HOW TO MAKE WRITING FUN | let’s talk about healing your writing process & ✨creative joy✨

hey guys it's Shaylin I'm here today with another writing video and I'm really excited for today's topic because we're going to be talking about how to make writing fun and how to keep yourself having fun in your Writing Practice whenever I do videos like this that have to do more with the emotional side of writing rather than the craft side I always feel like a bit of a hippie but I am a bit of a hippie so I think we should just embrace it at this point I'll leave some similar videos I've done before on writing and confidence on writing and dealing with low motivation on writing and self-care one video that's been requested a number of times how to have keep your writing fun you can start to introduce so much stress into your writing process and so much pressure and it can start to feel like work I know what happened for me you know I started writing as a kid I was writing you know because I love writing right there's no other reason I love the process of sitting down to write words and then you know I got a bit older so I started to Implement a lot of practices into my writing routine to feel like it was a job writing a certain number of words per day really scheduling it treating it literally like a job because I remember I always heard the advice online that you should treat writing like a job I started having this mindset as a teenager why at 16 should you be treating writing like a job I didn't lose my passion for writing but I lost the fun in the creating aspect it's something that I've really worked to get back I'm a huge proponent of fun in your writing I think that that is the most important thing I think that if you can make a writing process that is fun that will be the most successful writing process fun to be the number one priority before like what productivity for me the way that I am productive I'm really pleased with the amount of work that I produce and I do write consistently almost every day a lot of the time the reason that I can do that is because I've made writing into a really fun thing and so I genuinely look forward to writing I want to write I don't schedule writing and I know that because I find writing really fun I'll write I'll write a lot and so I think that the most important tip for being a productive writer is to stop caring about being a productive writer and figure out how to just have fun with writing and when you really get to that place where writing is Fun the productivity will fall naturally and you're less likely to burn yourself out in those times of high productivity because it's coming from a place of genuine excitement and not following a schedule I mean I think that that should be the root of why you write to right like it starts pretty much for all of us as a passion right it starts because it's something you want to do something you enjoy doing you have a story that you care about it can be easy to turn it into work and lose that but if you can maintain the fun you may not need those things or at least not need them to that extent you may still have a schedule but you won't really need to force yourself off to write because you'll just want to right so let's talk about some ways to do that my first number one tip get rid of all goal schedules and deadlines entirely if you can it may be hard if you literally are on Deadline or if you're a student or something but I'm gonna just make this video under the assumption that we don't have any kind of externally imposed deadlines and if you are you just have to adjust accordingly and take the tips that you can fit into your life start by getting rid of goal schedules and Designs a hundred percent if you if you enjoy those things they can still be part of a process that is fun 100 you those things can co-exist but I think the first step is to get rid of it full stop I think the first step is to go back to like um this will sound really hippy like a natural creative state right go back to when you were a child if you wrote as a child there weren't schedules there weren't anything but you you may be still wrote like I wrote as a kid and I actually wasn't putting it in my Google Calendar sometimes goals schedules defines they can become I'm using them this because I want to feel like I am productive I'm scared that I won't write without it maybe you won't for a bit and then the fun will come back the joy will come back but I think to get to that place you have to get rid of all these systems you've put in place to force yourself to write the goal of this in the end is that you won't have to force yourself to write you'll just write because you want to and you'll enjoy it and you'll enjoy it way more okay but get rid of everything you've put in place of needing to trick your brain into writing you can slowly introduce those things later on for now let yourself just write naturally like observe your creativity naturally and again it's gonna sound like some hippie but like give yourself some time to let your creativity like heal this was something that I remember doing when I graduated in University because I was coming out of uh you know four-year degree in writing where obviously I was on Deadline constantly everything was a deadline or an assignment and that was fine it was a high pressure environment I actually really enjoyed it and I wrote a lot of work I was really proud of but when I came out of it I was like whoa I I actually don't know what it's like to right in my natural creative state what is my natural creative flow look like if I just am writing just when I feel like it how often will I write how much will I produce I had no idea and so I think I gave myself some time