Writing: Work or Fun?

Last week I was telling some friends just how much I am enjoying my creative writing program. I’m not procrastinating (much), I’m getting a lot of pleasure out of the readings and the writing. It just doesn’t feel like work. You really can’t go on in this vein about anything before someone tries to rob you of your joy. And so it was put to me: “Well, it wouldn’t be so much fun if it was your work, your career. You’re only enjoying it because you don’t have to do it.” The implicit suggestion, of course, is that if I ever tried to make a living as a writer (which my friend knows full well I aim to do), I would no longer enjoy it. Hrmph! Is that so? I don’t think so.

Ray Bradbury is one of my favourite authors. I love his short stories and I was absolutely and positively transformed by his collection of essays Zen in the Art of Writing, which is about, among other things, the joy of writing. The most inspiring thing about Ray Bradbury is that he found writing simply delightful from day one, and continued to revel in the adventure throughout his career. He says things like, “I write all of my novels and short stories…in a great surge of passion” and “the more I did, the more I wanted to do” and “everything I’ve ever done was done with excitement, because I wanted to do it, because I loved doing it.” He says these things and I believe him. A couple of years ago, around the same time that I wrote that science fiction short story I talked about in Sunday Scribblings, I read Bradbury on writing. Keeping his words firmly in my mind, the story consumed me for the entire time that I was working on it. Its plot took crazy turns that I never suspected it would. I was in a constant state of anticipation, waiting to see what would happen next. I couldn't wait to get to it every day. Bradbury helped me find the joy in writing at a time when my material aspirations and impatience for a “writing career” had sent my creative spirit running for cover. Writing was threatening to become "work" in the negative sense of the term. Bradbury helped pull me back from that precipice.

Whenever I read Bradbury on writing, I am reminded that writing is an adventure. A writer can make anything happen on the page. Anything! Bradbury recognizes that, according to popular opinion, writing is supposed to be: “difficult, agonizing, a dreadful exercise, a terrible occupation.” But for him, often in the grip of an idea that won’t go away until he has written it, “it is a grand way to live.” This does not mean that writing is always easy and effortless, but if it's starting to feel like drudgery, it's time to take stock.

I will not let the sceptics rob me of my joy. If the sense of fun and adventure goes out of my writing, I’ll re-read Bradbury to get it back, then sit down and write something in a "surge of passion."