Words Gone Wild

Digging Into Whimsy for Serious Writers

- BY DR. FINNIAN BURNETT

I know so many of us want to be serious writers. I get that. I'm serious with a capital S, in a dig-into-the-trauma-and-cry, self-flagellating-because-I-didn't-finish-that-chapter-by-deadline, elbow-patches-on-my-tweed kind of way. Serious. Because you have to be serious to make a living as a writer, don't you? You have to sit down at the keyboard day after day, banging out serious words with a frown on your face.

I'm guilty of this, too. I've told my students to take their writing seriously. I meant it, at the time, just as all of the teachers who told me the same thing meant it when they said it. As writers, we're often told to treat our craft seriously if we want to be taken seriously.

And I agree with this concept—within reason.

But somewhere between self-doubt, punishing writing routines, and the absolute horror show of querying, I think some of us can forget the most important aspect of writing. It's supposed to be fun.

In a recent workshop I taught on creative chaos, participants wrote about a talking can opener, being locked naked out of the house, and, in one oddly specific story, Ryan Reynolds' socks. At a writing retreat, my coauthor-in-residence and I guided participants through writing bad haiku, stories of the unexpected, and characters making ridiculous mistakes. When I run my Prompt-A-Palooza events, participants are encouraged to leave normal at the door and go back to the idea of writing for the thrill of trying new things.

The stories, poems, and other works to come from these workshops might not end up being publishable. And maybe they don't make it into the novels all the participants are working on. But these activities do something better. They force the writers to let go of perfectionism, unleash their inner critic, and simply play with words.