Fun? Forget The Wizards & Get Back To Your Own Work

I’ve been hearing a lot online about how work should be play and we should all be having more fun, especially on social media.

So are we all having fun yet?

I think everyone has good intentions in spreading these messages. I don’t think anyone is trying to make anyone else — who may or may not be feeling like their work is play — feel badly.

But these fun-fun-fun messages might make you feel badly if:

• You are just getting started in your writing career
• You are overwhelmed by the complexity of choices available to advance your career
• You don’t yet feel confident in your ability to write well
• You don’t yet feel confident in your ability to use social networks
• You are still trying to find your regular work rhythm
• You have no idea which parts of your day are supposed to be “fun” parts that everyone else is talking about
• You feel guilty because the parts of your day that are fun for you are not the same parts that others seem to think are the most fun

The biggest problem today is that writers are going to be mightily confused if they try to follow the media-worship du jour as an indication of where to set your sights for success. Until now, writers tend to set their goals according to what the media tells us we should want. (This is a destructive cycle in and of itself but one that is tough to avoid in our society.)

In the old days, we all wanted a traditional book deal (usually before we were ready). We wanted to go from anonymous to best-selling, internationally known author because that’s the pipe dream that the media always fed to us. Writers who got book deals and were then on track to a concrete goal and (hopefully) future fame, were ecstatic to have a towering but concrete goal.

Then, the blog-to-book-deal became the ultimate goal. Blogggers flooded online hoping to become the next Dooce or Brogan phenom. I think most bloggers have figured out by now, just as most traditionally published authors have also figured out, that’s it’s far better to create your own modest success rather than try to be someone else or covet their success.

These days, a self-published book that hits a million sales and garners a traditional deal a la Amanda Hocking sounds just fine to those who are looking to the Internet for their daily dose of advice. And there are plenty of online gurus to supply this kind of fluffy, you-can-go-from-zero-to-hero and make it big-big-big kind of baloney.

But what I want to say is this:

Your fun IS your work. Your work IS your fun.

The truth about most beginning writing professionals today is that we don’t even know what we are hoping to create yet. We are creating careers, but even we don’t know, in the big picture, where we are going with all this.

And this is perfectly okay, as long as you are developing legitimate communications skills and finding whatever your own momentum is supposed to look like. Because once you start to become more confident that’s when the fun starts to kick in.

But if you are not doing your work because you are so busy with  fan worshiping and guru following, you can’t possibly be having any real fun. Or if you are, it’s the kind that is going to give you a major hangover when the ride is over (especially if you are giving your power away).

Because that nice, shiny guru, who told you that you could make it big if you just did this or just did that is going to turn out to be like The Wizard in the Wizard of Oz, just some schmoe who blew in on a balloon from Kansas and decided to set up shop.

So, if you want to have fun — real fun, creative fun, and not the guru-adoration kind. Then forget the wizards and get back to YOUR work. That’s where the fun is. That’s where it’s been hiding all along.

Avoid the people who want to help you to become a household name overnight. Instead just try to become a name in your own house first. Then take it one step further, one day at a time. Because that’s the kind of success that lasts and has integrity.

So, be like Dorothy. Forgive yourself if you’ve gone on any guru- or latest-greatest innovation misadventures and settle down, settle in, and get back to yourself and the cultivation of your own potential.

Slow and steady gets the writing done.

Slow and steady learns the skills.

Slow and steady builds the writing career that is going to last.

And remarkably, slow and steady really is the fun that you might be looking for somewhere else.

Because fun begins at home. And there is no place like home…just like Dorothy said.

~ Team Jenkins