A couple of weeks ago, I filmed a video interview with my six-year-old daughter on one of the elements of creativity: play.
She’s kind of an expert on play. Most kids are, but she had some really fantastic and insightful points about how adults need to relearn how to play. You can watch the full video on YouTube or over on the Creative Wellness Retreats blog, but today, I wanted to explore something she said that really hit me hard.
You can’t go back to kids again.
As her mother, let me translate: You can’t go back to being a kid again.
And yet, as writers, we use one of the biggest tools that a kid has at their disposal: our imaginations. Imaginative play has been proven to be one of the building blocks of not just creativity, but also the understanding that our thoughts differ from other people’s thoughts, overall social and language development, the ability to express and work through difficult emotions, physical development, and a higher level of problem solving.
Think about that.
Imaginative play is the building block of being a successful adult. And as writers who are deeply involved in creative work, shouldn’t we still be involved in imaginative play?
Imaginative play as an adult.
My daughter had a good point. You can’t go back to being a kid again. But you can go back to diving deep into pretend worlds and made-up characters and…wait!
We already do that.
But…I do wonder how much of our writing is surface work and how much is deep work. If you were to allow yourself to go deep into a daydream that existed in your story’s world, what would happen to your writing? If you became less concerned about sentence structure, power words, scene and sequels, story beats, etc., (which can be taken care of during editing) and just fell into your own story, do you think you’d be able to write a deeper story?
Without an imagination, kids have a hard time playing and creating. Without playing and creating, it’s hard to build a strong imagination.
So why have most of us adults given up playfulness in our lives?
Take a play break.
If you’re feeling burned out in your work, if you are tired, if you don’t feel joy in your writing, or maybe you’ve just hit a block, take a play break.
Take twenty minutes to free draw, use crayons or colored pencils and color a picture, go work on a puzzle or skip around the house. Turn on some of your favorite music and dance. Like Phoebe-from-FRIENDS dancing, totally uncoordinated, who-cares-who’s-watching dancing. Figure out a way to have fun again and play with your creativity.
Creative play builds creative muscles which leads to strength. Stronger stories, stronger characters, stronger reader impressions. A stronger creative life.
I want that.
We can’t go back to kids again. But we can relearn how to play.
What do you think, WITS readers? What do you do to play?
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About Christina Delay
Christina Delay is the hostess of Cruising Writers and the brand new Creative Wellness Retreats as well as an award-winning author represented by Deidre Knight of The Knight Agency. When she's not cruising the Caribbean, she's dreaming up new writing retreats to take talented authors on giving into the demands of imaginary people to tell their stories.
About Creative Wellness Retreats
Creative Wellness Retreats exist to teach you practical tools to go deeper into your creativity and learn how to protect yourself from burnout and creative blocking. If you’re already in burn out mode, our retreats for authors and artists will offer channels for healing your creativity, using effective techniques that are driven by your MBTI type.
Cruising Writers brings writers together with bestselling authors, an agent, an editor, and a world-renowned writing craft instructor writing retreats around the world.
Cruise with us to Grand Cayman this October with Kristen Lamb (Bestselling Author and Marketing Jedi), Rachel Caine (Bestselling Author of 50+ books), Deidre Knight (The Knight Agency), and Alex Sehulster (St. Martin’s Press).
It’s nothing personal against Coloradans, but I’ve started to sigh heavily when I hear this one word: Denver. For those of you with many friends in the Romance Writers of America, you know what I’m talking about. Next week, thousands of writers will descend on Denver, Colorado for the RWA annual conference — the one I was planning to go to, until I discovered the date conflicted with a previous family engagement.
Alas, the answer to “Will you be in Denver, Julie?” is a decided “No.” Followed by that sigh.
And it’s not just RWA. Other summer conferences include ThrillerFest, Killer Nashville, Writers’ Digest, Writers Police Academy, and more. It’s summer conference season, and if you’re not going to any of them, you can start to feel left out. Like everyone else is attending the Cool Kids Party while you’re stuck at home staring at blank screens and wishing your book would write itself.
Or maybe I just informed some of you that it’s summer conference season, and now you’re feeling crappy about it when you hadn’t before. Sorry about that. If it helps, I give you permission to get some Ben & Jerry’s therapy.
But is there something—besides a pint of ice cream—you can you do about this Left Out feeling? How can you also benefit from all those other writers going to conferences you won’t be attending?
1. Stay connected on social media.
You might be surprised how much advice gets shared on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other forums. There's a lot of insight to be gained by simply reading what attendees share. Most conferences have a hashtag you can follow to stay in the loop. Figure out which ones you’re interested in, then track the hashtags and see what’s being said.
Feel free to ask follow-up questions if a presenter's insight is shared and you want to know more. Yes, it won’t be the same as being in the workshop, but you can get some golden nuggets of wisdom just by tuning into those social media channels connected to the conference.
2. Ask friends to share what they learned.
Most people love sharing what they’re learning, so find friends who are attending those conferences and ask them what they gained. When they return, you can go at this several ways — from taking a friend to lunch and letting them spill what they learned, to asking someone for notes from a specific workshop you’re interested in, to simply opening up a conversation with a group about the conference.
