Can you think of a moment when you’ve found the act of writing fun?

You can? Oh good, let’s try something. I want you to bottle your moment.

Recall that fun moment. What made it fun?

Was it …

• the topic you were writing about?
• the place where you were writing it?

OR WAS IT this less definable element: the act of sharing something. Of going from knowing something - maybe not something life-changing but a certain tiny, sparkling, sputtering something - to not keeping it to yourself for another moment?

Also. If your answer is NO, you never find writing fun, but you’d like to, I recommend the same exercise in curiosity. Watch yourself wrestle an idea and marvel at your ability to squeeze it onto paper, and then observe: what is it that atomizes the fun out of that process for you?

Am I saying writing should always be fun? Oh, I don’t know. I don’t always find it fun. Exactly.

I mean, if I do the bottling exercise on myself, I have to admit I very often DO find it fun.

But sometimes it’s fun the way waking up in Rome with a cafe latte poured out of a ceramic pot with tiny pink flowers on it and a whole day ahead of you is fun. And sometimes it’s fun in the way that being a 40-year-old who is finally, ephemerally caught up on laundry is fun.

Different kinds of fun.

Maybe it’s better to expand your definition of fun than to claim writing’s never fun?

M​

PS: Awkward segue/but now that I have thought this I can’t un-think it:

George Wallace has the most fun when he writes. I’m sorry to link you to Twitter. Don’t get sucked down a rabbit hole! Just read a few of his tweets. So fun.