My 10-year-old daughter came downstairs the other day, with a big smile on her face and a stack of old papers in her hand.
“Mama, look at my stories from when I was a kid!” (You know, when she was five…)
They were adorable, her “sentences” and drawings, of princesses and frogs (but not the Princess and the Frog) and we admired her talent.
“Do you have stories from when you were a kid, Mama?”
It took me less than a minutes to dig one up. I’ve kept all my writing stored in a bin in our basement–which in and of itself should tell me something about my passion.
I explained it’s the first story I got “published” (my mom typed it up), the first story that truly sparked my imagination, the one that determined I was going to be a writer.
I was 8. It’s a story about Santa and the pressure of delivering presents on Christmas Eve.
It’s also terrible. There is no conflict, rising action, climax or resolution. No character description–but a lot of detail (Santa’s 999-year-old head elf declared his team had finished 80,056 presents, but still had 1,095 more to go.)
My daughter laughed. It was amusing, strolling down my writing memory lane.
I dug through more of my old work, especially stories and plays I had written in high school. I remembered some better than others, and enjoyed, as if for the first time, the suspense of those stories I didn’t remember. Some sucked. Others… you know what? They were actually pretty good. Far from perfect, but I impressed myself with some of my character development and dialogue.
None of these stories, plays and commentaries went anywhere–except to my teachers and my parents–the only ones who would have cared.
But it didn’t matter, because re-reading these stories reminded me why I started writing in the first place: because I liked it.
For years now, I’ve been focusing on improving my skill to attain the ultimate prize: getting published–and I ain’t plannin’ on stoppin’ now–but I wonder if I’d forgotten the fun of writing in all my efforts. The pressure-free, freewheeling, free-writing that comes from not caring how good or technical or appealing a story is.
For a while, I told myself I didn’t have time. My writing schedule was so limited, that I didn’t have time to waste on stories that went nowhere. Nor did I want to indulge in “pointless”, unrelated exercises–drills that honed my technique–because I had to get my novel finished.
Now I have no excuse.
Now I have time to write.
Maybe I even have time to write for fun.
To write stories that will never see the light of day.
Ooo, I have a great idea about a Conservation Society dedicated to preserving mythical creatures… Or maybe my protagonist will be a researcher for an encyclopedia sent to catalogue all the mythical creatures in the world… Or maybe all the mythical creatures meet up at a yearly convention, like comic-con… Or maybe all the mythical creatures have decided to break their Statute of Secrecy and reveal themselves to the world… Or maybe…
Or maybe I don’t have to decide which idea to pursue.
Maybe I’ll just write them all.
You know, for fun.