Writing Freely and Just For Fun

Something I’ve realized is I don’t write for fun anymore.

Don’t get me wrong! The act of writing, in and of itself, is fun for me. Yes, there are not-so-great aspects to being an author, but I haven’t lost my passion or my energy for the craft. Even while hitting deadlines, puzzling over editorial letters, and squinting as I forward royalty statements to my agent (so I don’t have to see the jump scare that is some of my book sales numbers), I’m absolutely having fun when I’m chipping away at a story I love in hopes of reconciling its reality with the dream it once was.

But when I write now, I write because it’s a job. I write because I signed a piece of paper promising to deliver a product. I write because there are people waiting for what I’m working on. And I write because only when I turn something in do I get paid!

I’ve been at this full-time for eight years.

We sold my debut series in 2016, and since then, I’ve had to keep up a frenetic momentum in order to continue doing this. And the only part of this bonkers career I can control is — surprise, surprise! — to write. A LOT. So every time I turn in a draft, you bet I’m already working on the next thing.

New book sent in to my publisher for the first round of developmental edits? Great, time to brainstorm and research for the next one.

Emailed pass pages back to my editor with my thoughts and comments? Amazing, I’m already typing away at the sequel.

Spent years of my life on a passion project only to discover that we would not be able to sell it (or so I thought at the time)? Cry, call friends, eat junk food that will piss off my stomach, and then work on something new.

I’m not sharing this for cookies. This is simply what it takes to stay on the publishing hamster wheel. I also have luck, good health, no children, and so on and so forth, but the bottom line is, this career doesn’t allow most of us to sit back and take it easy, and I came in fully knowing and accepting that.

You don’t have the incredible misfortune of being born an eldest daughter in an old-school Vietnamese immigrant family without being built for labor, and boy, can I labor. Whether it’s healthy that my definition of “hard work” is barely sustainable for the average human being is a different story for a different day, but the gist here is that I work my tail off for everything I get. People just don’t see that part. And that’s the poisonous nature of social media — you see trumpets blaring and lines of readers and beautiful book covers, but the behind-the-scenes blood, sweat, and tears go wholly unacknowledged, as though it’s more palatable if they’re hidden. But they’re there.

All that is to say: I haven’t been writing just for fun for a long time.

A million years ago, at my first job out of college, I had a tight-knit group of friends who would get together every week, cook, watch movies, and play board games. It was this group that first introduced me to tabletop roleplaying games, and it was also this group to whom I confessed my long-cherished, still secretly simmering dream of being a published author. One of these friends owned a story prompt card game that we would use to freewrite, meaning we would take any writing implement within reach and spill out whatever came to mind, no thinking ahead of time.

The other day, when I was planning out my workshops for this year, I found myself smiling and thinking about that group and that game out of the blue. I thought about how important — and just plain fun — it is to simply create for the sake of creating. When your passion becomes a job, it’s easy to forget why you began in the first place.

So I searched for story prompt cards online, bought this set to bring to retreats and workshops as an exercise, and decided to test it first. And I had a blast!

Sometimes, being an author feels a lot like sitting in a fish tank with your laptop, surrounded by spectators. So freewriting is like waving to everybody watching, pressing a button to darken the glass, and getting to make something in private again, just for you. No pressure. No worrying about deals, sales, and reviews.

I decided to write by hand because I want to build up my handwriting muscles again! My generation was probably the last one to be mostly analog. We did have a Computer Lab class where we learned the “proper” way to type (does anyone actually keep their fingers on the home keys? Leave a comment if you do, because I’m curious!). And I did own a little blue brick of a cell phone in high school, one that only made calls and sent out the most basic texts. But we wrote essays and papers, took notes in class, and did almost all of our homework by hand, and nowadays I can’t even journal for two pages without cramping up!

The set of cards I bought instructed me to choose two gold ones (which would represent my character) and two copper ones (which would give me the plot and/or setting), so I did that. I set the timer for 15 minutes, flipped my phone over to hide the screen — which I do whenever I’m writing — picked up my pen, and just went. I was amazed by how quickly the time went by.

I think I’m going to make this a weekly practice. No matter how busy I am or how much I still have to get done, I can certainly take 15 minutes out of my day to scribble down a new story idea. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun to flip through this notebook when I’m done and see what I’ve come up with!

My main albatross as a writer is learning how to let go of perfectionism. Being slow and meticulous never truly works in my favor! I know that every single one of my books comes out to be objectively very high-quality . . . but do readers even care? I’ve labored over sentences and literal punctuation only to be tagged in a review saying, “After all the books Dao has published, her writing is still so careless!” Careless — a word that has never and will never be used by anyone to describe me except for strangers on the Internet! I plan on doing another blog post about perfectionism, which has a lot to do with feeling safe and worthy for many of us, especially women, especially women of color.

But for now, suffice it to say that freewriting is going to be my way of training myself out of the need to be perfect and just put something, anything, down, FAST.

I’d love to hear everybody’s thoughts on freewriting. Have you tried it? And I offered to do this on Instagram, so I’ll offer it here too: if anyone would like me to draw some story prompt cards for them, leave a comment and I will happily do so!