Intuitive Exercises For Children and Creatives
Long before I was an actual writer, I was a child whose father used to take popular songs and make up silly lyrics to replace the real ones.
Like any child, I started mimicking my Dad and so from a very young age, I would “write songs” by changing the lyrics. Unlike my Dad, I quickly stopped writing comedy parodies and tried writing serious things.
I’m not sure on an exact timeline for this – but I remember when The Lion King came out, I changed The Circle of Life into The Train of Life and it was probably very, very bad, but at the young age of 6(?) I was intuitively trying to understand metaphors and rhyming schemes. This was probably helped by my Mum’s musical tastes; she played Celine Dion’s Falling Into You album on repeat and Jim Steinman’s songs are heavy on imagery, extended metaphor and storytelling.
By the time I was in junior school – so eight years old or so, I was a budding poet and by the time I was a teenager, I was writing music that I couldn’t play and my poetry was actually good enough to get into some collections.
This, not to self-congratulate, but there’s a lesson or two in here about pulling on threads of things you’re naturally inclined towards, good at or otherwise have thrust upon you by the Universe.
At some point, we’ll talk about hypersigil technology, but I’m cautious about promising another series of post when I’m weaving all these open loops.
Let’s instead get back to the topic at hand.
Practice Is Required
The above story about my natural writing and musical prowess makes it sound like I got everything naturally and it was all some kind of manifest destiny. In a way, there’s something to that. At the moment, it’s the Paris Olympics and it all makes me keenly aware that physical prowess isn’t remotely something natural to me; these kids are 20 years old, being the best in the world at an event and even if I trained the rest of my life, I’m not doing what they can do. Similarly, writing and other creative bits probably follow a trajectory that’s much the same.
Here’s the kicker though.
The story above is the montage; pick out the victories and major moments, ignore the fact that I’d spend hours learning instruments, reading endlessly and otherwise writing stuff that was terrible, ok or otherwise good but probably needing a lot of finesse.
I’ve written elsewhere, but my first short stories were a similar success to the poetry and I got published under several pen names in several collections as soon as I tried – but that’s after years of “practice” and writing for myself. Even now, 99% of the writing I do never makes it off my hard drive, notepads or other private places that if I don’t get my affairs in order, will never see the light of day.
My non-fiction writing “career” is a story I’ve told tons of times on this site; it started with the $5 freelance articles and then a swift-but-tricky climb up to being a direct response marketing force of nature. And that’s after years of “playing” and then “practicing” and drilling.
That’s not to say you have to spend years doing these things – nor does it have to be painful, but you are going to put the reps in. So with that said… you might as well make it fun.
Practice Doesn’t Have To Be Hard (And Arguably Shouldn’t Be)
Everything you learn, you do so through knowledge intake followed by explicit instruction followed by controlled practice and then free practice.
Think about learning a language; you kind-of have to know of and about the culture you’re studying, the big picture overview of how the language works, and then you can get into the technical details of the sounds and words that make up the language.
You then get taught or you self-teach what the words sound like, and where they go.
Then you’re in a class and you practice drilling the “Where’s the train station?” questions. Or you use the Teach Yourself or Pimsleur or whatever you use.
Then you do the free practice bit of trying to use the language, realise that it’s trickier and you cycle back to step one for the rest of your time learning the language.
This framework is apparent in every pursuit. In creative pursuits, it’s approached more intuitively and people don’t tend to pay attention to it. Hence the idea that someone who writes, draws or sings is “creative.”
They’ve done all the steps – it’s just background noise until they try.
You read stories. Then you get the idea that you can write a story so you try. But there’s a lot more to it than you think, so you start studying the stories you love. Then you try again – maybe you write out the bits you like or you deconstruct them. Then you give it a go yourself. Your first works are derivative, but that’s OK. It’s fun because you’re running on inspiration.
You can keep this going if you’re consciously aware of it. And you should.
I’ve let this run too long, so will have to return to the subject. Today’s task though, pick a creative art you’d like to do. Then, practice like a kid trying to amuse themselves. The only goal is to have fun and keep going, like a kid who is sat bored on a rainy day in the school holiday.
See what happens.
I’ll see you in the next one.
Jamie.