Eggs in Your Writing Basket
As a child, I loved decorating Easter eggs. Under my mother's watchful eye, I would hold a hard-boiled egg carefully by my fingertips and dip it first in blue dye from one end, then in red dye from the other end, taking care to let the two sections overlap to create a striation of purple in the middle. Magic!
Later, as a teenager, I learned the delicate art of dribbling hot wax across the surface of a blown egg with a special tool called a tjanting in Indonesia or a kistka in Ukraine. Draw, dye; draw, dye; draw, dye; then you heat the egg and wipe away the melted wax to reveal the vibrant pattern beneath. Magic again!
But by the time I reached adulthood, I had abandoned the simple pleasures of color, form, and texture. For a few joyful years, I dyed Easter eggs with my own young children. Then words, words, words swamped my brain again, and all the color drained away.
Until recently. While researching Writing with Pleasure, I rediscovered the pleasures of writing, drawing, and thinking by hand. I also learned more about the science of creativity: how and why our brains respond to the visual and tactile stimulation of color, pattern, and form.
Now, every day of my writing life, I look for ways to enrich my wordcraft with color and to bring texture to my texts. The art of paper collage, another creative pleasure from my childhood, has introduced a meditative element to my writing practice and helped me reframe my wordcraft as art.
These egg-themed creative prompts will get your hands moving and your brain whirring:
Cut a dozen or so eggs from textured or patterned paper.
Label each egg: for example, with the name of a current writing project or creative aspiration. You may also want to designate certain eggs to represent non-negotiable aspects of your work-life balance such as family, friends, and exercise. Use visual cues such as size, shape, patterning, and color to signal their relative importance and to draw connections or contrasts between them.
Arrange your eggs in whatever way you please. For example, you could pile them higgledy-piggledy in a basket, or line them up neatly in a box, or suspend them on delicate threads from a tree branch.
Picture yourself juggling all your eggs at once. What would happen if you dropped them? Would some shatter and others bounce?
Freewrite for 10-15 minutes about the writing eggs you have assembled. Which ones inspire you and bring you joy? Which ones fill you with anxiety, frustration, or dread? Have any of them been sitting around for so long that they've begun to stink?
"Seriously playful" reflective exercises such as this one can help you gain a new perspective on your writing. At the very least, it will bring some childlike creativity and joy back into your life!
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