When I first started making this paper collage, I had no idea how it would turn out -- or what the process was trying to teach me.

I had recently purchased some beautiful art paper featuring black circles pressed into a feathery white surface. Surely, I told myself, I can do something with this. But what? 

First, I tried placing a page from my journal behind the circles: handwritten words glimpsed through handmade paper. Despite its apparent translucency, however, the pulpy white paper proved too opaque for the inky letters to show through. Texture trumped text.

Next, I decided to try gluing colorful origami paper behind the handmade paper. I was staying at a remote farmhouse in Switzerland at the time but managed to acquire from a local grocery store some school glue, a pastry brush, and a pair of nail scissors.

Rather laboriously -- it took me nearly an hour -- I cut solid-colored circles from the origami paper to match the black circles on the art paper. Here's what the back side of the collage looked like after I glued the colored circles in place.

And here's what the finished collage looked like when I flipped it over and laid it flat on a table. The result was disappointing: pleasant but not inspiring. Why had I even gone to all that trouble?

But then I held my collage up to a window. The circles glowed, and everything became clear -- not just why I'd made it but what it could teach me about writing:

• Keep going.

• Trust the process.

• Try new approaches.

• Let the light shine through!

Perhaps I should have tried writing some inspirational words on the colored circles -- an indistinct poem unfurling in spiraling letters. Would the result have looked brilliant, I wonder, or totally naff? Should I go back now and give it a try: peel away the colored circles and start afresh? 

No, I'll let this one go. That's another writing-related lesson I've learned from my collage practice: sometimes you just have to leave the dried glue in place. Sometimes good enough is good enough. 

Warm thanks to the participants in my recent Creativity Catalyst short course for helping me see the light!

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My new 6-week virtual writing course, the Creativity Catalyst, launched last weekend, and we've been having a great time playing with arts-based techniques for zhuzzing up our writing processes and products.

Here's one of my favorite exercises from the Poetry module, inspired by Glenn Colquhoun's lovely poem "An Explanation of Poetry to my Father," which includes the following lines:
 

• The shape of words
  
  A is the shape of a tin roof on an old church.
  B is the bottom of a fat man. 
  C is a crab scuttling along the beach.
  X is the shape of butterfly wings.
  
                          ***
  orange is the shape of a round fruit hanging from a tree, a young woman reaching out to pick it, a kitten chasing after its own tail, an old woman weeding her garden, a small boy fishing from a pond, the sun setting over a smooth beach. 
  
  smoke is a lazy snake crawling towards the sun, two large clouds billowing, a round mouth coughing, a small bird singing in a tree, the eye of a tired child falling asleep. 
  
  love is one leg planted firmly on the ground, a spare washer for a dripping tap, that beautiful bird flying towards me or away, a broken eggshell opened on the floor.

Take a moment to notice how this poem works, particularly in the final three stanzas.  Each letter of each word -- orange, smoke, love -- evokes an everyday object that not only resembles that letter but also speaks to or illuminates some aspect of the word itself. 

It's easy to follow Colquhoun's example:

1. Choose a word -- not too long -- that represents your current writing project.

2. Write the word vertically, one letter per line, down the left-hand side of a sheet of paper.

3. Now describe what each letter looks like, keeping the whole word in mind as you cycle through the possibilities.

4. Read through your lines and make adjustments as needed.

5. Hey presto -- you've written a research poem!
    

One of our Creativity Catalyst participants, PhD student and prolific bicycle blogger Nina Ginsberg, produced an exuberant riff on the word Bicycles:

• spectacles sliding down noses of poses finally seeing things differently; the face-saving yes agreements and yes non-agreements; the woman bent over the fire, the loom, the field, and the baby; an absent-present seeping delta; the tenuous mark of schoolgirl attendance; the line between the have/nots, ride/nots, care/nots, know/nots, what/nots; the pitcher that carries the water, that carries the sustenance, that carries the girl, that carries a country; the pumping hand moves of sweaty, late-night dancehall dancers.
   

I went with the word WriteSPACE:

• Write is a crooked smile, a scythe cutting through nonsense, a brain-bearing body, a telegraph pole, a spiral of rebirth.
  
  S     Here our winding road begins,
  P     here we plant our flag
  A     atop the highest mountain
  C     wrapped in the wor(l)d's embrace 
  E     pointing forward, forward, forward.

The lines of this poem came to me quickly, but I'm still unpacking their meaning.  Creative activities like this one can help you approach your research from new directions and think more playfully and profoundly about your "serious" writing.  

Sound like fun?  Join us in the Creativity Catalyst! 

I'd love to see you there.

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Subscribe here to Helen’s Word on Substack to access the full Substack archive and receive weekly subscriber-only newsletters (USD $5/month or $50/year).

WriteSPACE members enjoy a complimentary subscription to Helen’s Word as part of their membership plan (USD $15/month or $150/year). Not a member? Join the WriteSPACE now and get your first 30 days free.

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