Fiction Writer’s Toolshed | Practical Tools for Authors
Writing can start as pure curiosity. You think of something cool, and you want to see what happens when you put it on the page.
Then you learn more. You get better. You begin thinking seriously about your craft, and maybe about becoming a professional author. Those can be good things.
But somewhere along the way, writing can become heavy. Every idea has to prove that you’re improving. Every session has to achieve something. And the thing you once stole time to do becomes the thing you avoid.
That happened to me. What I eventually realized was that I’d lost my sense of play.
This is my current best approach: what I think works right now, given what I know right now. I want to talk about how play can slip away, what that changed for me, and why you might want to let curiosity lead some of your writing again.
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Fiction Writer’s Toolshed
What Writers Lose on Accident | ep 006
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When writing was just something I wanted to do
Before I was even a teenager, I couldn’t seem to stop making things. Writing felt like wonder, exploration and discovery.
I filled notebooks, three-ring binders and loose sheets of paper. I drew ships, came up with character names and made bits of worlds. I had a desk with a television to my left, so I’d turn my head to watch Gargoyles or Batman: The Animated Series, then go back to whatever I was making.
There was no pressure. No outcome. No audience.
I’d think of a sword that could cut time, an awesome character name or a cool idea for a western, and I’d write about it. I wasn’t trying to impress anyone or make it lead somewhere. I wanted to express the thing because it was fun.
Later, there was a season when writing became pretty joyless. Or, if it wasn’t entirely joyless, it felt heavy and full of friction. Sometimes it quietly made me anxious.
I’m not talking about the normal resistance that comes with hard work. I mean the kind that made me avoid something I used to love, without understanding what had changed.
Play is the garden where creative joy grows
When I say play, I don’t mean laziness or a lack of discipline.
I mean lightness. Openness. That curiosity you have when you’re messing around and having fun. You aren’t measuring yourself or evaluating whether the writing is good. You’re exploring, dreaming and following something that interests you.
I think that’s a large part of what we call a sense of wonder.
Play is the garden where creative joy grows. When I first started writing, I didn’t know there was another way to do it. I’d steal moments during the day to write because the making itself was so much fun.
That doesn’t mean every writing session should be effortless. It means there was something valuable in the way I approached the page, and I didn’t notice when I stopped bringing it with me.
Getting better wasn’t the problem
As I learned more about writing, I became more structured and more critical of what I made. That helped me improve.
The play was still there, but it changed. It was like the moment a casual game with friends becomes lightly competitive. Everyone’s still having fun, but suddenly you’re all deeply invested in keeping a balloon in the air.
There was an extra layer of keepy-uppies intensity. And I liked it.
I was sparring with myself, trying to bring what I could write closer to my taste: the things I aspired to, the things I loved to read.
Then I decided I wanted to be a professional author. I started calling writing my craft. Again, that wasn’t bad. The problem was what I let slip away with it.
Writing became my capital-W Work. It became measurable in a new way, and I felt it needed to be as good as it could be.
Whatever that means. It’s such a subjective standard.
I started trying to achieve something with every piece. Finish the story. Finish the outline. Figure out the plot. Get better. I wanted the writing to be good, and if it wasn’t, I felt bad.
None of those goals is wrong. But when improvement and getting done became my primary focus, the play turned gray. It shrank. Eventually, I forced it out of the room while the adults worked.
Are you tossing a football, or playing under NFL expectations?
There’s something fun and freeing about tossing a ball around with friends.
Now imagine that every time you pick it up, you put yourself under the full pressure of NFL regulations and expectations.
You’d better throw correctly. Catch properly. Make the right tactical choice. Follow the rules. Respect the sport.
The ball hasn’t changed, but the experience has.
That’s what happened to me. Every time I picked up the writing that used to have playground energy, I imposed professional expectations on myself. The joy gradually drained out, and I didn’t realize it.
I’m not arguing against learning the game. I’m asking what happens when you never let yourself toss the ball around anymore.
