A few quick things.
Amazing Substack authors are releasing some very cool books this summer. Kirthana Ramisetti and Andrea Bartz put together this amazing Authorstackers Beach Read Guide that I plan to use to organize all my preorders. Check it out!
I shared a post on Instagram about three Black women country singers I interviewed when researching August Lane. They’re so brilliant, talented, and generous with their time. If you’re on that platform, follow them and listen to their beautiful music.
I’m starting to question productivity advice that encourages writers to follow rigid routines. And this is coming from someone who wakes up at the same time every day, even on the weekends, to write first thing in the morning. I’ve tried tracking daily word counts. I block websites (Goodreads? Don’t know her). I try to do what everyone says to do: treat writing like work to be productive.
And yet, I’ve been dragging. I’ve been working on the same book since last year, and I’ve just gotten past the halfway point. Something wasn’t working. Then I listened to Feel Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal, and realized that I may have been going about being creative all wrong. His central thesis is that productivity flourishes through joy. Feeling good about our work doesn't just make the process more enjoyable. It transforms the quality and quantity of what we produce. He tells a story about sticking a Post-it to his computer that read “What would this look like if it were fun?”
I tried it. I looked at my current approach to writing and tried to imagine what a fun writing practice might look like. Then I realized that I didn’t have to imagine it at all.
My writing practice used to be fun and effortless. Years ago (many years ago), I posted fan fiction on LiveJournal. LiveJournal fiction was a very specific vibe. The stories were short, the writing was third-person smutty lit fic, and high art was capturing the entire five of your favorite characters in a 100x100 pixel icon. Every word I wrote and posted on that site was born from a love of writing. Over the past few weeks, I tried to imagine how to capture that feeling again.
Here's what I came up with:
If this were fun, I'd work on more than one project at a time. I used to have three to four projects going at once. I don’t have the time or bandwidth for that now, but focusing on a single project puts more pressure on that story. Now that I have multiple works in different stages – drafting one, researching another, outlining a third – the stakes for each project have decreased. If one book flops, there's always the others I've started.
Just typing that made me less anxious.
If this were fun, I'd explore different story lengths—short stories, novels, novellas, and flash fiction. I tried all of them back then. Each format exercises different writing muscles and challenges me to experiment with structure, and I still love doing that. In my short story "Every Christmas," each section captures a Christmas moment over five years. August Lane follows the structure of a country song. My current work in progress is a conversation between the POV character and the reader.
If this were fun, I'd write different genres. Nothing used to intimidate me. The only test for whether I could write something was whether I loved it enough. Obviously, mastering a new genre requires research and practice, but if this were fun, there would be no "I can't write X.” There would only be "Do I love X enough to create my version of it?"
If this were fun, I'd surround myself with community. My LiveJournal friends showed up consistently, loving what I loved and encouraging my wildest ideas. Want to cross your favorite fantasy show with a pulpy action flick and gender-swap the main character? They’d beg me to push the envelope further. Now, my goal is to find friends who will read my wildest creations and love me for them.
If this were fun, I'd constantly learn new skills. LiveJournal made me want to understand graphic design. I taught myself Photoshop (the old version, without one-click background removal), studied design theory, and learned basic coding to customize my journal. Creative work naturally spawns more creativity, not for marketing or social media, but for the pure joy of making something new. Recently, I started learning Procreate and Procreate Dreams so I can create animated art for my novels.
If this were fun, I'd seek challenges. When a project intimidates me, it’s because I'm writing outside my comfort zone. That makes me a better writer. Slightly uncomfortable but not paralyzed is the ideal state for my best work.
If this were fun, I'd write for my readers. All my fan fiction was about women of color, many from supporting roles in film and TV, with tiny online fan bases. And I didn't care because that small fan base was my entire audience – I was writing for them and myself. I never thought about whether people who didn't care about those characters would like my work. In publishing, there are numerous stakeholders to please, and universal appeal can benefit your career. But writing to please everyone produces something as generic as bottled water, where only packaging distinguishes yours from the rest.
If this were fun, success would mean accuracy, not marketability. In publishing, success means sales figures, buzz, and publisher support. But when writing is fun, success means achieving your vision. Did I create what I set out to make? Does this feel true? Does the character sound like a real person? Does the story make me feel the way I want to feel when I seek out stories like this one? The answers to those questions are the only ones that matter.
I’m posting this newsletter in case some of you struggle with the same feelings and find it useful. But I wrote it for myself. With another book release approaching, I'm struggling to remember why I did all this in the first place. It was supposed to be fun. Lately, it's been stressful, time-consuming, and frustrating – and I know it will continue to be all those things. But it feels like fun again when I do more of the things I listed above. Like I’m playing my favorite game.
Words Worth Keeping
“All that matters is that you are making something you love, to the best of your ability, here and now.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being
What would your creative practice look like if it were purely fun? What elements from your earliest creative experiences could you recapture now? Have you noticed how your relationship with writing changes when you reduce the stakes and increase the play?
"writing to please everyone produces something as generic as bottled water, where only packaging distinguishes yours from the rest" dear GOD Regina can you please give us 24 hours of notice before hitting us with a truth like this <3 <3 <3
Beautiful. I love this and it’s spot on. It’s so devastatingly easy for the fun to disappear.