If you're anything like me and you like to write but sometimes find yourself experiencing writer's block then this post is for you.
If you watch a small child--a toddler or a child old enough to walk but not old enough to go to school yet--and, provided they have at least one very loving parent who spends more time cuddling them than berating them, here's what you'll find:
Immense amounts of spontaneous creativity.
It doesn't matter if that child is in South Africa, Sweden or Singapore, or anywhere else for that matter, if the child is allowed the freedom to move and explore and play, they will astound you with the things they create and do.
Unless you had a horrific childhood, i.e. you were born into a war zone, or an extremely abusive household, or into extreme poverty that meant you had to struggle for food every single day, or basically, any situation that was genuinely, physically unsafe from the day you were born, then what I'm about to say applies to you:
Once upon a time, you were like that little kid I mentioned above; you were a creative genius.
If you have enough money to have a phone and/or a computer, access to electricity and internet, and thus you can read this on Hive, then it's quite likely that you had a safe enough childhood that, even if you've forgotten what it felt like, you had a period of time in your early life where you genuinely got to play and make things up with your imagination.
Writing, is doing just that: it's making things up with your imagination.
But the reason so many of us experience writer's block, or compare our writing to someone else's who we think is better than ours, or endlessly try to make our writing perfect before we publish it anywhere is mostly to do with what happened when we went to school.
Schools all around the world do similar things to the creativity of tiny geniuses (a.k.a. small, malleable humans):
They squash all that immensity into tiny boxes and say that anything that sticks out is wrong.
Is it any wonder you have writer's block? You've been conditioned to "colour within the lines" since before you could write your own name.
So, let's end that nonsense here. Let's do a creative writing exercise together to start to unblock, unclog, unleash that mind of yours with all its "shoulds", and "musts", and "have-tos" and see if we can create something new and beautiful, together. What do you say?
Let's play with writing one or more haiku as an idea. Not a rule. Not a "have to". But an idea; a place to get us started.
If we're going to do that we need a definition to start.
What do they say? "If need to know the rules if you're going to break them." ~ Some person who said a smart thing.
Well, it was something like that 😉
So, what's a haiku?
Haiku 俳句 is a type of short form poetry originally from Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases that contain a kireji, or "cutting word", 17 on (phonetic units similar to syllables) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern, and a kigo, or seasonal reference.
So before we go any further, by this definition I've probably never written an actual, proper haiku in my life. So if you had me on some kind of pedestal now would be the time to take me off it.
I think to follow these rules one would have to have a really solid understanding of Japanese so that the on (phonetic unit), the kireji and the kigo would make sense, intuitively, so the poetry could just flow out your mouth, or fingertips as the case may be.
For me to play with this I immediately see that I, as an English speaking human with minimal Japanese, will have to simplify these rules the way that most Westeners do by doing this instead:
Write a short poem,
with three lines that follow this;
"five, seven, five" flow.
Not perfect instructions, but a haiku of sorts. Clever, hey?
Have I unleashed my creative genius? Maybe not. Am I willing to be silly as I try? Absolutely.
Let's try another one. I'll pick a word and then write a short, poem-like thingamajig (that's the official term). You can put yours in a comment below 👇 K?
Hmmm, how about "play":
I see a space here
where we can play together
with words, with words, now.
I can feel myself judging it. But I'm choosing to leave it there. Creativity doesn't care for perfection, it cares for play.
What about you? What did you create out of thin air?
If not, now is a great time to pause and write something, right? There's a comment box below with your (creative) name on it.
No, no. The other way! Down! 👇👇👇
Okay. Let's do one more.
Hmmm, "green":
So many green plants
I see out of my window;
the green blesses me.
I like this one. It feels nice and true. I'm questioning whether it needs punctuation (i.e. commas, full stops, etc) or to somehow change the grammar but since I'm trying to also focus more on play and less on perfection then I'm calling it a success, just as it is.
How did you go? Did you play along in the comments?
Feel free to write as many poem-like things as you wish. I promise to read them all 😃
If you want more prompts to pick from here are a few:
- love
- champion
- interesting
- lively
- stimulating
- ocean
- woman
Everyone who comments with some attempt at a short poem-like thingamajig will receive either upvotes or tokens (or both) from me.
Come and play here now.
Let your fingers fly away.
Grace the page today.
Caroline 😉
This photo is by @new.things, my partner in life, adventures and very occasionally, writing.
This post was inspired by a comment on a post I recently wrote that was full of haiku. The kind commenter said lovely things about how easy I made it look to write haiku and that they really wanted to write these kinds of ultra-short poems but struggled with all the rules. This post is for you, my love!
This is also a #HiveBloPoMo post. Translation: It's day 16 of 30 days in a row where I'm writing one post a day for the whole month. It's called Hive Blog Posting Month and you can use the hashtag to learn more. You can write a new post every single day any time of the year but you'll have company doing so if you join the next cohort in April 2023.