I am a very serious person. I work hard and I take criticism to heart. I have been brought up to respect universities and literary prizes and people who are “important”. When I lived in England, I read serious newspapers and considered ‘literature’ to be the highest pinnacle of what a writer could achieve. (Thus, I never actually wrote anything thinking it would be far above my mortal talents!)
Recently, I have been challenged in these assumptions! In the last week I have been looking at all kinds of exciting opportunities for authors to learn from gaming and create cross-media experiences for readers. I have also been developing my own skills in terms of podcasts, videos, blogging and making author friends on Twitter. I have seen some of the amazing things other authors are doing and this is so exciting!
In short, I have been having FUN!
This is a revelation for me after years of working hard (and not enjoying it very much).
Apparently, I am typical of Gen X. We take everything seriously. But we need to learn from the Gen Ys and the Net Geners who just ‘play’ with their ideas. They mash-up and use cross-media without dissecting it. They game, read, text and Skype. A brilliant book to read about this is Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World HC
The key message is that not everything you write has to be perfect and immaculate and finished. You can just put an idea out there and have people collaborate with you to extend and develop it. You can make a video and let it loose and see what people think. You can blog and leave it open for comments. You too can have fun!
I have goals and aims for my writing career, but I am not going to take everything I write so seriously now! I’m going to be more like the little kid in the picture and paint my hands and see what it looks like. I’m going to play.
Do you take your writing and creativity too seriously?
(Everything I am learning and putting into practice will be covered in the author 2.0 program)
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Lots of people take themselves too seriously and try much to hard to get “it” perfect the first time. See http://www.startwithmoxie.com/2009/01/release-1-the-ultimate-market-survey.html for a different point of view.
This is a really great article, I am glad that I was pointed to it. I look forward to your future articles on writing. I just wrote a few on editing. Thanks.
I think writers have to take themselves seriously (at least some of the time), mostly because the idea of sitting for hours changing a single sentence around and then rewriting it again tends to send non-seious people into little spasms. The early stages of writing are fun, and that’s why most of us do it. Tossing around ideas with a group of friends, scribbling on various scraps of paper and napkins, whatever is handy, and passing them on. Sharing them in social networks online and letting others have at them, all and all, it is a fun process. The actual writing part and then the editing is where the serious succeed (or at least, finish), and the others decide they’d rather just move on to the next creative project and leave it hanging.
I for one have never been content with just scribbling all over the place and then squirreling away what I write. Getting online, networking and interacting with other writers and with other story-lovers like myself has been the biggest boon to my writing.
I love the idea of being able to share fun projects in various forms online.
You know I agree with you quite a lot here.
There are some things that have to be taken seriously but to be honest if you’re going to be a writer it has to be fun and you have to enjoy what you’re doing. The thrill of still tapping away at 2 am the fun and knowledge of getting that one part right.
Ok yeah there are serious elements to writing too but being too uptight about it not only makes things boring but also, personally, can stifle creativity.
I agree that you have to have fun with writing. I recall an article that someone posted in a writing community and I’d say out of 20 writers who got paid to write, only three of them said they enjoyed it. Those three were the only ones smiling too. I thought that was a strange coincidence.
One thing I know is that I never want to lose the passion for writing. Also, I agree with Tonya, meeting others authors have been a surprising benefit.