Happy Writers Society: Daydreaming

Welcome to yet another installment of Happy Writers Society! The club house is so busy these days that I've considered building a tree house in the giant oak outside. There would be old carpet stolen from the neighbors who are remodeling, and some of those lawn chairs that fold in on you if you sit in them wrong. It would be VIP only, though, so don't get too excited.

I'd also like to invite any HWS members to guest post here on Fridays! If you have a happy writing message to give, please, relieve me of my club president duties and take over the mic. You can e-mail (see sidebar) your articles and I will let you know if you get to host.

Also, I'm having serious difficulties with my informercial, mostly because I've been, uh, busy. I've been waist-deep in daydreaming, and I'm starting paper edits next week on Transparent! This is why I should never, ever promise to vlog. Did you know making videos takes a lot of time? Because I have so much of that to spare.

But today I want to talk about this daydreaming thing.

You know how it is. You get this idea and think about it all day. And then you dream about it. All week you can't stop thinking about it. You can't help but float around, smiling like a fool because this idea is just so awesome! And it's all yours, perfect and shiny and wonderful.

I think we underestimate the power of that daydreaming phase. We scramble to write things down so we don't forget them. We rush into outlining or figuring out this nebulous, sparkly idea blob. But sometimes I wonder if that's such a good thing, making that idea tangible with words and chapters and rules. It means you don't have to keep it in your mind constantly anymore—you have it written down, so your mind is free to wander off onto other things.

I'm currently in the middle of an experiment. All I've done for the last two weeks is...daydream. I had this huge, incredible idea for a rewrite of one my very first books. Instead of tossing it out as crazy or writing it down as genius, I've let it stay there in my head.

And guess what? It keeps growing. The characters keep talking. The world keeps filling out. The plot is slowly coming together.

And I haven't done a thing but think.

But more important than that, daydreaming has helped me with something I haven't been able to feel for a long time—passion. Passion for writing, for this story, for the journey that is creating a book. I haven't felt this excited to write in a very long time, and I'm holding on to that for dear life.

Writing should be magical. Letting yourself live and explore a new world, new characters, is just as important as the writing and editing that comes after. I know we're often told we need to work hard to get published, but it can't be done at the expense of creativity and imagination. If you snuff that out, everything else suffers.

So if you feel like you've lost the passion for writing, I highly recommend some good ol' daydreaming.