#41 - Beginner's Reflection(8) - Write Purely for Pleasure

Hi, everyone!

A great day for writing!

I am so exciting to write today, because I love today's topic.

First, let me ask you a question:

What is your ideal state while writing?

For me, my ideal state is to write freely, naturally and more importantly, creatively. In addition, I want this ideal state last for as long as possible.

I have set this ideal state as my ultimate writing goal.

So the next question would be:

How could I achieve this goal then?

I've got a great answer, it is why I am so exciting today.

The answer is to write purely for pleasure.

Here is how I got this answer:

We all want to be happy and having fun.

We hang out with friends, go to parties, watch movies or play video games, we spend so much time on those things and never get tired or bored.

So I asked myself: Why don't we write purely for pleasure like we play?

Some of you would say, "What!? I am writing for pleasure, what else am I writing for?" I understand that, I am too, I am not writing for school or work, but I am not writing purely for pleasure, I am writing for some purposes and goals, this is why sometimes I find it is so hard and painful for me to write, I must have done something wrong and I want to change that.

So what do I mean by "write purely for pleasure"?

To answer this question, another question would help:

What would you do when you hang out with friends?

You would answer, "Whatever we think is fun".

Yes, it is my answer too. "Write purely for pleasure" means that we write whatever makes us happy and in whatever way we like.

When we write in normal situations, we consider so many things, we have to care about information, knowledge, structure and so on, we have to pay a lot attention to what we write and how we write it, and we care so much about our readers. All those things we need to take care make the activity of writing so hard and difficult, not only we have to care about content, but also we have to care about how we organize the content and how we show the content. Our mind is constrained by so many things that it barely operate freely.

* Writing for pleasure would make our mind operate more naturally and more freely. *

How do we write for pleasure then?

Write for no purpose and for nobody but ourselves. This is the foremost attitude we should have for writing for pleasure. In this situation, there is no rule and no limition, we can write anything we want and in any way we like, play with our mind, imagination and words freely like children play with their toys.

Painters mess around with colors and shapes for inspiration; Dancers move their bodies awkwardly for improvisation; Musicians play instruments weirdly for creativity; Writers experiment words and forms for amusement.

After we have written for a while, our mind would tend to work in a specific way which greatly constraint our mind and limit our creativity.

Writing purely for pleasure will calm us down and get relaxed, and make our mind work more freely and naturelly, it will help us get rid of bad writing habits and replace with good habits, eventually it will make us become better and happier as writers.

There are so many things we could do for pleasure in writing, I hope you could share some of yours with us.

That's all for today's topic and hope you find it useful.

Be well and be happy!

^