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Joe Artz's avatar

Spontaneous play can come in forms other than writing. Here are two of mine. Heading to my favorite coffee shop is a 1.5 mile walk from home. Walking along, I let my eyes roam freely (spontaneously) at what's passing by. The steepness of a house's roof, the lacy curtains in the second floor windows of another. That bed of hostas that wasn't there last week. Lingering on a tragic event: a college kid with no concept of how to parallel park. Potholes, fallen branches, peeling paint, garbage cans tipped over and raided by raccoon for scraps of food that should have been composted. Does this count? Well, it's spontaneous but is it play? Darn tootin' it is! I'm letting my eyes play at random while my mind creatively interacts with them.

I'm also a rather compulsive people-watcher and eavesdropper, who often are doing things that strike me as admirable or courageous so much so I feel compelled to pay them a complement. The creative part of this is the strategic thinking it requires. Yes, many kinds of play require strategic planning --- football, for example. My favorite is this -- an elderly person using a walker, progressing by inches while others, unencumbered breeze past. Lord, how awful it must be, getting so old you've become an encumbrance. As I pass by, I pause a moment to say, "You know, it's not that you're going to slow, it's that the rest of us are going to fast." Spontaneous playfulness that somehow I'm able to get away with, the kind of complement I'm often receive when a wonderful sentence appears in my head while slogging through the bog of this dang story I'm working on.

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Amy Christensen's avatar

Recently I stepped outside my normal genres to try something different, and it was so fun!! From the research to writing the piece, I thoroughly enjoyed it! It makes me want to try other things, just for fun!

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