“What is something you say you want to do but don’t have time for?” —Catherine Price, the question that changed her life
Preview: Episode 57 with author Catherine Price
What if we told you that what your creative practice really needs is more fun? What would that look like? How would that really help? And how do you go about infusing more fun into your practice? In this episode of Emerging Form, we speak with with Catherine Price, author of The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again. (You may remember her as our guest on Episode 45: Protecting Your Creative Time.) She offers us her own definition of fun, based on her research with the Fun Squad, and it’s this: fun is the confluence of playfulness, connection and flow. We also discuss the importance of self permission and how to develop a fun mindset. Catherine’s launching the February #Funtervention challenge if you would like to join!
Catherine Price is a science journalist, speaker, and author of numerous books including How to Break Up With Your Phone, Vitamania: How Vitamins Revolutionized the Way We Think About Food, and the new book, The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again. As a freelance journalist, her work has appeared in publications including The Best American Science Writing, The New York Times, Popular Science, O, The Oprah Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post Magazine, Parade, Salon, Slate, Men’s Journal, Self, Medium, Health Magazine, and Outside, among others. She's also the founder of ScreenLifeBalance.com, which is part of her mission to help people scroll less and live more.
What We’re Reading and Listening to:
Rosemerry:
A friend gave me John Tarrant’s Bring Me the Rhonceros and other zen koans that will save your life. And I am so glad. It’s a weaving of mystery, daily life, ancient wisdom, contemporary short fiction and transformation.
I read Caravan of No Despair by Mirabai Starr, a memoir about her spiritual path and the death of her teenage daughter. It was an astonishing book that opened me in so many ways. It was uplifting, intimate, zany even, and it honored how trauma can be a gateway for growth.
Christie:
Euphoria, by Lily King, was only the second book I read this year, but I already feel like it could be my favorite. The novel is the fictionalized, reimagined story of anthropologist Margaret Mead and her entanglements with two other anthropologists — one who was her husband, the other who became her next spouse. The story follows the three as they do field work in New Guinea, and what made me fall in love with the novel was the captivating way that it explored scientists at work, professional jealousies, and questions about how what makes scientific work meaningful. I read King’s novel Writers & Lovers last year and I loved this one even more.
Oliver Roeder’s new book, Seven Games: A Human History comes out next week and I couldn’t recommend it more. The book is about checkers, backgammon, chess, go, poker, Scrabble, and bridge. But really, it’s about so much more —art appreciation, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, world history, archeology, and, of course, game theory. In beautiful prose, Roeder explores what games can tell us about philosophy, art, and human nature.
I absolutely love this essay by Tish Harrison Warren about what she gained by quitting Twitter. “The times when I checked Twitter were often the transition points in my day: when I sat down to work or I finished a task, waiting at a light or in line... Freeing up those small, seemingly inconsequential moments has been transformative.” She writes that “leaving these small moments of my day unfilled changed how I walk through time.” She adopted a new motto:
Guard the margins — those seemingly unimportant parts of our day and time. Margins on a page can seem like wasted space (wouldn’t it save trees if we wrote or printed across the whole page?), but all that blank space helps us to read and take in information. We need the blank spaces. We need moments when we get no input, no news, no videos, no memes, no opinions. We need moments when we space out, daydream, when our minds go blank.
A Prompt Just for Fun
One of my favorite writing prompts ever came from poet Aaron Anstett. He share with us Richard Peabody’s poem, “I’m in Love with the Morton Salt Girl.” The gist of the exercise is this: Fall in love with a mascot for a company or a team, or some other fictional character. Write a confession about how you love this person and why. Here’s one I wrote years ago:
I’ve Fallen in Love with Dr. Seuss
I’ve fallen in love with Dr. Seuss.
I want to slather him with rhymes
until his Horton hears my Whos.
I have heard delicious rumors
of his seven hump whump.
Did he say seven humps? Seven?
Oh, be still my whump a thump.
I want to find him in my car,
I want to find him near and far.
I want to find him in my house,
I want to find him up my bl--.
Excuse me. I know what you’re thinking.
Rosemerry, come on. Dr. Seuss?
Isn’t he a bit old for you?
But if he’d just take a gander,
I’ll be his mother goose,
and oh, the places we’ll go, good doctor!
Put your wocket in my pocket,
and when we’re through
I want to get lost in your salla salloo.
I would even devour green eggs and ham,
for the chance to roll in a rhyme with you.
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
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Two Questions:
(share your answers with us here on Substack or in our FB group)
When was a time you really had fun in your creative practice?
What is something you say you want to do but don’t have time for?