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I like to tell people that I hate fun, mostly because I think that’s fun to say. I’m not totally kidding, though. Many things that are meant to be “fun” — board games, for example, or airy reality television shows, or amusement parks — make me want to scream. Not in a fun way.
What interests me more is joy. If fun is like cotton candy, joy is like an impossible burger and a martini and fries AND a salad because joy doesn’t make you choose like upscale bistros do. Joy nourishes. It’s satisfying. It’s less about the shifting weather of a mood, and more about a livable climate of connection and contentment. There’s meaning in it, is what I’m saying, not just the emotional equivalent of sugar.
When I was an editor at a personal development publication, I once pitched a piece about the rise of Instagram Museums. You know the ones, those bright, photogenic, fizzy pop-ups that charge $50 for a cute photo op. The real truth of the piece was meant to be that we have lost track of what fun even is, and instead of seeking experiences that will feed our brains, our souls even (like spending time in nature, seeing great art, connecting with our friends yes even the ones who suck at the internet), we yearn for Proof That We’ve Had Fun. We want to show people, including ourselves, that Fun was Had, so that we can have some quantitative data proving that we are living our lives correctly. Look how many likes!
The publication didn’t end up running the piece, in part because let’s face it, my concept was sort dickish, and also because then the pandemic shut down even said Experiences. The difference between performative “fun” and deeper, life-affirming “joy” suddenly felt like the least consequential concept on earth. Maybe this is true again. Or maybe it’s always true. Times are bad. (I just wrote an entire paragraph explaining to you how bad times are but then I deleted it because like, you don’t need me to tell you that, presumably you know this already.)
And yet we continue living our little lives. It can also be true that we don’t actually help anyone by living joylessly. Joyless people have no energy left for anything.
Something that gives me joy is writing. It’s not fun. I mean sometimes it’s fun but a lot of the time, especially if you’re really trying to make something good and true, it’s hard work. Holy work, a friend calls it, which I love — it speaks to the way I feel about writing, which is neither hobby nor job, but more like a vocation. Writing helps me to make sense of life, and to find that place of flow where the distractions of the world quiet down.
That said, it’s still hard to find the energy for creative work, especially when the world feels dark (see/imagine above deleted paragraph itemizing all the horrors). Something that helps me is to remember that there’s always some value in keeping a record of what it is like to live through complicated times. And sister, it’s always complicated times.
Okay but also, I mean for these newsletters to be practical, so here is the practical takeaway. (That was another problem with my imagined hilarious-and-incisive Instagram Museum takedown pitch, by the way, was that there was no actual takeaway, and therefore what was the point even? That I would be comped tickets to a Ball Pit Emporium? I mean, not no, but still.)
Here’s a suggestion: What if we thought of our creative lives as less like a straight line — writing » revising » completing » publishing — and more like an ecosystem, or a cycle? What if we worked on a novel not with the gritted-teeth, survival-focused attitude of someone training for a marathon, not with the idea that art can be made via a formula and ought to be produced as efficiently as possible — but with openness and curiosity, finding meaning in the process itself?
What I’m saying is: What if we thought of writing not simply as the slog necessary to achieve an end result, but considered writing a way to invite more joy into our lives?
Not fun — as any writer knows, it’s not always fun — but the kind of joy that’s maybe more akin to awe than anything else. “Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world,” according to the psychologist Dacher Keltner. Awe is accessed when you look at the night sky, perhaps (you, not me, I live in New York City and the night sky is a muck of light pollution, but you get the drift), or whenever you take a moment to really consider the wildness of life on earth.
And here’s where we get to the ecosystem part of it. Because in order to write in a way that invites joy and awe into our lives, we have to also feed our creative selves with, yes, joy and awe.
I think the most useful writing advice (aside from the old standby of read everything), is Julia Cameron’s directive of the Artist Date. If you haven’t encountered the Artist’s Way, well, you should! But in the meantime, here’s the gist of the Artist Date: “a once-weekly, festive, solo expedition to explore something that interests you.” Note that it doesn’t even necessarily involve writing. Weird, right?
When I worked in an office, I used to sometimes duck out on a lunch break for a quick visit to a museum to sit with a painting or two (New York City, she gives and she takes). Cameron emphasizes, though, that this need not be a high art moment. The Artist Date can be a trip to a "a bird store, to a children's bookstore, to a flower shop.” Something that feeds your well with whimsy or offers an interesting sensory experience or sense of possibility. Maybe it’s an amusement park or a board game meetup or a goofy Instagram Museum! Look, just because I hate fun doesn’t mean you have to!
What matters is that this is something you do for you, because it interests you, not because you think it will be photogenic or look good on the grid, not even because it’s research for your writing, exactly. But because it will fuel you. It will open you to the possibility of awe. And guess what, it will give you energy and ideas for your writing, even if you don’t yet know how.
It can be hard to think of writing as a conduit for joy. We live in a world that loves to commodify. Oh you write? Do you publish? Anything I would have read? How long did it take you to write your book and how much money did you make from it? People ask these questions not to squash your creative soul (let’s assume), but because we’re not great at letting art exist for its own sake. We’re unused to valuing process, generally more focused on salable end products. Capitalism, baby!
So the next time you feel stuck with your writing, consider focusing less on bearing down or grinding out some arbitrary word count, and focusing more on a bird store, or the night sky, or whatever makes you feel a little more alive inside. Joy matters, after all.
PS I wrote about all this and more in my novel Dear Edna Sloane, which is really so much about writing, and wanting to write, and wanting not to write, and everything in between. And you can preorder now! Capitalism, baby!
Exercise: Write two pages about a smell you hate. Then, write two pages about a smell you love.
If you have a manuscript that needs an edit, or a writing project that’s stuck, let’s chat! I also review query letters, book proposals, pitches, and submission packages. I’m currently taking on new coaching clients and book-length projects for June.
Put some time on my calendar for a free 15-minute call to discuss how we can get you unstuck.
Love this piece, lots of truth.
I, too, am anti-fun! Glad to know I have an ally.