Playfulness Explored

 

Plato said, "You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation."

Play promotes curiosity, seeks novelty, teaches perseverance, and invites creativity. It even nourishes the immune system. Each person has a unique play personality. When one gets in touch with it, the pleasures and fun abound. 

Animals have a lot to teach human beings. If you've ever dangled a string in front of a cat or played ball with a dog, you've seen their playful expressions in action. 

In his book, THE GENESIS OF ANIMAL PLAY, Gordon Burghardt, a psychology professor at the University of Tennessee, reports playful behavior in lizards, turtles, and birds. Even fish have been known to amuse themselves.

Stuart Brown, one of the authors of PLAY: HOW IT SHAPES THE BRAIN, OPENS THE IMAGINATION AND INVIGORATES THE SOUL, believes in the necessity of play for children and adults. Brown's organization, the National Institute for Play, focuses on making human play a "credentialed discipline in the scientific community." 

Children have lost touch with tree climbing and scouting for discoveres in nature. Computer games attract them more than wriggly creatures, birdsong, or flying clouds. 

Nagel Jackson writes, "The truly great advances of this generation will be made by those who can make outrageous connections, and only a mind which knows how to play can do that." 

Play in a freewriting exercise reveals attracts ideas that will evolve into stories and poems. Problems find solutions through activities that have no specific goal. They flow in a fun process. 

In today's fast-paced world, taking time to play - reall play - feels frivolous to many. 

BECOME PLAYFUL. You may have to work at it.

How will you play in your writing today? Dangle words and images, make connections and search for nuances. 

A few play starters:

What would you do with a teapot, a jar of maple syrup, a parakeet and a harmonica?

Create a story about a cardboard box you can crawl into, a blanket, a flashlight, bananas and daisies.

Go for a walk and choose five items. Touch, smell, listen and notice their characteristics. Play and Write.

Make faces at someone and write their reactions.

Teach a mockingbird your school's fight song. 

Create a sand castle with a crocodile.

Go for FUN today.

Axe Adjectives

Avoid the use of adjectives to describe. If you wish to gain the reader's attention, show an action. Why and how does an event occur? Reveal it in detail like a photographer or painter. Watch a sunset for beautiful and express its qualities. Search for metaphors and similes. Do the ridges appear like fans or curtains and then what? Does a scent arouse attention?  Reveal how the sound of dew hitting the rose ping or pop or snuggle the petals.  Sense of focus and specificity intrigue. Express the opposite of beauty to enrich the experience. Create an image that reveals a judgment. Include weeds that blossom and stretch themselves beyond the concrete?  A   S   T   O  N   I   S   H Active verbs move sentences Sentence variety relieves the reader Tickles with metaphor engages communication Oh !  get rid of adjectives and adverbs Nourish with wonder  Ignore words like beautiful Simple works Help the reader into your story A   S   T   O  U  N   D Astonish with verbs Startle with a noun        Tickle with metaphors Out with the adjectives and adverbs     Nurture the reader    Design sentences Notice where metaphorical thinking connects to a secret inside not yet explored.    Trace the ridges and boundaries. Dip into the center.        Unfold, release, relent to your imagination. Delve into your concept of beauty and communicate it to the reader with description. Let it fly. Axe adjectives.

Shape Story

It zings the page and rises, curls like waves dashed into foam.  Grasp a first line that leads to a vanishing point. 

Notice how sun at the horizon mystifies and dips behind the sea. 

Paddle out to discover a story's shape.

It is hidden and teases

waiting for notions to collide.

A mythology of merriment,

bubbled by the waves.

It exists beneath

foam left for discovery.

Anenomes bloom pink

with purpled tentacles 

soothed by flow

then fingers or prey

get sucked right in.

Gather flavors,  sounds of birds, colors of earth, scents of stones. 

               Arrive to speak . . . to reveal.