1.1 Once upon a time—but not anymore
The community of writers has come a long way.
I remember when I started out decades ago, there were so many famous authors preaching the gospel of struggle…
Writing is difficult, always difficult, even torture, and it never gets better.
They were…
Catastrophizing.
At the same time, those authors liked to tell us how special we writers are…
We’re good at observing, we take in every detail, we feel deeply, we understand human psychology in a way other people don’t.
This is…
Romanticizing.
But why this self-praise? Where does it come from? I’m thinking it might be compensation…
If I have to suffer, at least I get to feel special.
In fact, just because I’m a writer, I’m one of the most special people in the world. All I have to do is jot down sentences on a page and I get to be a member of this elite tribe who, because many of us are good with words, can lavish ourselves with self-congratulations.
But the worst of it was when these authors started…
Romanticizing their catastrophizing.
Like…
I’m special because I’m suffering.
If you believe that, why would you ever want to let go of your suffering? Why wouldn’t you want to suffer even more so you can be even more special?
But…
That was then and this is now.
The internet is such a mixed bag. It’s both a blessing and a curse. But there are at least three blessings it’s brought the writing community…
1. You can publish your work online weekly even daily and get immediate feedback.
No more waiting years to publish and to get a response from a large number of readers.
Now you can publish on your own blog or Medium or Substack or lots of other platforms, which means you can get useful feedback constantly and make much faster progress.
2. You get to be in direct, personal, vigorous, even intimate conversation with readers.
Of course, on some platforms, the comments section is a zoo. But it’s quite possible to create a community of followers who appreciate you and then with their responses to your writing help you get better.
3. Writers are in constant conversation with each other.
Writers are a community in a way they never used to be. They give each other support. The old image of writers working in lonely isolation, just doesn’t haven’t to be true anymore.
Add these up and…
Writing is so much more fun for so many more people than it used to be.
Of course, since writing is an art and a craft, it will always take dedication and discipline and hard work. But bringing in play makes the hard parts work better.
And…
There’s something nurturing about hard work done right.
There’s pleasure in it.
Now what about this site? It’s very much part of the positive trajectory we’re witnessing in the writing community.
But it’s not comprehensive. I’m not a writing teacher, I’m only telling you about one thing I discovered.
And it…
Started with a surprise.
I had spent years working with abused kids, and one day I happened on a book about play therapy and read the stories in it. Then re-read them again and again, because…
I love those stories. I just love them.
I’m not talking about casual, easygoing therapy that stays on the surface.
What inspires me is the deep kind where the therapist uses play to help kids deal with the trauma of abuse and neglect and with the daily struggle of living in a seriously dysfunctional family.
I call this…
Primal-play therapy.
Primal because it goes deep and deals with the toughest issues.
Once I got hooked, primal play started showing up in my writing like a puppy who wouldn’t leave me alone, “Come on, let’s have some fun.”
So then…
I got serious about play.
And I got strategic. I started bringing specific play therapy techniques over into my writing. I ran experiments to see what helped and what didn’t. Actually all of it helped. And soon I was calling this…
Primal-play writing.
And now it means the world to me. Here’s why.
If you’ve looked at my Asking book, you know that I’m on a mission to upgrade love, which I believe is as big a challenge as humans could ever take on.
As part of this mission, I do deep dives into the human psyche. I go down to the bottom of the human operating system and this is treacherous territory where you come face to face with the source of human evil.
So the issues I focus on are dark and difficult. But primal-play works for me. It keeps me going against the odds. It lifts me up on my hardest days. It provides me with a constant undercurrent of joy.
And I’m thinking, if it works for me, then…
Maybe it will work for other nonfiction writers tackling dark and difficult issues.
And…
For fiction writers doing deep dives into the human psyche.
And…
If it works for us, then maybe it will work for lots of different kinds of writers.
I believe if you care deeply about writing, if it’s your gift, if it’s how you express yourself, if it’s a core part of your identity…
Then you deserve to have a happy relationship with it.
