After a lengthy day of running errand after errand, as well as dealing with the everyday humdrums that tend to punctuate my daily existence, I’ve somehow managed to write 1,039 words of my novel. It’s not the most I’ve ever written in a single evening, but given the particular chaos of this day, it feels like a peculiar triumph. And now, as I write this entry, I can feel it; my productivity is firing on all cylinders. That’s not to say the quality is necessarily my finest, but the volume with which I’m producing content is on a level that is most welcoming.

I’ve noticed this has become something of a trend over the last couple of months. I’m writing more consistently now than I have done in years. It’s hard to say with absolute confidence, but I suspect the last time I dedicated this much of my free time to writing would have perhaps been during my university days; slap bang in the midst of my dissertation and masters assignment. Sure, I’ve written countless essays and short stories in the decade and a half since, but they’ve been in short, spurious bursts that seldom have a consistent flow. I’d write for a little bit, then I’d do the complete opposite for a few years. There is something about the intensity and frequency with which I’ve been writing in recent times that feels different. I now have routines; dedicated writing blocks that are built into the structure of my days. There’s even set deadlines for every single project I’m working on; deadlines which to my surprise, I’m meeting with only a small handful of failures.

All of which leads me to wonder, what’s different inside my mind right now? Is it the fact that penning bi-weekly entries for Spotlight Indie is giving me a tangible target to work toward? I mean, sure, it’s helping, but that doesn’t explain all the non-Spotlight content I’m also creating. I mean my novel is technically a separate entity, after all. Perhaps the existence of this blog series is holding me to account, pushing me to stick with the project. After all, if I walk away from Synthetic Empires, I would have to find a way to explain my reasons in this series; something I know I’d feel ashamed to do. Again, it might be having a bit of a contributing impact, but then why am I also working tirelessly on my non-fiction essays that are not been documented in this line-up of articles? Surely there’s an overarching reason that’s keeping me so disciplined right now. Something feels different, and I sense it’s because my attitude to writing has shifted in recent times.

In the past, my writing journey has often been overridden by extrinsic motives; an urge to write primarily for externally materialistic motives. As icky as I feel to admit this, I’ve warped my passion into something it never once was; a business prospect. I started to see writing as a means to attain wealth. If I just got good enough, perhaps I’d make a heap of money from my talent and luck. I could get a nice house and stop having to worry about how I was going to pay my bills at the end of each month. Maybe it would even bring a nice shiny award or two to place on the extravagant shelving placed in my luxurious six-bedroom home.

In my mind, the process of writing became less about the act of expressing my personal inner world and more about pursuing financial security. Even my website ended up getting warped by this extrinsic goal. If my articles were thought-provoking and engaging enough, perhaps I could get a sizeable army of regular readers to help make the page more lucrative. Maybe I could set up a Patreon and spend my days making a killing off of offering up exclusive think-pieces about new Doctor Who episodes and the history of Hollywood. People would love me, and they’d be paying me for it!

The problem is, this sapped the joy out of writing for me. It turned it into an alternative form of playing the lottery. I’d work on an essay, then publish it into the digital wasteland, hoping that this would be the one to strike oil. Despite it being hurled into the vast abyss of the web, maybe fortune would land. Despite the improbable odds, perhaps this would be the retrospective or review to bring all that materialistic fortune to my doorstep. When of course, the unlikely didn’t occur, I felt dejected and frustrated. This, in turn, demotivated me.

In recent months, my brain has not been viewing my writing work from this perspective. Far from it, in actual fact. As I got into the habit of writing for myself – largely through the act of journaling and novel planning – I started remembering why I got into writing in the first place. I recalled the days in Junior School, when nine-year-old me marched up and down the classroom, excitedly telling my friends and classmates that I’d started working on my own book. Oh how I’d rush home to work on that daft story of mine. I’d folded some sheets of paper in half and spent my evenings scribbling characters and monsters onto each page. A Fright in the Night, it was called. I can even recall the smell of my felt pens as I scribbled each scene onto the crumpled paper. The book was about a disfigured alien that crash landed in a village. The alien sought refuge in an abandoned manor at the far end of the village. There, the creature would lure unsuspecting residents to his new abode, where he would possess them and turn them into murderers. I was so proud of that story, not because my classmates respected me (they thought I was a but weird for it), but because I was turning my daydreams into something I could consume. I was getting my ideas out of my head and crystallising them into something I could see and experience in the real world. I’d wake up during the middle of the night, excited at the thought of racing downstairs the following morning to carry on putting the book together.

This is why I love writing. It’s the reason I love creating fiction. It translates my imagination into something I can read and helps me make sense of my thoughts. The visions develop a logical flow, the vague faces occupying those hallucinations suddenly cultivate personalities. Notions develop depth and meaning. They become something more than fleeting images bouncing about inside my skull. Similarly, it’s the reason why I love writing non-fiction essays. It helps me figure out why exactly I love or hate a given film, tv show or novel. I can dive in and figure out the deeper meanings behind them. It helps me learn more about the creative process, the journey of other storytellers, and the reasons why particular stories resonate with me so deeply.

Writing for the joy of it is phenomenal because it channels the remarkable chaos of my brain into something that makes tangible sense. The process becomes an instrument that turns ideas into records. When I see writing as this wonderfully exciting and educational tool that enriches both the fantastical and educational sides of my existence, it becomes a lot easier to dedicate large portions of my free time to clocking up those word counts. Instead of throwing tantrums and shedding tears each time another post fails to go viral, I’m jumping for joy at the insights and epiphanies I’m getting through the mere act of tapping away at my keyboard.

Does this mean I will dedicate the rest of my days to penning thousands of words each and every evening? Probably not. Like all writers, I’ll continue to have my good and my bad days. I’m sure there will be many other periods in my life when the extrinsic urge will take control once again. Perhaps after a bad day at the office, or when my car decides to breakdown on me for next to no reason, I’ll start desperately hitting those keys in the hope that it will somehow bring me instant fortune. As of right now, however, I’m happy to report that I’m creating primarily for the sheer joy of it. I’m writing more than I’ve written in over a decade, and I’m discovering so much in the process. My novel, my essays, my personal journal, and my bi-weekly Spotlight posts are bringing me untold amounts of insight into my current state of mind. There is such a thrill in the process; a thrill I never seem to get when I’m wondering how on earth I’ll find a way to attain endless wealth through this lovely little hobby of mine.

Right now, I’m not trying to be a best seller. As it stands, I’m currently in the business of writing because I enjoy making sense of my thoughts. After several years of disappointment and daydreams of being a millionaire author, it’s nice to remember why I took up the hobby in the first place. Nine-year-old me wasn’t trying to get rich beyond her wildest dreams. She could barely comprehend the importance of money. Instead, she was just trying to scribble her daydreams onto a dozen folded sheets of crumpled A4 paper.