One of the things I love about being a writer is taking control of my research and learning what I need to learn to write my stories. I love creating my own personal curriculum as well as my own commonplace books where I store what I’ve learned. Sometimes as writers, we need to do whatever it is we need to do to keep our creativity flowing, especially since there’s so much in the world that wants to hamper our imaginations. One thing I’ve learned to do to lean into my creativity is to romanticize my writing life. Romanticizing my writing life is the main way I keep the magic alive. I talked about it in Chapter Seven of my book of encouragement for writers, The Swirl and Swing of Words. Enjoy.

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Romanticizing your life is about accepting your life as it is while having some imaginative fun along the way. Writers should marvel at life, and we should capture that sense of wonder in our words. To capture it, we should experience it for ourselves. How will we share our sense of curiosity with others? As Helen Keller said, “As my knowledge of things grew, I felt more and more the delight of the world I was in.”

Imagine Helen Keller’s experience. As a deaf and blind person, she learned about the world slowly, understanding first water, and then everything else as it was introduced to her. How can we share our knowledge of the world with others?

Life on earth is an extraordinary gift that we’ve allowed to become mundane, which says more about our expectations than the wonder surrounding us. We see magnified lives on TV and in film and think our lives are boring because they aren’t filled with a manic amount of drama. We create drama for ourselves by overreacting to situations that don’t require such extreme levels of negativity. Dramas should be performed on stage or in front of a camera, not around the dining room table. Real life is about the commute to work, earning a living, household chores, family, and hobbies. Romanticizing your life simply means taking the time to notice what is good and making the most of it even when it isn’t exciting.

I’ve heard that romanticizing your life can be a way to make yourself the main character of your life’s story. As a Downton Abbey fan, on occasion I may allow myself to imagine that my afternoon tea is presented by Mr. Carson. Is it silly? Sure. But that flight of imaginative fancy allows me to find a certain joy in the moment I might not have felt otherwise. Writers have overactive imaginations—that’s why we write, after all. We should give in to that imagination when the time is right. Do I enjoy my tea a little more if I imagine Carson has brought it? Of course I do. 

I must have been living under a rock because I discovered the Dark Academia aesthetic only within the past year. I’m older than the general audience for such an aesthetic since I’m at the stage where I’ve been an adjunct professor instead of a student, but still, I love the ambiance. I live in an apartment, so I can’t paint my walls or add wallpaper, but I added some small details to my desk to make it more academia-like. I have a small bust of David and LED candles (as I’m writing this, my cat Poppy is sitting on my desk, and I would rather not set her tail on fire with a real candle). I have old books on my bottom shelf and a pencil holder that looks like an old typewriter. I also have my white quill that I got from the Charles Dickens Museum in London. If I had to label my style, I’d say it’s Light Academia since my walls are cream-colored and my desk is white. While I’m at my desk I feel like an academic. I am an academic, but I feel like one as I sit here. With more than 20 years of experience teaching students from kindergarten through university, a love of learning has always been at my core.

Is reading an exciting pastime? Not to watch from the outside. Seeing someone reading is boring, but what goes on in the mind of a reader is something the most action-packed film can’t replicate. While I read, I’m living another life in another way in another time. Finding a good book is one of the easiest ways to romanticize your life as you find new characters to make friends with.

Sometimes, people romanticize the writing life in unhealthy ways. They take Hemingway’s example too literally and think you need to be drunk to write. Or they think the old cliché about being a starving artist is true. Still, writers can gain a lot by romanticizing their lives. I don’t mean presenting a false writer self where you pretend to be something you’re not. Negative romanticism means giving into the perception of the tortured artist too broke to eat properly sitting alone in a shadowy loft drinking bottles of vodka. Positive romanticism means that I find joy in the parts of writing that would otherwise feel so mundane that I might stop writing altogether. Sitting here at my desk, listening to a Dark Academia playlist I found on YouTube and enjoying the moody piano music, drinking a cup of Earl Grey Creme tea I found at a loose-leaf tea shop two miles from my house—these are things that help me romanticize this moment as I write my dreaded first draft so that the process feels easier than it would have otherwise.

It’s easy to focus on the negative parts of writing, but it’s important to keep in touch with the sense of accomplishment that comes with putting one word after another. I love the challenge of pulling together my story puzzle where I have these disconnected pieces, and it’s up to me to figure out how everything fits. I love to play with the shades and shadows of words the way a painter loves to play with shades and shadows of colors. Sitting here, wondering if I’m saying something to the best of my ability, guessing how to get from Point A to Point Z, propelling my way through a shitty first draft that needs endless revising—all of it can be frustrating to the point where I wonder why I continue to do this to myself. When I romanticize my stories, I slip into this other world as if I were living in it. That’s when I know my writing is going well—I’ve left the real world behind for this creation of my imaginings. I take delight in my fantasy world when I’m able to frame my writing tasks in a way that makes them less burdensome and more fun.

I’m not talking about toxic positivity, the kind of magical thinking where we pretend that anything negative—emotional or otherwise—doesn’t exist. Terrible things happen. That is the reality of human life on earth. We shouldn’t strive to live in a place of light where there is no darkness. Such a place doesn’t exist in the real world. PaulMcCartney said, “But with writers, there’s nothing wrong with melancholy. It’s an important color in writing.” When our hearts are breaking, instead of hiding from the pain, we should allow ourselves to feel the darkest depths of our emotions. Sometimes, life feels too hard to see good anywhere. We do the best we can at any given moment. To paraphrase Maya Angelou, when we did, we did the best we knew how to do, and when we knew better, we did better.

Charles Baudelaire said, “Always be a poet, even in verse.” Find poetry everywhere. It’s there, even if you have to search for it. When I have a quiet moment, I allow myself to embrace whatever beauty I see directly before my eyes. My two cats sleeping on the blanket still hot from the dryer. The powder blue sky outside my window with puffing clouds. The upbeat crescendos of a Mozart symphony. Rather than wishing things were different from what they are, I accept them. And then I ring Carson for tea.