to kind of just let those creative rhythms resync once they did I was like really pleased with how much work I was producing free of any kind of deadline my next tip this is if you're feeling really burned out I would actually even recommend like stop writing for a time and just brainstorm or take notes you know engage with the project without writing it sometimes I think we can build up too much pressure around the act of writing sometimes when I feel like I'm maybe a little burned out stop writing and just let myself be creative because I know that like I love being creative for a lot of people they put so much pressure on just the simple Act of sitting down to right words when it doesn't have to be I'll talk about that later in the video but I think if this is something you're really really struggling with create but don't write for a time and then slowly get back into writing and when you do that don't have any schedules or constraints on it tip number three make writing an event this this was something that I used to do a lot at the start of the pandemic maybe before the pandemic after work I would have gone and hung out with friends couldn't do that so it was like after work I have plans to write and I would look forward to it and I would like get ready as if I was going somewhere and then I would like you know like have kind of a ritual surrounding it and that actually really helped me to view writing as something like special you know make it like you know it's like a carrot versus stick I think ultimately writing itself should be the carrot you shouldn't be the stick to make yourself right but sometimes we can like self-impose this stick we want to get away from that we want it to be carrot making an event like go somewhere you know I used to before the piano I could always go right in like cafes and I really enjoyed that because I felt like I was really dedicating time to my craft this is how I wrote All Through University I would go to coffee shops to write make writing feel kind of special like I'm going out to write um I don't really do that anymore partly because my favorite coffee shop closed down at the start of the pandemic and I think because during the pandemic I stopped doing that so I kind got used to just writing at my house to the point that I can just write effectively at my house without having to go buy an expensive coffee I did really enjoy it and I still think that if you feel like writing is not fun that is a great way to do is to make an event go somewhere you can even go like if it's nice out outside go to a park I don't really know whatever works for you whatever you enjoy I think writing with friends like making it a social activity is great if you have writer friends I love writing with friends I love having a couple friends over to just write do we usually get a lot done no but it's really beneficial sometimes actually do a surprising amount done tip number four let yourself just write what you want to write this is obvious but I'm serious there's so much advice on the internet that makes it sound this is a beef that I have with too much writing advice too much writing advice online I personally think comes from this antagonistic view of writing where it's you versus your writing and you have to defeat your writing your writing is against you it doesn't want to work the book wants to turn against you your creativity like it's all working against you and you have to find ways to Wrangle it into place to force yourself to write it's not like that like your writing is not the enemy it's not you versus your book this is something that you're creating out of some kind of love or passion for the story I would assume I think a really common thing is like you know shiny new idea syndrome right people talk about like oh you can't once you start writing a book you can't stop you have to if you don't if you jump ship to write something else you fail with shiny new idea syndrome if you aren't liking what you're writing and you want to write something else that is fine do you actually want to force yourself to write a book that you don't get into a writing because someone on the internet said that that would make you a bad writer I don't know I I think it's ridiculous if you want to work on start working on something else that is okay you know if it becomes a cycle where you can never finish a book because you're constantly jumping ship then you have to cross that bridge when you get to it but is it an inherently bad thing to put something aside and work on something else no I have multiple things on the go constantly for this very reason where if I don't feel like working on my novel I can work on a short story I can edit another novel it's why I write multiple projects so that I can essentially shiny new idea syndrome whenever I want and I don't feel bad about it when I get a new idea from a book I will often stop everything to write the opening chapters brainstorm it it's fine being a writer on the internet having said that I was going to write certain things feeling like I had to write books because I had committed to it online and said this was gonna what I was gonna work on and it made writing really miserable and I wasn't writing what I wanted to write a lot of the time and so I wasn't enjoying the process and once I said screw that I'm just gonna write whatever I want to write when I want to write it I started enjoying writing the process of writing so much more and I was enjoying the things that I was creating so much more one really important aspect of this that I did not touch on on the video writing what you want to write doesn't just mean writing the specific projects that you currently want to be working on it's also