F is for friends who do stuff together, U is for you and me, N is for anywhere and anytime at all down here in the deep blue sea!
The most important principle that I center in my writing is fun. Now, I must say that I’m not always successful in that, but that is the intention. Actually enjoying the activity of putting new words of fiction on the page is what drives everything else.
I am too fragile as a writer to “write to market” and too busy to figure out what that would look like. Magic schools? Romantasy? I am not against these things in principle, but if they haven’t already popped into my head, they’re not going to be what I write. Writing is not work. Writing is a hobby that I do for fun. I get to sit somewhere and entertain myself with vivid hallucinations and then record them in case anyone else might be interested.
Fun doesn’t mean “Wee!” all the time in either content or process. Tragedy can be fun. For me, melancholy almost always is. Pushing through something difficult can be fun. But whatever fun is, it remains key. I have to remember that especially for my current project… try to write down things that are fun, and try to not write down things that are not fun.