Chris Playing with Words
Judy Reeves On Wordplay & Chris' Fun Word Playing Games
By Chris Dunmire
Since playing with words is one of my most favorite creative activities EVER, I was instantly attracted to the word play section in Judy Reeves' revised edition of A Writer's Book of Days, which in deep gratitude to the publishers at New World Library, is now the third excerpt from Reeves' book (plus a very informative author interview about writing, books, and muses) published on Creativity Portal.
In Wordplay Reeves writes,
"Taking your writing seriously doesn’t mean giving up the fun of it. Playing with words — squeezing out the sound of them, arranging them on the page in nonsensical visual dollops — is a delightful way to get some fun back into your work."
Reeves then offers over a dozen exercises in the form of "playful tools" to facilitate creative wordplay in your writing projects, from "clip[ping] words out of magazines and newspapers to make word collages," to "see[ing] how many words you can come up with for a color, or a taste, or a sound."
Playing with words is not just limited to the writer's realm. For instance, I'm in LOVE with the process of intermixing words with images as a graphic designer and artist. Collage, in particular, lends itself wonderfully to this process. The digital image above is something I whipped up today — inspired by the fall season and Molly Anderson-Childers' piece about NaNoWriMo.
(I also happen to be in the process of working on a traditional hands-on collage project in a 3-part art workshop I enrolled in last week, which is really energizing me in a multitude of unexpected ways. More about that later....)
For now, have fun with Reeves' ideas for playing with words, and if you'd like additional word play activities that merge more with your creative wit or the artist in you, have a look at my TypeARTgraphy and Word Type exercises, Nit Wits comics, World's Hardest Word Search Puzzles, or Mixed-Up Cliches game. •
© 2010 Chris Dunmire www.chrisdunmire.com. All rights reserved. |
