Blogger: Janet Kobobel Grant
Location: Monterey, Calif., planning Books & Such clients’ retreat
Do you play enough? When I was a kid, my classmates and I scoffed at the goof-off who was always waiting for recess so she could quit working. The rest of us were serious about our studies. Now, as an adult, I have trouble figuring out how to make space to play. It took me several decades, but I finally figured out that play is an important creative activity. So I come back to the question, Do you play enough?
What do I mean by play?
It’s when we tap into a sense of childlike wonder and exploration. I’m realizing that one way in which I recreate is cooking. Exploring how flavors, textures and colors blend (or don’t) is fun for me. I enjoy watching cooking shows and searching for new recipes online or among my cookbook collection. Discovering new combinations or even having a miserable failure is part of being playful. Fortunately my husband is an adventuresome–and forgiving–consumer of what I produce.
Why should we play?
Because studies show it helps the brain to adapt and to improvise when unexpected challenges come up. Stuart Brown, a medical doctor, psychiatrist and founder of the National Institute for Play (yes, Virginia, there is such an organization) recounts a landmark study in which rats, apparently a naturally playful species, are denied play from birth onward.
When a cat’s collar is thrown in the rats’ cage, the play-deprived rats respond as any rat would–they run for shelter. But after the initial moment of flight, these rats fared worse and worse. Their stress levels increased, and in contrast to rats who had grown up playing, they couldn’t bring themselves to go out and forage for food. The rats who hadn’t been denied the chance to play were better able to adapt to the new hazard and dared to brave the dangers.
In other words, play helps us to find creative solutions when we encounter the rough-and-tumble world of publishing, fraught as it is with rejection and not-good-enough messages.
I want to explore more about taking recess time with you tomorrow, but for now, tell me, when you think about play, what opens the door to childlike wonder for you? How do you find time to indulge in playing?
I love cooking as well. I have a special notebook for recipes I’ve created. Some were great successes like my apple-jalepeno coffee cake, and some are better left forgotten 🙂
I also like video or computer games (not the exploding heads kind, rather than fantasy and puzzle kinds). There’s no pressure in games. I can play just to beat the challenge and enjoy the graphics.
Between writing those soul-drudging short stories exploring the fallen nature of humanity, I am working on a new YA manuscript with characters who are at times actually happy 🙂
I like extending playfulness into my writing, but reading a funny story or website is also a way to find some play in the day.
Play is SO important! I am a mother and dog owner and I encourage play with both my son and my furkids. The part about the rats is interesting, because I find with dogs play deprived animals are often more fearful and stressed.
Play exercises your brain, often your body, and it keeps you young. I think writing is a form of playing (for me) because I get to be in touch with my creative side.
But of course there’s always nature for playing (hiking, camping, swimming, ice skating) yes, play is something we should never be too old for.
Promise not to tell anyone, Janet. I was on the staff of the Write to Publish Conference (then held at Moody Bible Institute), when I spotted a sprinkler. During a most sweltering spell in the month June. Yep, I ran toward the water spray. Wearing a blue and white dress and tennies with cuffed lace socks. Imagine my delight when I saw a cluster of women watching me from the sidelines. Did they join me? Nope. No matter, I thoroughly enjoyed my play.
By the way, Janet, great article! Think I’ll go play for a bit.
I love this, Janet! I’ve been forcing myself away from my desk more lately, and I’m a better person for it. I love to cook and bake. Sometimes just checking out a new cookbook relaxes me. I also enjoy art museums. Exercise can be fun too–I use Just Dance and Wii Fit. It’s great to combine fun and health!
“The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play.” (James T. Kirk, “Shore Leave,” stardate 3025.8)
Please excuse the sci-fi quote, Janet. Your post brought back a vague memory of this sentence I’d heard as a boy watching Star Trek. Just had to Google the fragment I recalled to see how your observation will be reaffirmed…a couple hundred years from now. 😉
I try to keep that child like wonder with me as I work. I spent almost 10 years in software quality assurance at one time. As I was testing software, sometimes (ok a lot), I would play with the software and see just how far I can go with it (like off chart or the beaten path). I enjoyed playing with it.
Now as a technical writer, I am amazed (at times) by the experiments that I write about that are or will take place on the International Space Station. I have been in meetings where I have wathched experiments and I am just in awed. I feel like a child in toy store.
I like computer games but usually I play either Boggle or Mahjong. I like checking out stuff on the Internet. However, when I am at home, I like spending time away from the computer.
I was all ready to say, “Yes, I play!” — until you defined it. I guess I don’t play nearly enough.
Thank you for the encouragement to do so.
Does reading count? I have promised myself that when this term on the OB of ACFW is over December 31, 2011 I am going to read, read, read.
My creative outlet is sewing and I have done quite a bit of that this year.
Writing is creative, but it is more of an obsession. LOL.
Ahhh, play! For me it can be any number of things – gardening, singing my favourite Broadway soundtracks at unbearable volumes, hunkering down for a movie night, tickle fights, splashing in puddles (I’d totally have joined you in the sprinkler, Mona!), enjoying other people’s baking, hiking, cycling… Humph, maybe I play a little too much???
What fun to read about the playful activities you all engage in. Larry, I love that you play by writing about happy characters. Rick, the Star Trek quote was perfect.
Yesterday I was playing…er, working, in Monterey with Wendy Lawton. We had so much fun, I had to commemorate the moment by buying an arty necklace. It was way too expensive, but I wanted to remember our day together every time I donned the jewelry. And Wendy urged me on in the purchase. It was fun all the way around, but I need to find less expensive ways to play.
Oscar Wilde fan or not, those who enjoy incorporating play into life and writing might appreciate this quote of his from The Picture of Dorian Gray:
“He played with the idea, and grew willful; tossed it into the air and transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy, and winged it with paradox.”
I can’t imagine being able to write that line without familiarity with play. I picture Oscar, and not just as a boy, blowing bubbles and experimenting with paper airplanes.
I recently took up pastel painting as one of my ways to play. I’ve tried other mediums, but this one reminds me most of art play as a child. I can get my hands messy with color and touch my art as I create. I believe I like to do that a little with my writing as well!
I had to move away from the familiar to learn to play, to enjoy life the way God intended. Here in my new surroundings, I see Him as the sun rises over golden hillsides, and the wind rushes through yellow quaking aspen trees. I see Him in the slower pace and the people who smile and say Mornin’ to a stranger like me. My spirit is rejuvenated as much as if I’d spent all morning on the playground swinging high in the air or spinning on the merry-go-round until I can scarcely breathe for laughing. Sometimes we all need a break, a vacation, to put things into perspective.
Does surfing the Internet count?
lol
Lately I play on Pinterest. No matter which topic I explore, I’m amazed by the conglomerate of creativity. People seem to have basically the same challenges and desires the world over, and they find such wonderful solutions while expressing themselves at the same time. I like to observe the patterns–images that are repinned and tweeted again and again because they strike a pleasing chord. To me, these are clues to “macro”-yearnings that might wander into a story one day. I also love to track the adaptations of a good idea as one poster after another shares the ways they make it their own.
Great post, as usual. Thanks!
For a recent birthday, I asked for and received my very own basketball hoop and basketball.I never played sports growing up, but I like throwing that ball around!