Keeping the Fun in Writing

My approach to writing comes from looking back when writing wasn’t something I thought about. It was something I did. It was fun and satisfying. Many years later (about 6 years ago) I decided to write again and started on that first novel. At first the writing was fun, like it had been when I was a kid. Then I started to learn about setting and hooks and voice and all the fun went out. I was too focused on writing well.


The self help books got me even more confused. Not really confused, but overwhelmed. I went back to just sitting down and cranking out story, that’s were the fun was. Too many times I had sat trying to get that first paragraph out with a killer hook. I found that when I put the fun back in, the hook came naturally, just not in the first paragraph. It became fairly easy to find that hook, start the story there and either discard or weave back in everything in front of it.

That’s when I decided that for me, it worked to follow a routine of write, learn, review, edit and write. Eventually the practice of reviewing and editing made the things I learned sink in. New skills became second nature after practice and new skills were always on the horizon.

Finally I got to the point where I stopped reading how-to books. The hook doesn’t hold off until page 12, but still hides until the middle of page one. Setting, dialogue, all the parts come out reasonably well the first time. Editing doesn’t make me laugh as much because most of the really stupid mistakes are long gone. I still write about three chapters before I go back and edit. The fist edit now catches almost everything but the typos.