My creative juices are up.   I am enjoying writing like I’ve never enjoyed it before.  This is not just  a one day phenomenon.  It happens almost every time I put pen to paper.

This wasn’t always the case. I used to find writing excruciating. I remember many times during my first years at university, when I would lie on my bed either depressed or in tears about an essay I had to do. I loved the research but hated the writing.

Later I worked as a journalist and editor, and even wrote and published a book.  But most of the time I found the writing process painful.

So I decided to stop until I could find a way to make it fun. I quit my journalist job. I wrote very little for years.

Then I started doing daily pages  as suggested by Julia Cameron’s in “The Artist Way”. I did this on a regular if not daily basis, for several years. Later, I took a few courses in creative writing.

I began to learn how to write without my inner critic having the upper hand.  My writing started to free up, and when I worked in groups where we wrote together, other participants often expressed amazement at how quickly and freely I wrote.  My writing became fresher and more fluid.

Finally after all these years, my efforts to free up the writing process have paid off.  Whenever I write now it’s fun and motivating.

To help you love the writing process too, I’ll be blogging about my experiences in making writing a pleasurable process.  Look out in the next few days as I sum up up the strategies that have worked best. It took years for me to learn this stuff. It doesn’t have to be that way for you!

So here’s the first tip and probably the most important. Write your first draft of anything as fast as you can without editing it at all.  I know its hard but do your best not to judge the quality of what you are writing. It may seem like drivel and like utter nonsense . You may be repeating yourself. But just go on writing. Then leave it for a day or two.  Believe me you’ll be pleasantly surprised when you come back.

You may have heard this tip before. It is deceptively simple, but it works. Look out for my next blog posts where I’ll share more of the ways I’ve found to make writing a pleasure not a pain.