Writing for fun

I’ve been doing my writer-girl-group homework every day since last Wednesday and I’ve learned some interesting stuff. It’s very freeing to just sit and type for 15 minutes or so, ending up with between 700 and 1000 words, just letting the thoughts come. I’ve always written in all sorts of forms, including journaling to get my feelings out or work through problems, but I haven’t really sat down on a daily basis just to write. No greater purpose, just write for the sake of writing.

And you know what? This exercise has reminded me how much I love the process of writing. I have always seen it as a craft rather than an art, with a wonderful array of materials and tools in the shape of words, grammar, punctuation and imagery. Learning to type, which I shared about the other day, was a huge boost as, once I speeded up, I was able to get the words out almost as quickly as the sentences formed in my head.

Most of my working life I’ve used my writing skills one way or another. I worked as a specialist journalist for a while in my 20s and later on I often ended up running the office newsletter in various jobs. Of course, becoming a lawyer was like being a kid in a sweet shop with letters, briefs, statements and attendance notes to write. Two things happened as I worked through academia and my training contract: 1) my handwriting, which was pretty disgusting to start with, went rapidly downhill as a result of scribbling through lectures, court hearings and police interviews. It’s now barely legible, even to me, with missing and mis-formed letters and no uniformity at all. 2) I learned to dictate into a machine, which was so interesting, just like learning to write sentences and paragraphs on paper all over again. It’s a very different activity, but quite enjoyable and mentally stimulating.

My first experiments with blogging were several years ago when I started running again and set up a blog to record my training and interact with other runners. I found out how enjoyable it can be to network online with like-minded people, and that I was comfortable chatting away on my keyboard and knowing that people all over the place would be reading what I said.

In 2011 I wrote my first really long piece, which was a 22,000 word Masters dissertation and had to be meticulously researched, every reference footnoted and everything perfect. It was exhausting and quite stressful, and it was only when I got to the conclusion chapter, where I didn’t have to provide references, that I could really let my writing flow. And even then every sentence had to be carefully crafted in order to keep within the word count. It was a great experience though, and showed me I could write something substantial.

So with all that writing behind me (who knows how many words!), what have I discovered recently that I love about it? It’s very simple really. Something like alchemy in the way the thoughts form in my head, then turn into sentences, and almost by magic appear on the screen in front of me. It’s almost as if my brain is turning itself inside out on to the white page. I do usually tend to think in sentences anyway, which may be rather boring of me!

After many years of writing for a purpose, whether it’s been work, university or as therapy, or even blogging, I’m finally writing for fun again, and strangely enough finding that it is indeed fun! It’s almost as if, in order to find the fun in playing, I’ve needed just to play. This is after a week of play-writing each day, so who knows what will come of having fun like this on an on-going basis? I certainly intend to keep it up so I can find out!

Is there something that you used to find fun and that you only do when you have to now? Could you benefit from scheduling in time to play, to find the fun again? Or maybe you already do and have reaped the benefits. Perhaps it’s writing or maybe something else. Do share!