construct directing your book exactly how you would want it when I started having this mindset of I'm just going to write exactly what I want to write exactly when I want to write it it started when I started working on honey vinegar which went on to become like my like favorite thing I've ever created my magnum opus right in past books I had put way too much thought into what I thought readers would want from my work and then with honey vinegar I just stopped caring about that and basically the the mindset that I took into the book is I'm gonna write this exactly the way that I want it to be I'm going to construct the story exactly how I would want it to be I'm gonna have the story unfold exactly the way I want it to unfold I'm not going to think about what other readers what readers would want or anything like that when I started writing honey vinegar I was actually shocked at how much fun I was having writing the book because I have never had this much fun writing it revolutionized how I approached writing which is maybe kind of ironic because it was something that I was actually writing within the constraints of Academia and so you would think that that would come along with added pressure stress and you know creative constraint but for me it was the opposite because it overrode all the expectation that I had put on my writing from my online life really what made me realize I can just do whatever I want and it's going to produce the best writing of my life I was shocked it was Game changing that was an instrumental book for me because it made me realize that if I just prioritize myself and what I want in my writing it will actually produce the best work for me I've taken that into everything I've written since um it was really a game-changing book for me because I just prioritized myself what I wanted and having as much fun as possible and it ended up producing my favorite thing that I've ever still remember starting that book and Ian wowed by how much fun I was having I didn't know that I could have that much fun writing and writing had been my lifelong passion at this point but I literally was shocked at how much fun I was having just because I was prioritizing exactly what I wanted if you're trying to refund in your writing process don't write what you think you should write what you have to write what you feel you are supposed to write write what you want to write you may at a certain point feel like you have to start putting in some kind of schedules to keep yourself on track with a specific project in order to get it done at a certain point but let the fun come back to your writing process first if we're talking about healing your writing process which sounds so hippy dippy but we're rolling with it there's no way to make this video without sounding like a hippie I kind of am a hippie I have to just embrace the woo-woo hippie dippy okay we're healing our writing processes and that's a good thing you have to heal your writing process and your creativity before you can start figuring out how to healthily implement schedules in order to do things like finish that book and you may find you don't need the schedule to finish the book you may just finish the book because you love writing the book you may have trained yourself to think you need the schedules but you don't you may find you don't that this was a huge thing for me I thought I needed schedules goals deadlines word counts in order to write I had convinced myself that I was an inherently lazy being who because this was what all the advice online was it all it framed things like this you are inherently lazy person who doesn't actually want to write so you will not complete your book unless you consistently write x amount of words a day and follow schedule and treat it like a job and so I really convinced myself that that was the way that I had to write because I was an inherently lazy person who wasn't inherently motivated and so I had to force myself to write eventually I realized that's not necessary I love writing I don't need to do that so you may find that there's a healthy way for you to implement scheduling into your life which sometimes I do do some like goal setting and really have fun with it a lot of the time I don't at all but before you can start doing that I think you have to heal your creativity it was a big Revelation for me to realize oh I don't actually have to force myself to write I will just write because I enjoy it I constantly get questions how do you schedule writing how do you and I'm like I don't I don't use that because I know that I enjoy writing so I know I'm going to write a bunch and it's proven itself to me because I've completed several manuscripts over the past few years and I don't think I'm that unique I don't think I'm that special I think a lot of people watching this are like me you may find that if you let writing be fun that's all you need I just wanted to make one little addition to this video as I was editing it over I kind of felt like I was implying that um if you don't need any schedules or goals or Etc to write then that makes you like a more creative or passionate writer um which I did not want to imply that at all but I just felt like that that was what was coming across in the video greatly because I was really focused in this video and talking about kind of my journey with these things and how I made writing more fun for myself by getting rid of those things and realizing that like oh I love writing so I don't need to schedule it I didn't want the implication to be like if you need those things to write that means you don't love writing enough or you're not like an innately creative enough person because that's not true at all there's nothing