Writer At Play

Let's face it - being a writer is hard work. Maybe not in the same way as other, more labor-intensive jobs, but it's tough. There is a lot of training, all kinds of repetitive tasks building up your skills, a lot of setbacks, and the inevitable pain of failure. And we do all of this and go through all of these things in order to become a better writer, and to eventually reach some point where writing flows naturally - but there's no promise we'll hit that pinnacle. As I said, writing is hard work, which is why we need to have our fun and games now and then. 

Now fortunately, writers do differ from more labor-intensive jobs in the sense that if a writer decides to fool around, there's minimal risk of an industrial accident and a lawsuit from OSHA. Rather, when writers have some fun, they don't even need to actually be writing. It can be all mental fun and games, or letting meaningless ideas coming to mind that the writer just indulges. Most of the time, the best way for a writer to help themselves while at play is to simply challenge themselves to let go of rules, structure, and all the formalities, and look for the unexpected - then play with it.

I was trying this out with a simple idea - a writer's prompt, if you will. Someone sits down to have their fortune read, and the medium brings out the tarot deck and places down the first card  - and it's the...

What is it? Is it the Death card? The Ten of Swords (literally the worst card you can get)? Well, if you don't know the cards in a tarot deck, that actually helps. "Playing" with this story means giving ourselves the opportunity to step outside the reader's (and the writer's) expectations and draw on something new and unexpected. What if the first card is... the Mother-In-Law. Now, a normal tarot deck does not contain this card, but maybe that's the point you play upon. Maybe the medium has never seen this but feels obliged to explain the card. Maybe the medium has a truly magical tarot deck and expects weird things to appear. The next cards could be the Sloth, the Cheeseburger, the Loft Apartment... whatever you want. Play with it. Have fun.

When I went with this prompt, I had the medium draw the Death card, then explain to the frightened customer that it didn't necessarily suggest death was imminent but rather some form of change. The medium then drew the next card and it was... also the Death card (utterly impossible to do). And yes, the third card of this poor soul's fortune was - you guessed it - yet another Death card. I didn't go wild with the play aspect, but I definitely mixed it up. My thought was, "what would it be like to be constantly pursued by the Death card?" So I played with ideas, and there it was.

If you are in the mood to flex your writing muscles but not in the place where you can create, just take in an idea and try to process it through your creativity. Leave the proper and practical structure behind, and stretch your mind as far as possible outside the boundaries. It's the kind of play that will show up in your writing... you just might not realize it until you see how your horizons seem broader.