Your local writing group could also have a debriefing from those who attended a conference, so they can spread the wisdom they gleaned. If your group isn’t amenable to that option, host a gathering yourself. You can feed a decent-sized group for a reasonable amount and ask your guests to fill you in on what you missed.
3. Order the recordings.
Some conferences, including RWA National, offer recordings of workshops. Since the recordings are completed by professionals, the audio quality tends to be good, and you can hear for yourself exactly what was covered.
You miss out on the camaraderie and opportunity to ask your own questions, etc., but you might get more content than if you attended in person, since workshops often overlap.
4. Take your own writing retreat.
Another option is to skip out on trying to connect with the conference and go the other direction: Retreat. With “everyone else” at the conference, this might be the perfect time for you to log more time with your work in progress. Just avoid the social media where conference attendees are sharing the fabulous time they’re having and do what they’re likely not doing — write a bunch of words.
Tuning out that buzz, you might find yourself taking great strides toward finishing your project. Let them have their conference. You don’t care because you’re on your own personal writing retreat, and you’ll have lots to show for it!
Whatever option you choose, I still sanction Ben & Jerry’s — or my favorite, Blue Bell ice cream — as a good companion for your journey.
Are you going to a summer writing conference? If so, how can you share with others what you’ve learned? If not, how can you benefit from others going?
ABOUT JULIE
Julie Glover writes mysteries and young adult fiction. Her YA contemporary novel, SHARING HUNTER, finaled in the 2015 RWA® Golden Heart®. When not writing, she collects boots, practices rampant sarcasm, and advocates for good grammar and the addition of the interrobang as a much-needed punctuation mark.
Julie is represented by Louise Fury of The Bent Agency. You can visit her website here and also follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
There are certain words that make most writers break into a cold sweat. “Synopsis” is one of them.
Until recently, the thought of writing a synopsis would send me into fits of, “screw this, I’m going to become a unicorn farmer.” After all, I’m a pantser, I can’t possibly write about a story I have only a vague idea about.
The first time my agent asked for a proposal that included the first 50 pages and a synopsis, I panicked. Full out, hyperventilating into a bag of gummy bears panic. Once I was done with the gummy bears (and post-gummy Pepto Bismol), I sat down to write what needed to be written.
It was, my friends, a writing-life changing moment!
Here’s what I learned …
1) A synopsis is a brainstorming tool.
When a story idea nestles in my brain, I have various bits and pieces but no idea how they fit with each other. I’ve tried character sketches and scene cards and three-act structure diagrams and pretty much every how-to out there. None work for me. What works for me, is letting the ideas marinate until the story comes together. I open a word document, type “chapter 1” and work things out as I get there.
So, the idea of writing about a story that was still forming, was slightly south of crazy. First time out was indeed painful. But at one point, I stopped agonizing over knowing what was coming, and let ideas jumble out of my brain. I’ve written before about mind-mapping. Free-flowing with a synopsis is just connecting the dots, where the dots are the branches of the mind-mapping exercise.
By not stressing over the structure, I can play around with ideas. I fantasize where the story could go and I don’t limit myself by rules or expectations.
2) A synopsis is not your novel.
In writing the synopsis, I’m telling my story’s story. I’m looking down at the game-board for my story and guiding the characters along the chutes and ladders. I’m writing from a different POV, and from a different level of intimacy with my story and characters. I don’t worry about whether the story has a sexy first line or a plump middle. I’m not focused on hooks and perfect phrasing.
By not agonizing about wordsmithing the content, I allow the ideas to pour out of my mind and settle onto the game-board as they see fit.
3) A synopsis is not your GPS system.
It doesn’t have to get you to a specific spot, just in a general direction. Sometimes you land on a chute that takes you one way, sometimes it’s a ladder that takes you in the opposite direction. And that’s okay. The point of the synopsis is to give the agent/editor/you a sense of the story’s purpose.
With a synopsis written, my next step is to storyboard the chapters. Before I start to write a chapter, I review the synopsis and what I’ve done in the previous chapter, then sketch out what the next chapter will look like. Sometimes the synopsis is on the money, other times, the chapter that needs to be written is completely different from what I thought would happen next.
The synopsis acts as a prompt, which can be a godsend on days when that blinking cursor tries to hypnotize the words right out of my brain.
The best advice I was given about writing a synopsis: “Relax.”
My advice to you: “Try it.”
I’m still a free-soloing pantser. But I’ve also discovered the joy of a synopsis sanity saver.
Okay, tell me … are you camp synopsis or would you rather walk on legos than write one? For those who are camp synopsis, do you have any other tips for writing them that will help nudge a reluctant synopsis-writer?
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About Orly
Orly Konig is an escapee from the corporate world where she spent roughly sixteen years working in the space industry. She is the founding president of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association, a member of the Tall Poppy Writers, and a quarterly contributor to the Writers In The Storm blog.
She’s the author of Carousel Beach (May 2018) and The Distance Home (May 2017).