wrong with using schedules or goals or deadlines or whatever and I actually do sometimes still use those things I know in the video I say I kind of don't anymore I don't really use schedules but sometimes I like to do like a little writing challenge for myself and kind of set a goal of writing like every day for a month or something or set a little deadline so that I have like something to work towards there's nothing wrong with using those things and there's also nothing wrong with needing those things to write different people are just different I'm very type B and so I think for me those kinds of things repel me a little and I don't really get excited about the thought of scheduling my writing process as we're scheduling anything so I usually kind of just rely more on this knowledge that I enjoy writing and so I'm gonna write and but if I schedule it it makes me enjoy it less but someone else may be the opposite the reason why I suggest at the beginning of the video If writing is really not fun for you to begin by kind of going cold turkey and cutting out you know all those things scheduling and Etc is so that you can kind of start from square one and really figure out what you need and what you enjoy and what's one what's fun for you then start reintroducing them and I think you'll have a better sense of what you actually benefit from in your writing process that leads to my next point which is you want to use momentum not force to make yourself right consistently if you want to get to a point where you're writing consistently and you know maybe in order to complete a project faster to meet a deadline you want to do that through momentum rather than Force I hate the advice write whatever every day or even if you don't feel like it I don't think forcing yourself to write accepting rare situations you know like I'm gonna seem like a bit of a hypocrite because I had talked extensively about my book that I was struggling with and I was really struggling with the book and um the only way to get through it was to like force myself to kind of get through the block the issue was not with my process the issue was with the book like I had issues with the book that I couldn't figure out so I had to like force myself to get through these issues with the book the way that I've started to think about it is if it's if she is with your book you kind of do have to power through it sometimes but if it's with you that will only drain you more forcing yourself to write especially consistently when you don't have the energy for it or you're just not feeling it is just going to again reinforce in your mind that writing is not fun you're gonna again build up really negative associations with writing if you constantly force yourself to write when you're not really feeling like it you know when I was going through these issues with my book I wanted to make it work I wanted to write I just didn't like what I was writing you know and so that's where the having to force myself through it I was forcing myself through the problem but not forcing myself to like write when I just didn't feel like it I think those are very different things so I think the way to write consistently if that's something you're aiming for is to really focus on building healthy momentum the thing that's getting you to create consistently is a genuine desire to because it's something you enjoy not because you're forcing yourself to again carrot not stick and we're getting to the point where we're writing the active writing itself is the carrot this is the thing this was my issue I imposed stick as my reason for writing when I didn't need to I could have written because of carrot or the sheer Joy of writing I'd always produced a ton simply because I enjoyed it but I was convinced I needed stick to make myself right and so then it started to build negative associations with writing tip number six this is actually like one of my favorite tips for making writing fun is actually really focused on making the scenes themselves interesting so that the scenes themselves are fun to explore like that is for me why I like writing because I really enjoy the act of writing because I love just exploring a scene like the way it feels for me is you know on Star Trek like the Holodeck growing up I always wanted a Holodeck I always thought that'd be the coolest thing ever right you just go anywhere whenever you want Even though technically it's hologram but that being the coolest ever for me writing is the closest thing there is to having a Holodeck it's like I can literally go live experience this other story in this like which is kind of because a lot of my stuff is like it wouldn't be pleasant experience I don't actually want to live it in real life working through the scene and picking out all the details like it feels like I'm there and like it's really fun to just explore the scene and so I think if you're not having fun with writing how can you make the actual engagement with the scene fun simply through observation like what is in the scene that's interesting what is happening in the scene that's interesting oh interesting conflict like that's drama that's entertaining right oh like what's this interesting thing I can describe making the the scenes interesting so that they're fun to write is something that I really come back to a lot tip number seven don't wallow on problems here's the thing there's gonna be problems this is the thing about writing and especially if you have you know like a fun Bass Writing Practice like myself where I don't really schedule my writing I just kind of write what I want to write the biggest challenge and threat to that is that there's going to be problems in what you write you're gonna