I’ve been writing something by hand. Two hours a week, fountain pen on notebook paper, just following my characters as they explore a mysterious place. When I started, the only thing I had was the setting, and even that was a bare sketch. The characters have slowly taken shape as I’ve gone on. The scenario has slowly developed, too. I still have no idea where I’m going, or what I think I might be trying to say. Every week, I open my notebook, see where I left off, and just start writing to see what’s going to happen next.
For anyone that’s never written a story, that might be what you picture writing always looks like. Just sit down and make up a story, the way we all did in elementary school. Only longer.
Honestly, though, very few writers approach it this way. I usually don’t. This kind of improvisation is at the far end of a spectrum that has planning on the other end, and I don’t know many writers that don’t end up doing some kind of planning.
Personally, I’m somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. I don’t need (or even want) a complete outline before I begin, but I discovered years ago that if I don’t have a sense of where I’m going, I’ll just let the narrative wander pointlessly until it eventually gets entirely lost. And often, when I come back to see what I’ve accomplished, I discover that it’s a big fat nothing.
I don’t know if I’ve ever written this many continuous pages without a plan. And there is absolutely the possibility that these pages will never turn into any kind of publishable story.
So why am I doing it?
I didn’t know, at first. I started it one day as an exercise – something that was only supposed to take thirty minutes. But then I just kept going. It was fun.
It took me a couple weeks to realize how important that was. The fun. I always enjoy writing, at least a little. And I enjoy a lot of other things about pursuing it as a career: talking to other writers, learning more about publishing, amassing a longer TBR list than I have any hope of finishing in my lifetime. Lots of those things are great.
But sometimes, I forget to have FUN. And at this moment in time, with so many things in the world feeling heavy, I needed fun more than anything.
Once I figured that out, I did set one single expectation for this bit of writing: I will keep writing this, without a plan, without looking backward or forward, for as long as I’m having fun. Or until I come to what feels like the end. And then? Well, I’m still not sure. I’ll probably put it away for a little while, which is always part of my process when deciding what to do with something I’ve written. Maybe I’ll take it out in a few months and discover that it’s not bad. That it can become something. The odds are about equal that it’ll be so terrible I can’t do anything with it.
If that’s the case, I’ll have to remind myself that the value of the thing was in the entertainment it’s already given me. It’s been worth it for the fun.