Dean Wesley Smith drew some conclusions while writing his latest novel in five days, this time while on a road trip, among them that most 2026 authors are lazy — Come on, one hour of writing a day? — and scared — how many rewrites do you need to “make it perfect”? — plus they don’t seem to be having fun.
That was me until just a few days ago, when I reminded myself that writing is not sitting down and showing up for work — it’s diving into PlayTime.
You’re creating universes out of whole cloth and inventing stories about people who never existed, tossing them into situations that can be uncomfortable, challenging, or downright dangerous. Sounds pretty cruel if you take it too seriously, but it’s make believe, people, about make believe people!
There is no student who was targeted throughout middle and high school by an evil mastermind. There is no teenage girl who was drafted into a nationally televised fight to the death against other children. No time traveling 21st century woman ever married a man who was born 350 years ago.
But making believe they exist is fun. If it’s not fun, why would anybody do it? The people who write because they want to make money are broke most of the time. Come to think of it, the people who write for the fun of it are broke most of the time, too. Making money is usually a natural side effect of writers having so much fun their joy was infectious.
It’s true — writers generally do not become rich or famous, whether they had fun writing or not. So you may as well have as much fun as you can.
And so I will conjure a baby dinosaur who encounters a time traveling woman who adopts him as a pet. The golden retriever loves him immediately, but the Shih Tzu has issues with the idea.
What if I deliver my own high school student who pines for a magical girl who happens to be an evil mastermind? Oooooh …
Look over here, a country where young men and women are drafted to compete in a golf tournament or some other bloodless but addictive sport. Um … Clearly this particular concept needs work, and so it’s disqualified from PlayTime until the idea migrates to a soul who can have fun with it.
Why do people devour stories about psycho killers and prehistoric creatures and death duels and broken hearts? Ray Bradbury (who else) wrote a poem, “We have our arts so we won’t die of truth.” Reality has its share of real monsters, and so we crave stories where we can be fairly confident the monsters will be vanquished before the final credits roll.
Since the beginning of time, our myths and fables have been about good overcoming the dark and the light blinding evil. You do remember those two kids who shoved a nasty old woman into an oven, right?
And seeing monsters lose is fun. Face it, we can’t wait for George Bailey to gain the upper hand on Mr. Potter. The psycho killer rots in jail or falls off a huge cliff with spiky rocks and a raging fire at the bottom. The evil mastermind’s annihilation after seven books (or eight movies) provides a magnificent catharsis.
So lead me not to a work station to toil and sweat. Let me run to my play station (lower case), where I gaggle with imaginary friends and cruise highways inside the part of my cranium where hippocampus and prefrontal cortex cavort.
