Valentine wiped away a tear that had come out of nowhere, and then she laughed. “Remember how bad it smelled in B hallway?”
“Oh God, why did you have to bring that up, I had almost forgotten about that,” Vega said, wrinkling up her nose.
“Like old socks,” Valentine said.
“Like old socks that someone had peed on, maybe,” Vega said.
“Gross!” Valentine yelled but she was laughing harder than she had in weeks.
“Peed on and then farted on,” Vega kept going.
“Do you want to see me throw up?” Valentine said, trying to control both her laughter and her stomach.
Was the that greatest thing I will ever write? No, probably not. Did I have fun writing it? Absolutely.
Now, I could pretend that I am a “real writer” and talk about how that scene is a tension breaker that happens right before an important “story beat”, that also helps to show the growing bond between Vega and Valentine due to their shared struggles of a haunted house and the realization that their childhoods are giving way to adolescence, and then after that adulthood and blah, blah, blah, blah.
But that’s not why I wrote it. I wrote it because it was natural, it belonged there, and it was fun. I didn’t go back and review my notes before writing it, or worry about using “juvenile” humor, or offending anyone. I just did it. Cause I wanted to. Because I was playing.
That’s right, writing should be fun, it should be a game, it should be play. Play, after all, is just work that you enjoy doing. So if you think you should feel guilty because you’re having fun while writing, well get over it.
Yes, there are people out there who write about “serious” things who have books that make you hate the world, never trust anyone, and wear black clothes the rest of your life, but that’s not me. Writing those books is probably not fun, or play.
Are those books important? Yes. But I am not that type of writer, and I am not going to try and be that type of writer, even if it means I spend the rest of my life with only a dozen or so people who read my books. I would rather have fun than be a fraud. That doesn’t mean my characters will all be goofballs or that all my stories will take place in a circus. You can have fun and be “serious” when you need to be, like later on in the story, this happens:
“She balled up on the stairs and fell into a pit of sadness and despair so deep that there are no real words for it. I could type a lot of fancy stuff here to sound like a “real writer” but you already know how Vega feels right now. She wants her mom to know how much she loves her, how much she appreciates everything she has done, everything she has done alone, but now she is never going to get that chance. She will die in a stupid basement in a stupid haunted house on Willow street and her mom will never know how Vega really felt about her.”
So, when you sit down and start writing later, and you WILL start writing later, have fun. Let your characters breathe, let your setting open up and be amazing. Write what YOU want to write. Maybe you will blow a Game of Thrones Season 8 plot hole into your book, but you can fix that later.