly I was a powerless fifteen-year-old, but inside I was a super-being, with a world of narrative at my command. It sustained me like nothing else. It was fabulous to be able to climb into my trench and be a hero after a miserable day at school. I could step into that place and live something bigger, better, and more meaningful.

When we make up stories we are using them to deal with the pain of reality. We find that serious things can be dealt with when dressed in the bright clothes of stories. Shakespeare understood this and this is why we go back to his plays time and time again and see truths in them. Good stories celebrate life and deal with it at the same time. This is why we are all so hungry for them. We need them.

So you are allowed the self-indulgence of creating them in the first place. You do not need to justify your pleasure in the process. You can just enjoy yourself. Taking pleasure in it will make you more relaxed and if you are relaxed you are more likely to write well, by which I mean you will write authentically and with insight.

If you keep saying to yourself "Oh no, I can't say that, that's much too vulgar or not right for this sort of thing," you will run out of words. You will freeze with the pen in your hand.

Take pleasure in the act of doing it now, without worrying about the results. I just watched my ten-year-old daughter decorating a cover for a school project. She was happily absorbed writing her name and the title in fancy letters, in different colours and then drawing a row of flowers with striking swirly centres. She was not concerned with correct layout or what her teacher would think. She was doing it, in that moment, because it pleased her. The result was not as important as enjoying the process.

Children do stuff just because it's fun. We should do that with our writing. Do it not for results but for the sheer love of the process.

Have fun!