When your work-in-progress refuses to, well, progress, give yourself permission to call a TIME OUT. Sure, for some, a physical activity (e.g., taking a quick walk) can do the trick. I guess I’m a little different. I find much-needed mental refreshment from letting my brain go out to play (so long as its well supervised!). For example, engaging in a simple writing exercise can (re)invigorate my imagination and remind me how fun writing can be.

Recently, I challenged myself to play with the lyrics of a famous song, syllable by syllable. It felt like real exercise for my gooey gray matter dipped in a sweet sugar coating of zero-pressure pleasure. Why not give it a try, my little pumpkin spice biscuit. If you dare, please share the results.

Sound of Silence Night

(Apologies to Mr. Simon)

Hello Feedback, my old friend–

You’ve come to toy with me again

Words of derision swiftly heaping

Grow like weeds while I am sleeping

And the revisions that are ranting in my brain

Still complain–

With this next round, try silence.

***

In ripped up jeans I walk alone

To buy a bar of Toblerone

‘Neath the beam of a gooseneck lamp

I scroll the pages till my fingers cramp

When my eyes are stabbed by a plot so flat and trite

A wasted night

Even my muse is silent.

***

And in my lava lamp I saw

Ten thousand people I may bore

People banning without reading

Critics speaking without thinking

Authors writing books that agents never share

No one dares

Curb the sound of silence.

***

“Dudes,” say I, “You do not know

Silence like my word count grows

Hear my words through this blue kazoo

Read my texts that I might reach you!”

But my work like sweaty high tops smells

Say geckoes in the wells of silence.

***

And the writers bow and pray

Over critiques for which they pay

Spellcheck flashes out its warning

After words they are misforming.

***

And agents say, “The words of this novel

Should be written on subway walls

And bathroom stalls

And whispered—no, drowned!—in silence.”

Stepping out of a normal routine, finding novelty, being open to serendipity, enjoying the unexpected, embracing a little risk, and finding pleasure in the heightened vividness of life. These are all qualities of a state of play. ~ Stuart Brown, Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul