Keeping it fun

I've been having a slump lately where working on my script has felt like... torture,  a nightmare, work.

Despite that fact I am writing for my own free will, unpaid, un-agented and unpublished, there has been a heavy cloud over my head and lead in my hands when I think of working on it leaving me feeling very flat indeed.

There has been a kind of self-imposed pressure laying on me. Pressure to finish, pressure to write well, pressure to write full-stop!

Every time I open my laptop I stare blankly at the screen. Awful.

I write because I love to write. Usually.

So I decided to not write until I felt that love return. It's been awhile. Even my blogs have suffered.

Last week while tutoring a friends 10 year old daughter in reading and writing, we were talking about a task she had been given in class to pretend to be a reporter and write a story. The teacher had given them a topic (which I will divulge later- you'll see why) and the young girl had written 8 words and then refused to write any more saying she couldn't think of anything to write.

We discussed how I come up with ideas, where they come from etc, and as I had no pressure on myself I spouted into an impromptu story on the given topic. I held no reins and just let the words tumble. I had the young girl in hysterics.

It was FUN.

From there the story idea stuck in my head and the next day before I knew what I was doing, a new version of the story was pouring from my finger-tips onto my pretty white screen and I was enjoying writing. I was writing a short-story for fun, for me, for no other reason than because I wanted to tell the story.

I wasn't writing with the thought of publication, or entering a competition, or any of that. But, for the joy of creating something from almost nothing. From a little idea. The only place I thought of "publishing" it was on here and again: for FUN.

I realised this is the spark that I had lost. That I cannot write without. That I never want to lose again!

I needed to find a way to write for the pleasure of writing, writing something that is so completely different from what I'm working on, that I can share with my friends, peers, fellow writers, just for the purity and joy of it all!

Perhaps short-story writing is my way of finding that inner-child-writer. The little voice that has always been there but sometimes I just can't hear.
Different from inspiration, which is everywhere, as even with beautiful music and amazing pictures I have still been putting the pen down and shutting the laptop. But when I was writing the silly story I was happy. I didn't need anything else. Just the sounds and pictures in my own mind.

What do you write for fun? Do you lose your spark and how do you get it back?