When the critic starts policing every impulse
My early writing was terrible. I wasn’t even spelling things right. It was glorious.
I also did a whole heckin’ lot of it -- sometimes more than I do now. Which raises a question: was I, in some sense, a better writer because I was writing more? Is a writer who writes terribly more often better than one who isn’t writing at all?
I don’t know. I’ll leave that with you.
What I do know is that I was fearless. I didn’t know what derivative meant. I didn’t know what a trope or a cliché was. I was playing and doing things I thought were cool.
As I learned more, I could see grammar problems, structural weaknesses, derivative ideas, clichés and overwriting. That awareness was valuable.
Until it started policing me.
I’d ask, “Wouldn’t it be cool if…?” And behind that voice was another one, arms crossed, foot tapping.
Probably shouldn’t write that. That isn’t proper grammar. That’s a little like something else you know about now. That probably won’t work. I wouldn’t try it.
When play left the room and that guy took over, my curiosity became a shriveled raisin.
I stopped experimenting, wandering and exploring. I played it safe. Everything started to feel stale, like I was showing up to a job nobody was paying me for and I didn’t like.
I’d lost the voice that said, “This isn’t perfect, but let’s roll with it and see where we can go.”
So I dreaded writing. I procrastinated. I avoided it, then felt frustrated with myself. Having all that creativity inside me and not getting it out felt poisonous.
That’s my experience of what happened. The problem wasn’t simply knowing more about writing. It was letting that knowledge shut down every impulse before I could explore it.
You can’t grab joy by trying harder to feel it
At one point, I recognized that writing felt joyless, and I started trying to fix it.
But trying to force the feeling was like scrunching up my face and declaring, “I’m gonna have a good day today.” Tell me how that works out for you.
Then I had an experience that reminded me what I’d been missing. I don’t remember exactly what we were doing. It may have been a group project. There were goofy creative constraints, and before I knew it, the people I was with and I were laughing and talking.
I was writing things down. The paper was full of notes, including the margins.
Reflecting on it later, something clicked: for me, creative joy could be a byproduct of play. It wasn’t something I could run out and grab directly.
Play isn’t its only source. There’s joy in figuring something out, and joy in finishing work. But I’d become so rigid that I was losing the everyday feeling of wanting to show up and make things.
Sometimes it’s a fart-to-art doodle
I started messing around again. Truly sitting down and writing for fun, with no other reason attached.
I gave myself permission to write nonsense. I made a ridiculous four-panel pencil doodle that turned the word “fart” into “art.”
I was so stupidly proud of it. Big smile on my face. Please judge away.
The point is that I let myself follow curiosity instead of correctness.
Was the Magna Carta going to come out of that? Probably not. Although I’d like to believe it was written during a particularly enthusiastic and unseemly rhyme session.
There once was an old Magna Carta…
But really: not everything you write has to justify its existence. Some writing can exist because it’s interesting. Because it’s strange or weird or fun. Because you want to see what happens.
I’m not going to tell you how to play
I was going to give you specific things to try. Then that felt wrong for this topic.
I’m not going to tell you how to play.
Maybe there’s already a playful thing you’ve been wanting to do. Something that’s been on your mind for a while, or that has popped into your head a few times.
Hopefully, you’re smiling.
I encourage you to do it. Make that the writing you finish.
If your writing has started to feel heavier than it should, maybe you’re regulating every move. Maybe you don’t need another technique or schedule right now. Maybe you need to toss the football around without keeping score.
That’s one possibility to consider. It doesn’t mean every difficult writing day is a loss of play, or that burnout and skill problems never matter.
And finishing still has a place here. In 3 Nutrients of Finished Fiction, I explore what small finished pieces can give you. You can let curiosity lead something you make and enjoy reaching its end.
The invitation in this episode is to go play. Do something for you.
Fiction Writer’s Toolshed: Practical Tools for Authors is a Make Exist podcast hosted by Tim Kearney. It offers hands-on training for fiction writers to diagnose writing problems, build their skills, and finish more work.