3 Steps to Boost Your Writing by Thinking Like a Kid

I haven’t been to a comics convention in about seven years.

There are reasons for this—lack of money, nothing in particular I want to buy, and little interest in current comics. 

But since comics formed the foundation of much of The Power Club™ , they remain close to my heart.

This weekend, the biggest comics convention, Comic-Con, is going on in San Diego, CA. Thanks to updates and even a live feed from friends who are there, I can keep up with all the excitement.

The con was also featured on this morning's news. The report spotlighted a middle-aged woman dressed as Ma Hunkel, the original Red Tornado, complete with a cooking pot with eye hole cutouts for a helmet.

Even when I went to cons, I didn't dress in costume—but not because I didn't want to. Costumes can be expensive, and I also couldn't decide which character to go as.  

(My ideal costume would have been Lightning Lad's 1960s outfit, complete with robot arm.  There's something inherently exciting about a blue cape and lightning bolts as a chest insignia.)

Going to cons and dressing in costume is something a lot of people do not understand—to them it looks silly (no sillier, I would argue, than dressing in costume or wearing war paint to go to a football game).  And yet such silliness—acting like a kid, if you will—can be a vital part of being a writer.

Last night, coincidentally, I watched a program on the National Geographic channel that encouraged adults to do just that: think like kids. The program, Brain Games, explores how our brains function and how we can boost memory—“use it or lose it,” as put by the program’s oft repeated mantra.

In one segment, both adults and children were shown a series of simple abstract drawings and asked to generate ideas for what the drawings could be. Guess what—the kids generated more answers than the adults. We’ll get to why later on.

Thinking like a kid, however, can also boost writing, which involves doing several kid-like activities: creating something out of nothing, combining ideas that at first don’t seem related, and thinking outside the box—the very processes Brain Games suggests can boost memory.

Here are three suggestions for how thinking like a kid can improve your writing:

1. Play, play, play.

Quick question: What’s the difference between work and play?

Both can involve the same types of activities, effort, and even rules (if one is playing certain games).

One difference is that, in play, there are no serious consequences if you fail. Sure, you may lose the game and whatever rewards go along with winning, but that’s all. Play, in its purest form, does not affect your income, social standing, or future prospects.

Kids usually don't worry about these things when they play; neither should you.

Playing is important to writing. If you’re not having a good time writing a piece, why would your audience have a good time reading it. (You always want your audience to enjoy your work, even if you’re writing about a serious subject.)

2. Don’t worry about whether it’s right or wrong.

Remember those kids who were more creative than the adults in the Brain Games segment?  Why was that?

Kids, according to the program, do not have the experience or context to know whether an answer is right or wrong. They do not self-edit or judge their answers.

Do not self-edit or judge your work, either. Save that for the revision process.

3. Change your writing routine.

While most writers find keeping a routine helpful—such as writing at the same time every day, writing in the same space, or even drinking the same type of tea while writing—it’s a good idea to shake things up once in awhile.

It doesn’t even have to be a major shake-up.  For example, I used to write these blog posts while sitting in a particular restaurant. But the last few, including this one, were written in a different restaurant.

A small change, yes, but a significant one. This particular restaurant reminds me of the places my family and I used to go to for breakfast while on family vacations. There’s even a view of traffic cruising along a busy street, as if I were next to a highway.

Mentally, being in this place puts me back in those childhood vacations. The result (after starting out with no idea what I was going to write about) is the post you are now reading.  (And if you don't like this post—well, maybe you're not thinking like a kid!)

Doing something new or something that reminds you of the best parts of your own childhood can put you back in the fame of mind to create, create, create.

If all else fails, put on your cape and fly.

Never Been Kissed?! What to Write About When You Have Nothing to Write About

Sooner or later, every writer faces that topic she knows nothing about.  

For a student writer, it may come when you’re in class and the professor puts on the board a writing prompt that makes you go “Huh?”  

For fiction writers, it may be that moment in your story where your character comes across an artifact from the Ming Dynasty, and you know nothing about Chinese history, let alone the Ming Dynasty. 

The most common way of dealing with this problem (other than research, of course) is to fake it. You’re a creative writer, after all—so create. And, if you’re writing your own book, you may be able to transfer the artifact from the Ming Dynasty to one from, say, the U.S. Civil War.  

But if you’re writing for a professor or an editor, fudging may lead to disaster.

So what do you do?

