Your story might move quickly or painstakingly but I shouldn't feel the effort it takes you to create those pages.

If I feel the pain of the decisions you had to make to find the right story, character, scene, sentence, or word - you've lost me.

By the way, for those who, like me, write computer programming books, replace the word "character" with "example".

Todd Bright linked to this short excerpt from an interview with Disney animator Eric Goldberg.

Goldberg describes the wonder of seeing Walter Lanz in the late fifties talk about how animation worked in shorts that were placed around his Woody Woodpecker cartoons.

He talked about the joy of taking Robin Williams audio improvisations and turning them into Aladdin's Genie.

In between Goldberg talked about watching animation on the screen that engaged him as a kid and a young adult.

"My favorite animation", he says, "is the animation that looks like it's enjoying itself on the screen."

What a wonderful feeling.

Strive to imbue your creation with what Goldberg calls, "inherent joy."