Find Your Way Back to Joy in Writing

A writing life can be challenging. Sure, there are blissful days (even weeks) when you fall into your stories like you’re riding a raft with a solid paddle and no leaks, and you don’t tip over and the shining sun makes glorious rainbows in the white water’s wild spray. But there are also those days author Anne Lamott notes, “…when it all feels pointless and pitiful, like Sisyphus with cash-flow problems.” (Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird (1994)) And keep in mind, Anne Lamott is kind and funny and truthful.

So how do we face these ups and downs and keep writing?

Ask for help by inviting Joy to the writing party. No, you won’t find her number on a bathroom stall. Joy is an insider. She’s a friend of Glee and a pal of Gusto and she comes from within. All she asks is that you believe in the story you’re telling—and keep the faith even when that paddle slips through your fingers and your raft springs a leak. Because it will—and you may feel like Sisyphus with bad credit—but lost paddles are part of the creative process, and your job is to find your way back to faith in your story. Find your way back to Joy.

When you seek your Joy, you’ll feel better, and facing the blank page won’t be as terrifying as checking under the bed for monsters. With Joy, you’ll smile and laugh more, and your back won’t ache, and your butt will tend to stick to the chair longer than if you’re miserable and depressed. Joy will also tell your self-doubting, self-conscious gremlins to f—k off!

And Joy brings more benefits than simply feel-good creative mojo (although very little is better than plunking down to write with a tickle in your belly). Additionally, writing with gusto and glee permeates your storytelling and fuels your distinctive writing voice with—wait for it—Joy!

James Scott Bell, a critically acclaimed author-and generous teacher-writes about the connection between voice and joy in his concise how-to, Write Your Novel From The Middle: A New Approach: “…I do think there is something to be said for trying to coax out a little more voice, even though you can never quite nail it down to pure technique. So what is it that does the coaxing? In a word, joy.”

Bell goes on to share the following quote from Clayton Meeker Hamilton: “’In the great storytellers, there is a sort of self-enjoyment in the exercise of the sense of narrative; and this, by sheer contagion, communicates enjoyment to the reader. Perhaps it may be called (by analogy with the familiar phrase, “the joy of living”) the joy of telling tales. The joy of telling tales which shines through Treasure Island is perhaps the main reason for the continued popularity of the story. The author is having such a good time in telling his tale that he gives us necessarily a good time in reading it.’ (Clayton Meeker Hamilton, A Manual of the Art of Fiction (1919)”

Bestselling, uber-prolific author, Dean Koontz, in the first book in his Odd Thomas novels, has his young, modest and gallant hero Odd share this advice from his mentor, a bestselling author named Little Ozzie. “’Give the narrative a lighter tone than you think it deserves, dear boy, lighter than you think you can bear to give it,” he instructed before I began to write, “because you won’t find the truth of life in morbidity, only in hope.’” I love this quote. And I believe it’s true.

But does this mean we should only write about the light stuff, the pretty stories, the fluff? Well, in answer to that, if you saw me now, you’d know I look a lot like the screamer in Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” I’ll let Anne Lamott answer this: “We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. Otherwise, you’ll just be rearranging furniture in rooms you’ve already been in. Most human beings are dedicated to keeping that one door shut. But the writer’s job is to see what’s behind it, to see the bleak unspeakable stuff, and to turn the unspeakable into words—not just into any words but if we can, into rhythm and blues.”

I’ll add one more favorite quote from my dear friend, amazing teacher, and bestselling author Alan Watt (author of The 90-Day Novel). I’ve paraphrased from a lecture during which Al mentioned this advice from his acting teacher: “Seek the joy of your own experience, even if your character is dying inside.” And whether you are writing comedy or tragedy, the stakes for your characters are always life and death!

So, this 2024, go with the gusto and find your way back to Joy! When we writers love our characters and our stories, keep the faith, and fully embrace writing with Joy—whether we are charming readers, breaking their hearts, making them laugh, and/or scaring their pants off—the Joy of “gusto mojo” communicates inexorably to readers. Toss in memorable characters, emotional truth, your personality, and style, a tight story told from your heart—and you just might end up with readers clamoring for more, more, more!