Art Museums for 2 Year Olds

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A couple weeks ago I took my 2-year-old to the Phoenix Art Museum–and she loved it. Her favorite exhibit was filled with modern art and was titled, “Order, Chaos, and the Space Between: Contemporary Latin American Art from the Diane and Bruce Halle Collection.”

Sticks at a museum

This was one of the pieces. She got super excited and exclaimed, “Sticks! Touch it?” I said no, she couldn’t touch it, but she enjoyed looking at it from all sides.

In the background you can see one of the other pieces–thousands upon thousands of black butterfly sculptures. They were attached all through the front entrance areas of the museum. It was quite a sight.

Butterflies Butterflies

It’s easy to fall into the trap, when looking at contemporary art, of trying to force meaning. For example, there were four glass boxes, each a different color, so I could read into that feelings of containment over the course of seasons or something along those lines. Here’s what my daughter read into them: “Look! Blue! Look! Yellow! Look! Red!” She experienced pure joy just at the coolness of the boxes and their colors.

My daughter’s approach framed my entire visit. Instead of finding deeper meaning, I just enjoyed the objects and colors as objects and colors, and in doing so, I left the museum with a different, better, fuller perspective. Ordinary things became extraordinary when enlarged (the sticks), filmed (there were three films of tops playing simultaneously), or put into a different context.

My daughter’s favorite part of the exhibit was this piece:

Candy at the museum

You probably can’t tell, but that’s a pile of candy. A very large pile of candy. (My daughter called it chocolate, but to her all candy is chocolate.) There was someone standing nearby, inviting you to take one. We were there in the afternoon, so the piece didn’t look quite as rectangular, and there were open holes on the floor. Candy can be art, and art certainly is sweet. And now my two year old keeps saying, “Go to museum! Get chocolate!”

 

 

Writing is like Kissing

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Yes, you heard me. Writing is like kissing.

Lips

Kissing, like writing, works better (or at least tends to be more interesting) if there’s a second person involved. We’ll call that person the audience.

If you want your kiss (your writing) to go really well, it is often helpful if you know your audience.

Also, kissing (writing) goes better if you try to interact and engage with your audience, rather than just kissing at (writing at) your audience.

Finally, kissing (writing) gets better with practice.

Good kissing (writing) ventures, and Happy Valentine’s Day!

 

 

Photo credit: Jannie-Jan

Make sure to check out my Metaphors About Writing page for all my other “Writing is like…” posts. 

Writing is Like… (Part 3)

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Writing is like building a bird’s nest.

It’s easy to get stuck with writing, to think, “I have nothing new to say.” As the oft-repeated Biblical proverb says, “There is nothing new under the sun.” Most of the time the point of writing is not to create something new, but rather to assemble the available materials in the best way possible, just as a bird finds the best sticks, grass, and feathers and puts them in her nest.

Here’s a video of a great tit building a nest. (You can skip through it and still get the general idea.)

One thing I find fascinating about this video is that the bird doesn’t stop building her nest once she starts laying eggs–she keeps working and finding new materials until all her eggs are laid.

What are the components you can use in your nest? If you’re writing an essay, these will be your quotes and sources, your examples, your explanations. If you’re writing fiction, these will be your story tropes, character archetypes, and genre conventions.

Even if two birds use the same materials, their nests won’t turn out exactly the same. It is the same with writing–the point is not to create an identical product, but to use the wealth of materials available in the world around you.

 

Read more I’ve written on Metaphors about Writing. 

Ignoring Writer’s Block

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New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson wrote:

Sit in a chair and write. Ignore this thing they call writer’s block. Doctor’s don’t get doctor’s block; your mechanic doesn’t get mechanic’s block. If you want to write great stories, learn to write when you don’t feel like it. You have to write it poorly before you can write it well. So just be willing to write bad stories in order to learn to become better.

There are lots of ways to fight writer’s block:

  • If you’re stuck with no direction, try outlining, pre-figuring out where you are going to go, so when you sit down you just have to write it. Or, do the complete reverse, and just free write, putting words down on the page, non-stop, and letting the words take you somewhere. If one approach isn’t working, switch to the other.
  • Work on a different project or idea. Find a different thesis or topic or story that you do have something to say about.
  • Create artificial deadlines. I do this a lot–deciding, arbitrarily, that I need a draft done by a certain day or time. I often set lots of small deadlines, for example, I need to write a certain number of words today, before I go to sleep. For larger deadlines I like to reward myself when I reach them, typically with European chocolate.
  • If the particular paragraph, sentence, or section I’m writing isn’t working, I’ll skip ahead to a part I’m prepared to write, and then come back to the part I’m struggling with later.
  • Often, when I feel like I have writer’s block, I’m actually just procrastinating. Recognizing this makes a huge difference.
  • I also have to recognize that very rarely do I have bolts of writer’s inspiration, and when I do have them, it’s not because I’m sitting around waiting for them to happen. I get moments of inspiration, gifts of the muse you can call them, when I’ve already put in the hard work, often after writing at least 500 words.
  • And then, to me the best way to ignore or overcome writer’s block is to write regularly. As I’ve posted before, writing is like exercise–the more you write, the less your writing muscles will protest when you do write. It will still be work, but it’ll probably be less painful.

If you’re interested, there’s also two Writing Excuses podcasts on writer’s block: Butt in Chair, Hands on Keyboard, and This Sucks and I’m a Horrible Writer.

 

Credits/Citations:

Brandon Sanderson quote from “Writing of Epic Proportions” by Krista Holmes Hanby, BYU Magazine, Winter 2013
Photo Credit 1: Cali4beach, Creative Commons license
Photo Credit 2: brainpop_uk, Creative Commons license