As I sat in Joey Beenz yesterday, with my notebook in hand and a whole lot of scribbled-on-looseleaf scattered about, I came to a realization. I always refer to my writing as “my work,” and I now believe that I am doing it a disservice by doing so. I was certainly engaged, even lost in the words, but the one thing I was not doing was “working.”
When I was in high school the one thing that drove my teachers nuts (well, one of the things…) was when I’d drift into a daydream. They hated it. I’d stop paying attention to their lesson, tune out their voice, and venture into another world of my own making. In this world, chances are, I was some sort of ninja or spy – and I had to save the school (to be honest, my latest crush) from some sort of terrorist attack. In my dreams, I was even more awesome than James Bond. Thing is, sooner or later I had to be snapped back to the real world. That’s when my teacher would ask, “What are you going to do after you graduate? Are you going to daydream for a career?”
Who knew. Really, the only difference between my daydreams as a teen and those as an adult is that I tend to take myself out of the equation. I now daydream about what would happen if Person X was placed in Situation A (X+A), to see what outcome Y might be. (X+A=Y) See, I paid some attention in algebra…
The disservice that I pay my daydreams now is that I call them work. Yuck! Who wants to force themselves to go to work, when they could be sleeping, or watching TV, or reading a book, or, well, daydreaming.
From now on I will no longer call my writing work but instead refer to it as “play”. Because, to be honest, that’s what it is. It’s my time to escape my reality – and spend some time in another world playing.
You are so right :)If you are a true writer at heart writing is not really work at all. A novel for example is just a very long daydream without the rude interuptions teachers are always creating (ugg I can relate to that!) lol and very good algebra.