Every Monday I tutor a 9 year old boy on creative writing. This kid is into a lot of things....horse riding, running, piano--he has a very busy schedule.
The other day we were at the library and we picked out a few of his favourite books. I could tell he was pretty excited about this because he started to wake up (he was tired when he arrived having already been at school all day).
One series that he is fond of in particular are the Wally McDoogle books by Bill Myers. Wally McDoogle has his own fantasies about how he is a special agent with lots of fun gadgets. And his name: Brawn, James Brawn.
We read through certain parts of the book and talked about how the author is able to express what he wanted to get across to the reader.
I then told him to pretend he was a special agent. What would he do? What kind of gadgets would he have? What about the name?
This boy's eyes lit up even more. I could see the creative mind working hard.
I told him just to write and not 'over-think' it. He wrote for 10 minutes straight. Unfortunately, I had to stop him because we were almost done with our tutoring and that's when he told me he could have written even more.
I told him to keep the story in the back of his mind and we would take it further during the next session.
The point is, even though he had a language composition project that needed to be completed, it wasn't feeding his creative soul. Or, maybe he was 'over-thinking' the project because it was for the benefit of getting a good grade rather than just letting himself go crazy with creative rapture.
Whatever the reason, it's clear that creativity is good for the soul.
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