Thursday! 2-38: Are You Having Fun Yet?

Jul 27, 2022

“On the subject of writing, are you familiar with the book, Writer Ferrets Chasing the Muse by Richard Bach? There is a scene where the main protagonist, who has been fighting writer’s block while trying to create his Magnum Opus, realizes he can’t write because he doesn’t like his story. He thinks he needs to write a literary classic of the ages, when, really, he just wants to write children’s books about dragons and hummingbirds. When he finally lets go and writes the stories he loves, he finds happiness. There is a plaque above his desk that I have stolen: HAVE FUN! DON’T THINK! DON’T CARE!”
— Nikki Nelson-Hicks, in an interview at JaneFriedman.com

Monday night, I found myself in a bit of a predicament. My mood wasn’t all that great going into the morning and it didn’t improve measurably after spending a tidy sum on an unexpected break repair and learning I’d have to shell out an even tidier sum on new rear shocks in the next month or so (ahem, please!). Then the thunderstorm rolled in.

I don’t like thunderstorms at all. The sudden loud noises make me jumpy and, thanks to the layout of the duplex where I live, lots of rain means a flooded front patio and, once, a flooded chunk of the living room1. I’m already a worry-prone kind of person2 and storms keep that level of worry fairly high until the rain subsides and the storm grumbles into the distance like a guy leaving the supermarket unhappy about the price of groceries. Add to these worries that my wife was out running some errands with my Mom and, well, I wasn’t exactly the model of calm repose. I kept popping up to check the front door for any moist mayhem and, heck, while I was up why not pace around a little bit?

At this point, you’re wondering where I’m headed. Hang with me for a couple more sentences because a friend of mine is about to jump into the story and remind me of something I very much needed at that moment. See, my friend and I tend to keep a rolling conversation going and I shot her a note about the storm. We swapped messages and I paced and then she asked something really odd of me.

”Can you write something for me? A little poem?” she wrote. That slowed my brain down a bit. I’d written a couple small things for her, either as inspiration for something she needed to do, or just for the heck of it. I like writing poems for my friends for no particular reason at all and I hadn’t written one like that for what felt like decades.

”Sure! Depends on the deadline,” I sent back.

“Haiku, 15 minutes or less,” she replied. “Theme of your choice”. Aha! A challenge. I like challenges. I write very well to prompts or deadlines, because I see them as contests and the competitive little boy in me loves a contest. How well can I get something very cool into the space provided in the time provided? This was going to be fun!

And, what do you know, it was! Not only did I give her one haiku, but I gave her a second on the topic of cheese3. You can read both of them at the end of the essay. They are two of the three creative things I wrote this week and I like each one of them a lot. They aren’t masterpieces, but they’re good and they made me smile to write them, to share them, and to read them again today.

[Wait! Before you go on, why not become one of my rare and precious patrons? You can choose from $2, $5, or $20 a month! ]

That brings me to the quote at the very beginning. You may have noticed that I haven’t written very much for a couple of months. I definitely have noticed and it’s bugged me — more than bugged me, it’s kept me in a pit of self-criticism that’s bled over into just about every creative thing I’ve tried since roughly the beginning of Summer. Fewer of you wonderful people have read my e-mails each week and I think part of that is because my e-mails have been less fun to read. I started back in that direction last week and I hope I’ve stayed on that course this week4.

You know where that course goes, don’t you? Funtown! Funville! Funnsylvania! The Funshire Dales! And boy oh boy do I need to get back. I missed the good feelings I got from writing. Oh, sure, there were times when a poem or a story might prove more challenging than I expected and days when my lack of actual training in writing frustrated me, but as a rule writing was fun! My stories were cool. My poems were interesting or goofy or creepy or…something. Who could predict what might come out once I dipped into that Idea Pot of mine?5 That was heady work, fun work, the work of an explorer in love with the wonder of discovery and the excitement of revelation. I love when I can unearth a cool idea, clean it up, and show it to you.

The pressures of being “legitimate”, at least in my own head, got to me. The more I dug into learning about poetry, though, and the more I looked around at the doings of other poets whose work I liked, the more I worried that I didn’t know enough. I hadn’t written a sestina or even a proper sonnet!6 I don’t consciously count rhythms to figure out the formal meter of a line. I don’t set out to write a type of poem, because how could I? I know so little. I have no teacher nor mentor. What am I even thinking with my delusions of Actual Poethood?

I’ll tell you what I’m thinking now, thanks to a couple impromptu haiku and a very timely quote. I’m thinking that writing is still fun. Creating something from a scattered idea and a few rhymes is a huge kick in the pants and it makes me a little giggly deep in my heart when I think about the poems and stories and songs and goodness knows what else I can share with you that no one has ever seen before. I don’t need to overthink whether the next thing needs to be a sonnet or a short story or a script. I can roll with whatever comes and it will be just fine. After all, I wrote two nifty poems in less than 30 minutes! Why not something else? Why not anything else?

I want you to dig into some fun, too. Creativity is not a chore but a blessing. Every day, we get to add something new and interesting and cool and us to the world. We have this wonderful gift bestowed on us and an opportunity every day to share it. Let’s not worry ourselves into misery and inaction because of what we think our limitations are. Let’s not care overmuch about whether our creations are perfect or popular. I’m not just giving you a “rah rah” speech here, either. Remembering all this stuff is not easy. If it were easy to remember, we artists wouldn’t need so many reminders. Authors wouldn’t write encouragements and other writers wouldn’t quote them and other other writers wouldn’t quote them. We forget. We get serious. We overthink. We hesitate before a future that hasn’t arrived and may never arrive.

That doesn’t get the art done, though. That gets worry done. And fret. And anxiety. We have enough of that, I think, lurking in the next thunderstorm. No need to bring it along with us. Let’s have fun and do something cool, what do you say?

(Hey, look. The beginning of the new month is just a few days away. It’s a great time to get in on my Patreon, at a level that fits your entertainment budget. I don’t want to strain anyone’s finances, which is why you can start at two bucks a month! Cool? Oh, yes. Definitely cool.)