Writerly Play
Let’s chat about living creatively and playing our way toward challenging, meaningful goals.
Develop Creative Thinking Skills with the Writerly Play Kit
Psst! If you haven’t yet subscribed to the Writerly Play Kit, you’re missing out! Issued monthly, the WP Kit is a collection of activities, book recommendations, and other inspiration to help you develop creative thinking by focusing on a single skill.
Why one specific skill?
As is true for building physical muscles, you can develop creative thinking mastery much more efficiently when you’re intentional. When you focus on one skill, you:
- progress more quickly with less friction
- build momentum and the confidence that comes with success
- make that skill a habit so that you can turn your focus elsewhere without losing ground
Wait … Creativity is a skill?
Yep, actually creative thinking is a collection of skills. A commonly held misbelief is that people are either creative or not. If I had a penny for every time someone has told me they’re “just not a creative person,” I’m pretty sure I could buy a private jet. One reason this myth is so prevalent, in my opinion, is that people focus on one aspect of creativity when they measure their capacity. So, they might think of creativity as the ability to generate a giant collection of ideas, or to craft a well-told story, or think quickly on the spot.
This narrow thinking often creates one of two problems.
First, a person might not be good at that thing. Maybe they struggle to come up with even three ideas, or they always figure out what they should have said hours after the moment has passed. Thus, they conclude that they aren’t a creative person without noticing other skills they DO have that are also key to creative thinking.
Second, a person may have a strength in one of these areas. When they’re asked to be creative, they play only this one note. When the process moves on to another stage, they may not have the next skill needed, and they get stuck. They may undervalue the importance of developing their creativity because they don’t realize that they are actually bumping repeatedly into a weakness in their overall skill set.
The way to develop creative thinking is through marginal gains.
In his book, Atomic Habits, James Clear shares the concept of marginal gains. Basically, when you improve through marginal gains, you make tiny changes, changes that might seem insignificant on their own. However, taken together, the collection of changes lead to overwhelming transformation. Becoming better at asking questions may not feel significant at first, but taken together with an improved ability to identify problems and generate ideas about possible solutions, soon you start to see fresh, exciting creativity coming to life in your world.
What are your strengths when it comes to creativity? How about areas that get in your way? What if you had clear, step-by-step strategies and a bookshelf of tools to overcome those challenges?
That’s exactly what the Writerly Play Kit is here to do for you.
So what are you waiting for?
Writerly Play Activity Collection – Storyboard Your Manuscript Your Way
No matter your creativity style, a storyboard will give you perspective. If you're an Inventor, you might struggle with a storyboard because it feels too structured. If you're a Special Agent, you might feel like it's a waste of time. If you're an Architect, it might...
How to Improvise: A Book Flight
For a long time, I didn't understand improvisation. I thought it was the art of being hilarious on the spot, and the thought terrified me. When I (finally) dared to learn more about improv, I learned that improvisation was, in fact, terrifying, but not for the reasons...
Writerly Play Activity Collection: Improvise Your Way to the Page
Improvisation saves writers time. Many writers are actually improvising when they write their first drafts. They following their spontaneity and intuition where it leads as they make their way from scene to scene. However, writing scenes takes a lot longer than...
Journey to Your Writer’s Heart: A Book Flight
From my MFA residencies and decades of SCBWI conferences, the largest takeaway has always been to write from my heart. Like most wisdom, this advice is simple but not easy. Sometimes, my subconscious battles me when I try to dip into a story that holds rich meaning...
Writerly Play Activity Collection: Finding Your Artist’s Heart
How do you create meaningful work? Putting our hearts on the page sounds simple, but it is one of the most difficult tasks artists face. In order to make powerful work, we must brave vulnerability and ask ourselves tough questions. After a lifetime of improv, I've...
Grit, Empathy, and Vision: What I’m Learning about Creative Writing
I woke up in the middle of the night before our most recent Inklings Book launch with these three words bouncing around my mind - grit, empathy, and vision. Sometimes the answer to a question I've been wrestling shows up this way. The question? Why is creative writing...
What I Learned from Madeleine – A Book Flight
Speak with me for more than twenty minutes, and you'll likely hear me quote Madeleine L'Engle. Sometimes you find that author, thinker, or artist that challenges and inspires you in all the right ways. For me, that person is Madeleine. I’ve chosen four titles for this...
Writerly Play Activity Collection: How To Find Your Dream Mentor
Do you have unexplored creative potential? A mentor can help you identify and explore new territory. When people ask me about the value of grad school, I always say that working with mentors saved me years of trial and error. In-person mentors are invaluable, and if...
The 2018 Writerly Play Gift Guide for Writers
Gifts get a bad rap sometimes. We lament the hurry-scurry feel of the holiday season, and in order to settle our hearts and minds, decide gifts are off-limits. Perhaps because gifts are my love language, or because I've both seen and felt the heart-swelling joy of a...
