In his book Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury describes the process he used to write a whole mess of short stories:
In my early career I floundered into a word-association process in which I simply got out of bed each morning, walked to my desk, and put down any word or series of words that happened along in my head. I would then take arms against the word, or for it, and bring on an assortment of characters to weight the word and show me its meaning in my own life. An hour or two hours later, to my amazement, a new story would be finished and done. The surprise was total and lovely. I soon found that I would have to work this way for the rest of my life.
Well, that sounds fun, doesn’t it? Hey, it worked for Ray Bradybury, maybe it will work for you.
The writing exercise: Random word associations
Add Ray Bradbury’s word association game to your writing practice and see what happens.
First thing in the morning, write down a couple words that come to mind. Then explore them. Write about them. As Bradbury suggests, “Take arms for or against” them.
Your own experience will vary based on the kind of writing you do and your personality. In my practice, the experience is less like taking arms and more like a gentle scuffle or friendly arm-wrestling match.
The idea is to explore them, to test your strength with them, to see where they take you.
For example, you might:
- Freewrite for a page or two inspired by one or the other, or their intersection
- Drop the words into a line of poetry and see what happens
- Create a list of 5 unexpected questions about each
- Try to link, or disconnect, the ideas
- Draw a sketch or mind map
Will it turn into a short story? That would be wonderful. But maybe you will simply flex your creative muscles. That’s a good result, too.
Why it works (if it works)
Word association games like this spur the kind of lateral, associative thinking that gets us out of our grooves and sparks creativity.
Coming up with the words first thing in the morning may contribute as well. During REM sleep (which mostly happens in the early morning hours), our brains string together unconnected ideas. Hence the strange, free-flowing nature of dreams.
By picking words out of the air shortly after waking, you might choose ideas still echoing from your dreaming mind. If nothing else, being close to that state primes you for creative thought.
Of course, if you miss the first-thing-in-the-morning window, you can pick a couple words any time during the day. Try this for a while and you might notice different responses based on the time of day.
See if this simple exercise loosens anything up.
Related Reading
This exercise in inspired by a passage in Bradbury’s book Zen in the Art of Writing.
Watch the video for this exercise on YouTube.
Find other Writing Experiments on my blog. Here’s one of my favorite recent ones: Re-humanizing Language
