by Naomi | Feb 13, 2017 | Writerly Play Activities
Visit the Writerly Play Attic and collect ideas from your life with this creativity sparking activity. Never heard of the WP Attic? Learn how Writerly Play thinking strategies supercharge your creativity here.
One way to move yourself out of a creative funk is to feed your mind fresh images and ideas. Where should you look? Museums are excellent places to encounter ideas and images that you might not seek out otherwise. In a museum, you step into a world curated by someone else. You’re likely to find at least one gem that fuels new thinking.
A quick search of museums in my community includes:
- American Bookbinders Museum
- Cable Car Museum
- Computer History Museum
- Pacific Pinball Museum
I’m sure that immersing myself in any of these worlds would set off creative fireworks for me, particularly because none of these topics is related to my current work.
A quick note: If you decide to go collecting ideas by visiting a new museum, go with an open mind. Rather than forcing connections, allow yourself to be an explorer. If you don’t come away from the experience with a quantifiable new idea, that’s still okay. No matter what, you’ll gain creative energy. The more you allow yourself the play, the more likely it is that an inspired idea will show up.
So, why not take your creativity on a field trip? What museums might you discover in your community? Go check one out and then come back and share. I’d love to hear about your experience!
by Naomi | Nov 17, 2016 | Writerly Play Activities
When you need to move a heavy piece of furniture, you examine it from multiple angles to figure out the best strategy. In problem-solving, we’re more likely to identify helpful strategies when we explore multiple vantage points as well.
Try this:
- Identify the problem. If you need help clarifying what the problem is, exactly, try running your vague issue through this helpful clarification exercise.
- Start with a clean piece of paper, and list twenty questions that relate to the problem. If you come up with more than 20, excellent! Do push yourself to come up with at least 20, even if you stall out around 12. The questions that aren’t first to mind often end up being the most compelling or innovative.
- If you’re struggling for questions, spur yourself on with question starters such as “What if…” or “Why does…” or “How can…” or “Where can…” or “When might…”
- Once you have a list, go back and decide which you’d like to explore. You may feel the whole list is helpful, or it may be that one or two stand out.
- Make a plan for how you’ll address your list. Some next steps might be:
- free-write
- brainstorm in mind-map form
- create a collage
- research via google
- research via the library
- research via an expert (friend, colleague, blogger, podcaster)
Sometimes the most important step in problem solving is simply starting. Once you’re in motion, it’s much easier to ask, “What’s the next step?”
Writerly Play offers a framework for creative thinking. In each mental room, we tackle different thinking tasks. This activity is a tool for your Attic, where we collect life experiences, sort them and crystallize them into a question or set of questions to guide our creative exploration.
by Naomi | Sep 15, 2016 | Tools & Apps
Naomi’s Playlist is an eclectic collection of tools that help me approach my work as play. My hope is that they’ll do the same for you.
Object: Collecting the ideas and thoughts that pop into my mind all day.
What Didn’t Work: Remember to always have a certain notebook in hand, having ideas while driving and trying to remember them until I parked, wanting to reference links on the web or use photos or audio files to help myself remember why I had the thought in the first place.
My Aha! Moment: While on my sabbatical, I was in a rich landscape of thoughts all the time. However, I also wanted to be as physically and mentally free as possible. I didn’t want to drag a notebook around with me all the time. Evernote was another challenge, because opening it up meant looking at work and bills and real life. As a storage tool Evernote is fabulous, but as a collection tool it hindered me.
That’s when I came up with the concept of the Thoughtbox. Imagine you could carry an invisible box, or a magical, expandable bag like the one Hermione Granger carried, where you could store ideas, images, audio files, documents, and research. Even handwritten notes and drawings could be collected in this box. In order for it to work, the box would have to be flexible and ever-present.
I asked myself: What do I always have? The answer? My Apple Watch and my phone. Now, even if you don’t have a smart watch, you likely have a phone, so you can adapt this tool to fit your style and toolkit. The point is to choose a collection entry point—or, as in my case a couple entry points—with an air-tight container to catch everything you toss into your Thoughtbox.
How I Play:
- Because I collect thoughts in so many different mediums, I use Evernote as the holding zone for my Thoughtbox. I use the tag #Thoughtbox, so all thoughts of this type end up together.
- I’ve chosen a few appealing apps that live on my watch, phone, and iPad. These apps make collecting ideas easy and integrate well with Evernote.
- I use Day One on my watch and phone and Noteshelf on my iPad, but there are many other apps that will work. The point is to choose apps that appeal to you, which you already use or are easy to add to your system, and which will seamlessly send material to Evernote.
- Once a week or so, I review my Thoughtbox and pull out any ideas that need further attention right away. In general, the collection becomes an expanding record of my thinking. I access it during brainstorming sessions or when I enter my Attic looking for raw material to take into the creative process. (The Attic is one of the Writerly Play rooms, more on that here.)
Player’s Notes:
- One reason my Thoughtbox works so well is because Day One has a recording function from the Apple Watch app. Any time I have a thought, I can tap a button, speak a thought, and the words are instantly transcribed.