Answer: Write about what you do know.

You may be surprised at what you know, or how you can turn a writing situation to your advantage.

When I was in college, one of my professors tried to get the class to relate to a particular story by making us write about our first kiss. The problem was, even as a strapping college freshman, I still had not had a first kiss.

The worst part, of course, was being a college freshman and admitting I hadn't kissed a girl. Guys are supposed to get around to that stuff by age 15, or so our culture tells us. If you’re shy around girls, you don’t admit it.  If dating isn’t a priority for you, you keep quiet so your peers don’t think less of you.

And here was a college professor asking me to describe a deeply personal experience I hadn’t had yet.

Well, admitting that I'd never kissed a girl wouldn't do. And I didn't have it in me to make up an experience. But, as I sat there and studied the prompt, I realized there was a way to fulfill the assignment and preserve my dignity.

It turned out that I had, in fact, had a first kiss.

When I was five, a neighbor girl pressed me against her parents’ garage and started kissing me. This apparently continued until her mother glanced out from the house and yelled for her stop.

In college, I barely remembered the incident, but I did remember my mother telling me about it—and teasing me over it—for years after.  That embarrassing experience—being kissed is always embarrassing to five-year-old boys—remained vivid enough that I was able to recreate it for the assignment.

The professor even loved my novel approach so much she shared my essay with the class.

The lessons I learned from this?

• Play politician—if you can’t write to the spirit of the assignment, write to the letter.  (“It depends, your honor, on what kiss means.”)

• Go for the emotion—even if it’s something which embarrasses you or makes you feel sad, chances are your reader will feel the same way (or at least see the humor in you feeling that way)—and that’s what you want: for the reader to feel something.

• Recreate as many details as you can, fudge the rest—you can actually get away with this in a personal essay. No one’s going to track down that former five-year-old girl to see if she remembers things the way you do. At the same time, don’t fudge everything—too much fakery reveals itself.

•  Look upon writing assignments as writing challenges—you’re in this to grow as a writer, not to play it safe.

• Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable—audiences like vulnerability because they’re vulnerable, too.  Showing that you’re comfortable with your human side gives them permission to be comfortable with theirs.

The bottom line in fiction as well as personal writing is to tell an entertaining story. If you can get that kind of mileage out of being kissed or not being kissed, it’s all good.

If you like this post, you may also like: 

• Ideas are Worthless! (Storytelling Tips from Comp Class)

• Should You Plan Your Writing or Be Spontaneous?

• The Dirty D-Word of Writing

How to Turn Your Most Boring Day into Writing Gold

One writing exercise I give my students is to write about something interesting which happened to them in the last 24 hours.  Some complain that they lead boring lives!  But writers aren't people who have interesting things happen to them.  Writers are people who find something interesting in anything that happens.

 To demonstrate, here's my 24-hour essay: 

Support Your Local Latté

     A new coffee shop recently opened a few blocks south of the coffee shop I usually frequent in North Kansas City.  On Tuesday afternoon, I almost went to this new place.  I drove through its lot so I could discern in a totally risk-free manner what lay inside: by reading the drive-thru menu.  However, all they had to eat was pastries and, since I had just come from the Y, I wanted lunch.  So I drove to a Mexican restaurant, ordered food, and then went to my usual hang-out, where I knew I’d be welcome to bring in outside food so long as I ordered a drink.

            While eating my chicken rice bowl and drinking a caramel macchiato, I overheard a conversation between John, the owner of the coffee shop, and another customer.  She asked him what he thought of the new competition down the street, the place to which I had almost gone.  John’s answer surprised me.  He didn’t diss the competition or go into a sales pitch about how his coffee was better.  Instead, he said he didn’t think of the new coffee shop as competition.  He’d met the owner, thought he was a nice guy, and wished him well.  John was more worried about the new Starbucks going into the supermarket down the lot.  “Chains are taking over,” he said, “and I always root for local business.”

            I’ve long heard of the war between local businesses and chains.  One midtown Kansas City coffee shop I used to frequent (no longer in business) cheekily posted a sign behind its counter: “Friends don’t let friends drink Starbucks.”  But as tempting as it is to dump on chains, I’ve always dismissed such concerns as the usual fluff between competitors. It’s the equivalent of wrestlers looking into the camera and challenging the manhood of their opponents.

            And, although I nominally support local businesses, I go to chains, too.  I like variety, and Starbucks, I admit, suits my fancy sometimes. 

