How to Reclaim the Joy of Writing with Zanni Louise

When was the last time you wrote something just for the hell of it?

Not because you were working on your manuscript

Just because it sounded FUN?

I don't know about you, but I find it surprisingly difficult to turn off the part of my brain that wants everything I do to be productive. Even when I'm writing for fun, there's often a little voice asking, "Okay, but is this actually going anywhere?"

And I know I'm not the only writer who struggles with this. 😂

So for this week's episode of No Mess, No Magic, I invited my dear friend Zanni Louise, an award-winning children's author with over 50 published books, to talk about writing like a kid again.

Zanni has spent years teaching creative writing to both children and adults, and one of the biggest differences she's noticed is how much easier it is for kids to just... CREATE.

They don't worry nearly as much about whether their ideas are good. They don't need every story to become something. They just play.

And somewhere along the way, a lot of us adults lose that.

In this episode, we get into:

• Why kids approach creativity so differently from adults (and what we can learn from them).
• How to stop overthinking and get back into the actual FUN of writing.
• Why experimenting with stories that go nowhere is NOT a waste of time.
• How Zanni sometimes writes fast enough to outrun her own self-doubt.
• Why you don't have to listen to every piece of feedback you receive.
• How to start trusting your own creative instincts again.

We also talk about Zanni's approach to nurturing creativity, which involves a gardening metaphor that I absolutely love, and she shares a pretty wild story about what happened when she finally stopped worrying so much about getting published.

Find Zanni:

Website: https://www.zannilouise.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zannilouise/

Zanni also shares details about her upcoming creative retreat in a French castle (yes, an actual CASTLE), where writers and illustrators will spend a week exploring their creativity together.

Check out Zanni's retreat here: https://tinyurl.com/mv9v98px