“Work is much more fun than fun.”   Noel Coward

When my son Alex was four or so, he was invited to a birthday party at a place called “The Fun Zone” somewhere in the middle of nowhere in New Jersey. I was driving him to the place and of course, we were late — and because it was me driving, also lost. Alex was sitting in the back all buckled up and wondering, I guess, when the fun was going to begin. At one point in this seemingly endless trip, Alex called out from the back seat, “Mom, you’re going the wrong way!” And he was right!

To this day, I have no idea how Alex figured this out. Maybe he saw some balloons outside as we were flying past it. Anyway, it all ended well. We got to the Fun Zone and there was tons of fun: slides and tunnels, piles of rainbow rubber balls, balloons and cake. Kids were going crazy!

Sometimes, we’re like those kids: We get so caught up in the fantasy worlds that the world creates to entice us and distract us that we forget that work can be more fun than fun and that we can enter our own special “Fun Zone” all the time and anywhere:

Fun is dreaming up a great idea for a story and going crazy with it!

Fun is catching wisps of characters and making them real for readers.

Fun is giving yourself the luxury of time to play around on the page.

Fun is cooking up a wild plot and then seeing where it ends up.

And most of all, fun is doing what you love and loving it as you do it.

So let’s enter the “Fun Zone” today — luckily, we can never get lost on the way! Write on!