get to the point where there's a block and you're gonna not like the scene you wrote you're not gonna know how to get past this scene that's gonna happen that's pretty much unavoidable the thing that has to be done I think for me that I've realized is if I'm gonna have this type of Writing Practice where I don't really schedule my work and I just kind of like free flow right I you have to get really good at one thing and it's not wallowing on problems if you get to a scene and it's not working rather than just stopping and let it completely derail you and be like well I can't move on until I figure out the scene but I hate the scene so I'm not really going to work on the scene you will never get anything done instead it has to be okay I'm not really liking how the scene is I'm either gonna skip it or I'm just gonna write a really bad version of it and I'm gonna come back later and you have to get really really good at writing a bad version or just skipping it and coming back later that skill has really been a benefit to me let me tell you um one of the best skills I ever developed as a writer was nothing to do with writing craft it was just the ability to go this is not Karina well I will come back to it later and keep going and I think that is how you keep up momentum without any kind of schedule but if you wallow in problems if you let problems derail you and when you hit a problem instead of either really sitting down and working through it actively or just writing a bad version something and coming back for later if instead you wanted derail you and you just can't move past it then this type of writing practice is not really going to work I don't really like tough love harsh writing advice okay I don't really believe in that like again this is Art like like not to be but like it is Art why are we tough loving art but by one little bit of tough love in this video as as fun as we want writing to be there are going to be problems learn to just brush them off either learn to just be like okay I'm gonna sit down I'm gonna work through it and I'm not gonna let that derail my confidence you know I'm not gonna let it me myself think that this means I'm a bad writer or the project is bad it's just something I gotta work through or learn to just come back to it later the more you wallow the worse the problem will feel and you'll kill the momentum that you've worked so hard to build up and finally tip number eight really remember that the act of sitting down to type words in your document is actually extremely low stakes what's the the worst thing that can happen you write something you don't like and then you just fix it later thinking that it's a higher Stakes activity than it is you will make writing really hard because then there's so much more pressure you feel like every time you sit down to write it has to be amazing it has to be perfect it doesn't this is actually a really really low stakes activity if it's bad you don't even have to show it to anyone right we're all gonna write stuff that's bad and that's okay getting comfortable with just writing bad stuff and being like whatever like that's really important for enjoying the writing process and having having fun with your writing because it's gonna happen we're all gonna write bad stuff when I read a first draft of a novel there's by the end there are so many scenes that I'm like that's an actively Bad scene but it's okay it really doesn't matter I can just go fix it no one has to read the bad version of the scene minimize the pressure on yourself by just remembering that man the stakes are actually really low right now no one has to read it if you don't want them to you have the ability to fix things ultimately this first draft sitting down to right it can actually be very low stakes and you can kind of just have fun with it without worrying about whether it's good yeah those last two points combined will get you quite far the ability to not wallow in a problem and the ability to just kind of take it and try to be like okay whatever the scene is bad there are 100 scenes in this book I'm guessing not all 100 of them were gonna be perfect on the first try it's fine those are my tips on how to have fun with writing and make writing fun most of it is mindset I'm more productive on a consistent level in the past few years than I ever have been before in my life it's because I really fixed my relationship to writing in terms of feeling like what the source of motivation was it wasn't something that I had to force myself to do it was just something that I would do because I loved doing it right how fast you write a book is not really the most important thing if it takes you a little longer to write something but the process is more enjoyable and more immersive and you don't burn yourself out that's actually way more important publishing moves really slowly so you don't have to move at like lightning speed like I said I'll leave some videos below I also have a video that might be worth watching on motivation and why the way we talk about motivation in the writing Community is often misleading and again makes people kind of self-criticize when that's not really the root of the issues that's what I have to say about this thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you in another video bye [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: ShaelinWrites

Views: 25,415

Keywords: writer, writing, author, novelist, creative writing, writetube, writetuber, writing advice, how to write a book, how to write a novel, writing vlog, creative writing degree, books, nanowrimo, authortube, writing tip

Id: _oyVecJli0A

Length: 24min 57sec (1497 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 14 2023