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Because it’s Fun!: #MFRWAuthor Blog Challenge Week 26

Simply Romance Posted on by

Why I write…

is the topic of this week’s MFRW Blog Challenge.

A couple of years ago I took “Fearless Writer”, a wonderful online class offered by Laura Baker. One of the taskings was to come up with a kind of mission statement about Why I Write, with a view to improving storytelling skills and enhancing the “emotional resonance” of the story.

Though the mission statement I came up with is pretty in-depth about the kind of characters and themes that interest me, and a bit on the woo-woo psychological side, here are the salient points:

I write to make sense of the world and to reaffirm hope.

And golly, doesn’t that sound kind of pretentious? The truth is, good genre fiction hits the mark on both these two points. It’s literary fiction that tells us the world makes no sense and we should all just shoot ourselves.

Which gets to the real reason Why I Write:

Because it’s fun!

I’m going to bet that most of my fellow MFRW Authors will tell my same story:

  • Reading stories is fun.
  • We always liked making up stories in our heads, and we even told ourselves stories to go to sleep at night.
  • We like words, and wordcraft, and writing. Some of us studied literature in college.

Translating stories from my imagination to the page adds a bunch more layers of fun: the challenge of learning how to plot, how to write good dialogue, how to build effective characters, how to handle point of view, and then, how to manage the publishing process and find readers who like my stories and my storytelling voice.

Questions? Comments?

Hop along with my fellow MFRW Authors and see why they write:


Images: Wikimedia Commons

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Comments

Because it’s Fun!: #MFRWAuthor Blog Challenge Week 26 — 20 Comments

  1. It is fun or we wouldn’t do it. No one wants to be forced to do something they don’t enjoy. Translating the story in my head to paper is a journey,not a straight path since things always change, but the journey is fun. Seeing where the story goes, how the characters react, all of it exciting.

    • I’m not sure I’d ever quit, but I might switch to writing nonfiction, or some other genre fiction, if I stopped having fun with romance.

  4. Oh, man, you are so right that genre fiction gives people hope and literary fiction takes it away! Sometimes you just want to shoot yourself after reading one of those depressing stories, which is why I don’t do so very often. So much better to have fun and hope with our stories. I can get depress all by myself just by watching the news. I don’t books that bring me down, too.

    • I agree about the news. Which is why I escape into books. My life brings enough tears I don’t need a book to do it too. If I can’t have real fun (or a happy life, fame, success–fill in the blank), at least let me read about someone else who is.

    • I know, Linda. I can’t bring myself to read literary fiction, no matter how much someone raves about a book. Life is too short to be that depressed, and besides, I have too many romances and mysteries in my TBR stack!

  5. I love the joie de vivre of your post! Every once in a while . . . okay, more often than that . . . I need to be reminded to lighten up and have fun with my writing.

    • Usually when I get horribly stuck it’s because I’ve forgotten to have fun and entertain myself.

  6. It IS fun despite all of the issues, pitfalls, down sides, etc. We all agree it is in us to write regardless of talent level or story line. It’s great to know we’re together on a lot of the issues that might hold us back, so thanks for helping me along on this fun AND exciting journey.

  7. Yes, I LOVE hearing everyone’s take on this topic. We all have so much in common!

  8. Love your thoughts on literary fiction vs genre fiction. It’s so true – some books are SO depressing. I crave the HEAs you find in romances!

    • Your blog post was spot on, Maureen! I get really cranky also when I can’t get a moment to write.

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