Reader,

After a summer of thinking and writing about recovering a sense of play in one's writing, I'm delivering my conclusions as a class for The Porch tomorrow night.

"Conclusions" sounds too definitive. Judicial, even. However, I can't think of a better word at the moment, so I'm just going to run with it. (If you think of a better, more playful word, let me know.)

I'm opening the class with two questions:

• When it comes to writing, what does a "sense of play" look like for you?
• Why do you want a "sense of play" in your writing?

That second question is particularly important. In part, I'm curious to learn what enticed the participants to enroll in this class. More than that, I think that question is the key to making any headway on this topic. If we don't know why a sense of play is important to our writing, it's doubtful that we'll ever recover it.

And what's with my verb choice: "recover"? Well, that's where we'll go next.

Most of us weren't born this serious. As kids, we knew how to play. We turned pine cones into airplanes and broken twigs into laser guns. We made believe our bedroom closets were castles. We took on the personas of The Hardy Boys and earned worldwide renown based on our investigative brilliance.

But then we grew up.

Growing up isn't bad. We need our adolescence. Heck, we even need the awkward self-consciousness that defines our middle school memories and school photos. And yet there's a cost to it, because we're often not truly conscious of ourselves. We're too busy trying to figure out what other people think when they see us.

This is where my email about creating vs. competing comes in. Giving ourselves permission to not win is the first step toward welcoming the possibility of play. True play, where we get to explore the boundaries of what's permitted and hopefully push them around a little.

Which goes hand in hand with my comments about what we're willing to risk when we write. In some ways these points are two sides of the same coin. Our willingness to risk fuels our ability to create and vice versa.

These points lead to the final two points of my class. One of them is another mindset exercise, based on the Annie Dillard quote I shared last week. However, I'm leaning into a different side of her exhortation: specifically, her comment that "[t]he writer knows his field—what has been done, what could be done, the limits—the way a tennis player knows the court."

A mature creator doesn't revert back to childhood. She may want to reconnect with the delight she felt back then, but she's not going to be content producing doodles and stick figures. She's read too much, seen too much, done too much for that. She knows that freedom is not found in forgetting what others have done. Freedom is found when we observe them, fascinated, and dare to believe that we too could soar that high. Maybe even higher.

What you don't see in this class sketch are the exercises I'm assigning them to do in class. As much as I like to share the things that have excited and inspired me, I much prefer prompting my participants to pick up their pens and write. While they're still in the classroom.

Most of the prompts are designed for self-reflection. For the final one, however, I want to embrace some of the childlike spirit: we're going to create a word bank and each write something (at least a paragraph but no more than page) that uses the words we come up with. I've done this exercise with elementary schoolkids before, and it was a huge hit. Will the adults in my class feel the same? I'll find out tomorrow.

Before we begin, I'll be reminding them:

Wish me luck and, as always, keep your stick on the ice.

Frank.