- I can also take a photo with Day One, or easily add any photo that I’ve taken on my phone to the app. When I’m out on a hike or in a museum, this allows me to take a picture and make a few quick notes.
- I use Noteshelf on my iPad because handwritten notes and drawings are an important part of my thinking process. However, it is nearly as easy to draw or write on paper, snap a photo, and add the thought that way. Scannable is a great app for taking clean pictures with your phone for Evernote.
- I use Evernote’s simple web clipper and app extensions to send other material into my Thoughtbox. Since Evernote is such a well-connected tool, it allows my system to grow as technology changes.
Take it to the Next Level:
- Since I collect most of my thoughts in Day One, I can review my thoughts periodically in the app’s well-built interface. Looking over my words and images will often spark additional ideas, which I then add to the feed.
- Day One doesn’t instantly export material to Evernote, so I do this once a week or so. The exporting session provides another chance to review my collected ideas and think them over. I take the opportunity to also look at my complete Thoughtbox in Evernote to see what I’ve collected recently from the web and from Noteshelf.
- Since Evernote can be overwhelming to my visual-thinker’s mind, I use the presentation mode to scroll through the Thoughtbox. This way, the noise is cut out and I can see the ideas in a more compelling format.
by Naomi | Aug 26, 2016 | Creative Life
Today, let’s explore the Writerly Play Attic.
As a reminder, the Attic is one of five mental spaces in the creative landscape of Writerly Play. Like corners in elementary classrooms, these spaces help us focus on the task at hand–in our case, thinking tasks. We can fill these spaces with supplies and checklists, but the way each space feels matters most. A book corner feels different than a science corner. Beanbags and bookshelves invite our cozy, quiet selves out to play, while test tubes and lab glasses speak more to our curious, analytical selves.
In the Writerly Play Attic, you’re invited to think reflectively—collecting ideas, asking questions, and discovering personal connections.
If you’re joining this series mid-stream and wondering what in the world Writerly Play is, you might find it helpful to check out the first two posts.
What kind of staircase did you use to climb up into the Attic yesterday? A ladder? A spiral staircase? A rope ladder? What kind of ladder would invite your quiet, mindful, reflective self out to play? If you need to revise your entryway, make the necessary changes. Then, picture yourself climbing up into your space.
Look around. What can you already picture in your Writerly Play Attic?
Do you have a window seat next to a thick, paned window? A Narnia wardrobe stuffed full of familiar and forgotten items? Maybe you have a yoga mat, a writing desk, wind chimes, scented candles, or twinkle lights.
Remember: we’re creating a space with a specific feel–for YOU. There is no right-and-wrong rulebook for items you’re allowed to keep in your Attic. We wouldn’t tell students not to keep how-to books in the science corner because books belong in the reading corner. In the same way, try not to issue unhelpful rules in your mental spaces. If you could use an easel and paints in every one of your spaces, by all means, scatter those easels around.
Actually, this point of potential confusion takes us straight to the heart of what the Writerly Play rooms are meant to do. If painting is sometimes a way for you to reflect, and other times a way for you to brainstorm, and other times is a way for you to collaborate, it’s possible that sometimes your brain is trying to do all three at the same time when you pick up your paintbrush.
Surrounding your Attic easel with photographs, keepsakes, and a quiet, peaceful environment will cue your mind to focus and pursue Attic types of questions.
What matters to me in this piece?
What past experiences might inform this project?
What physical or mental clutter is in my way, and how might I clear a new path?
The more you engage with Attic thinking, the stronger your personal, mindful, reflective set of creativity skills will be.
The core skills in the Writerly Play Attic include:
- Clearing Clutter
- Collecting Ideas
- Sorting Ideas
- Asking Questions
- Finding the Heart
- Clarifying Goals
In order to play to your strengths while thinking in these ways, what tools, strategies or supplies ought to be in your Attic? You may have some tried-and-true ones you can add right now. You might also have a wish list. What else might stretch you in new directions, or take you deeper into your work?
Is your mind filling with ideas and questions? And if so, where should you start?
These are mental spaces, but making them tangible will strengthen their helpfulness in your creative process.
You might:
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Use a shoe box to collect your Writerly Play tools. Inside, separate out the items for each room in smaller boxes or bags.
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Create a collage or mind map for each room.
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Design a set of cards for each room with strategies, reminders, checklists and quotes.
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Or, if you only have three minutes right now, create a new list in your favorite note-taking tool, and do a quick brain dump. As far as the Attic goes, what tools do you have? What tools do you need?
I treat my wish list as a scavenger hunt, and invite you to do the same. You’ll find that ideas you tried in the past are newly useful as you start to organize them into specific workflows (or, thinking flows). You’ll see when you have an overwhelming amount of tools for one task and none for another. Maybe it’s time to weed tired ideas out. Or maybe you’d enjoy cycling through strategies like you do with summer and winter clothes.
Possibilities are everywhere–in creativity books, on podcasts, on Pinterest. You probably won’t be surprised to find that strategies and tools for the rooms are also a regular feature on this blog. If you’re curious, check out the most recent Attic tools I’ve personally explored here.
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