At last! You have the time and quiet space to write and you sit down with a notebook and pen in a cozy spot. A cup of water/tea/coffee sits close by and you wait for the magical words to start flowing. The first few lines stumble onto the page and thennnnn….crickets. You scribble down a few more lines and then you cross them out. Now you start to feel a little anxious and think maybe you should clean the house. Relax, writer. We’ve all been here and the answer is simple. You need to write something silly.

We all want our writing to have meaning. It’s different when you write in your journal and you know that no other eyeballs will ever look at it (until you’re dead, anyway.) But when you sit down to write a profound story for a reader? What usually steps in is stuffy. And I don’t know about you, but I really hate reading stuffy writing. There’s no connection between the writer and you. It’s like trying to swallow a dry piece of toast. And it always happens when you want to sound important and drive a point home. But all you do is drive the reader off the page and into the ditch.

So, let’s take the pressure off.

Write about something silly you’ve experienced lately. It made you laugh in the moment and even when you think about it, you still smile. That kind of silly.

When you write about something silly it allows your mind to do what it loves best. It gets to be wild and creative. That alone taps into a whole other part of your brain. And it gets the writing juices flowing.

Write about one of your pet’s crazy antics and why you loved it. How did it help your day? Write about something a kid in your life commented on. Dive into a crazy thought you had while driving and singing. Look for the slices of joy in your life that arrive in the form of silliness.

The strategy to help your writing is sitting there wearing a pair of googly eyes.

*Did you love this? Then check out Scribbly – my gentle and whimsical writing program that we snail-mail right to your house. Scribbly writers from three countries are writing something silly at this very moment.