            But John’s support for the new guy down the block gave me pause for thought.  The competition between local businesses and chains is quite real.  Chains risk little and have nothing to lose if you go elsewhere for your latté.  Small businesses like John, on the other hand, might have everything to lose.  They often go out of their way to keep customers coming back.  Shortly before this customer walked in, I overheard John serve a woman through his own drive-thru window.  (You gotta have a drive-thru these days.)   She told him it was her birthday.  Guess what.  She got a free drink. 

            It’s been several years since I asked Sam, one of John’s baristas, if I could bring in food from elsewhere.  Neither John nor anyone else has ever blinked when I’ve done so.  Could I get away with doing that at Starbucks?  I don’t know.  I’ve never tried.

            However, I will soon be taking a risk of a different sort.  I’ll go to the new coffee shop down the street.  I know John won’t mind.

Some tips on finding stories in your life:

• Connect your story to something larger than itself.  (In the above example, I connected my coffee shop visit to the tensions between local businesses and chains.)
• Look for the conflict.  Without conflict, it should go without saying, you don't have a story. (In this case, the conflict is not mine but between local businesses and chains.)
• Listen. Observe. Pay Attention.  (This is hard for me to do on an ordinary day, but, if you watch life happening around you, some stories write themselves.)
• Look for some way in which you've changed or want to change as a result of the incident.
• Include a few relevant details.  A quote or two always helps.

So, that's it!  Your writing exercise for the day, should you choose to accept it, is to write a short essay or story about something that happened to you in the last 24 hours.  Post your results in the comments section below.

Writers: What to Do When You Feel Uninspired

Image via Wikipedia

It’s been one of those weeks when, as a writer, you feel like you’ve been banged up and put away.

Your confidence is sagging.  A story isn’t working out the way you want it to.  A friendly discussion with an acquaintance has turned into a vitriolic debate.  Your students give you feedback that your teaching style (which you’ve been using for the last several semesters) isn’t working.  And “real life” obligations remind you there are things your writing can’t “cure”.

And now you’ve got to sit down at the keyboard and actually write something.

So what do you do when your inspiration runs low like the battery on your cellphone?

First, realize that writing has little, if anything, to do with inspiration.

That’s right.  Writing is a job, like any other.  Whoever heard of fireman’s block?  What would happen if a doctor didn’t feel “inspired” to help her patients?

Yet writers often feel they need to receive some sort of magical stimulation in order to do their work.

While writing can be stimulating, those of us who wish to get some compensation and recognition for our work must realize that neither will come if we wait for that magical creature called Inspiration to smile upon us.

As someone in my grad school once said, “Writers write.”

Period.

Second, here are four methods for kick-starting your inspiration:

Write through the problem.  Start by writing about the problem.  Acknowledge that you're having difficulty.  

Knowing that I’ve got to be somewhere else this afternoon and that my writing time is limited, I woke up this morning without a clue what I was going to write about.  So I took pen in hand and began writing about how my week went – including the difficulty of writing. 

Voila!  This method produced the post you are now reading.

Don’t wait for inspiration – seize it!  You are the commander of your writing “troops” and this is war!  Take action.  Now.

Get angry.  Nothing provokes a writer to action better than getting angry.  Anger leads to passion, and passion makes you want to do something.  

Can’t find anything to get angry about?  Turn on the news. 

Take your muse to breakfast (or lunch or dinner).   In his seminal book On Writing, Stephen King says his imaginary muse is a man.  Mine’s a woman.  Every week, my muse and I trek to a local restaurant, eat breakfast, and write.  (No, I don’t order for two.)

This particular restaurant is a little pricey for my tastes, but my muse likes to be treated right – and it works.  Many of these blogposts for the last two or three months have originated while my muse and I were munching on eggs, fruit, and Canadian bacon.

If it sounds a little odd to date your muse, deal with it.

Indulge your muse, and your muse will indulge you.

But does indulging your muse produce good results?  You be the judge.  (I will tell you that January was this blog’s best month so far, at least in terms of page views.) 

The old saw says that writing is 90 percent persperation and 10 percent inspiration.  If you wait for that 10 percent to come, you’ll slog through your writing until it loses interest for you, let alone your readers. 

To borrow from Admiral David Farragut, I say, “Damn the inspiration!  Full speed ahead!”

Leave a comment.  How do you kick-start your inspiration?