Play, Awe, and Everything Flawed: Human-Centered Design for Writers

From the very first time i poked around the Hive website and was later bestowed the “Hive staff” honorific, i was immediately struck by the exciting range of possibilities for applying human-centered design (HCD) frameworks and methodology. What was the theory and praxis behind the furniture on wheels, the silly games, the funky colors, the bean bags in cozy nooks? The writer, performer, and educator in me was so intrigued! I’d soon be trained to know the best way to set up a room for a poetry workshop, or how to effectively use digital collaboration tools for a group brainstorm, and call it a day!

Oh, how naïve i was! Regular exposure to HCD has serious, unintended consequences. Next thing you know, you find yourself “Designing a Family Dinner Experience” rather than just handling the logistics of a Mother’s Day party. Inevitably, the tentacles of HCD mindsets made their way into my writing practice — and it’s been quite the happy accident! In applying Hive values to my writing, i have found tools to push back against the thought patterns that constrain my sense of possibility, as well as constant encouragements to move through my creative path with more silly dances and less self-flagellation. Naturally, i want to share this goodness with you, dear reader, in hopes it can serve your writing!

Now, you’re probably wondering who i am. I’m in my 30s, 5’-3” short, and have a couple of distinctive moles. Let’s start with the ones on my toes — hold on, my editor is advising i use my painstakingly detailed list of physical traits for a character sketch in my next short story. However, perhaps you should know that i’m a bilingual writer (mostly in poetry and creative nonfiction), actor, and facilitator, situating myself at the intersection of arts, healing, and social justice. And of course, i work at the Hive! Doing what? Nobody is really sure, but i’ve been spotted replacing ink cartridges in the printers, punching numbers into a calculator, making piñatas, and calling maintenance when someone thought there was a dead animal on the premises. Cool? Let’s get started!

Writing a masterpiece? Pff nah, we’re just prototyping, bruh!

Some creatives are very good at jumping into a project and going with the flow. But if you’re like me, you’ve probably approached the page with knife-to-the-throat questions such as, “Could this be the poem i’m remembered for after i die?” or “How can i make this the best personal essay ever written this side of the equator?” For some reason, it’s very hard to write a single word after i give myself such interrogative pep-talks. And while you might laugh at my self-talk, after many conversations with students about their own writing challenges, it’s clear that self-doubt and self-defeating thoughts are some of the most common gatekeepers of our creative potential. We all seem to have our own set of ridiculous unattainable standards that haunt us!

One of the first things that struck me about HCD courses was the way students were tasked with creating prototypes, or preliminary models, always under the premise that a) you aren’t really sure what you’re doing, and b) you’re probably going to do it wrong, but you might learn something in the process.

Um, excuse me? No, thanks, that sounds awful.

But also — kind of liberating?

What if i started writing my draft accepting that i wasn’t going to get it right? As a perfectionist-in-recovery, i began to wonder how i could lean into the imperfection, the unknown, the humility of being wrong. I started coming to the page with a self-talk that went a little more like, “i’m just writing a poem, it won’t be the best poem, it won’t even be my best poem.” Or “i’m just putting down on paper an idea i have at this moment. I’m just letting it exist as is.” This helps me create a safe space for whatever creative seed i’m carrying to reveal itself, to come out from hiding because i’m saying i am ready to receive it without harsh judgment. I find comfort in remembering that the idea of responsibly prototyping a less-than-perfect idea aligns with my political values. My mentor and friend, Dr. Mohan Ambikaipaker, would remind his students that as racial justice activists, our job is to do “a bunch of experiments in anti-racism” because we are all still trying to figure out solutions to an ever-changing, elusive problem. Meanwhile, others like Tema Okun have discussed the relationship between perfectionism and white supremacy. As artists, we must remember that we are in the business of exploring and offering our situated, temporal, limited vantage point, rather than delivering The Answer that will be appropriate for everyone. So get in the car, loser, we’re going prototyping!

TRY: Next time you’re struck by creative paralysis …

• Lower the standards. Don’t give your creation any positive qualitative adjectives, just give it a noun. Stay away from, “This is going to be a life-changing personal essay that will get me published.” Start with, “This is going to be a personal essay.” In fact, it might be helpful to add a mildly negative adjective. “This is going to be a personal essay that kind of sucks for now.”
• Narrow your sphere of potential influence. Rather than writing a piece that “will have a profound effect on people dealing with mental health,” for example, maybe you write a piece “for a person out there that might really find these words helpful.” It is a less daunting task and less colonial-ish in spirit!

Love the player and love the game

“Creating permission to play” is a foundational pillar at the Hive. Do you think they’d let me write all these tangents and bad jokes if they weren’t jollification enthusiasts? Hivers are unwavering about starting every meeting, every workshop, every class with one of a variety of short games called “stokes.” And after doing a hundred of them, i so get the time investment! Trust me when i say that i am so much more ready to do some deep problem-solving with my team if i just spent the last 10 minutes chasing my coworker while pretending i was a dog and they were a cat. (Oh, and science also says play is great for your brain or whatever, but wait until you read more about my invaluable first-person account.)

Not surprisingly, playing has also proved to be a worthwhile endeavor in my writing. Last year, i was working on a comedic monologue that i revised repeatedly over several months. I felt the writing was finally done, so i put on a wig as part of my character’s costume, and started filming some takes. Soon, i was laughing at myself, feeling more relaxed and confident, discovering my character, and even doing a little improvisation. I hadn’t planned on playing dress up, but in this unexpected playtime, something really quite magical happened to my writer brain: i suddenly identified with amazing precision what edits i needed to make. I went back to the text and confidently made cuts, reordered content, replaced words, added details. Was this a magical wig? Is that what the mysterious shopkeeper with the pet owl meant when she said, “This isn’t just any wig, young lady, beware of its powers,” before vanishing with my money? Could be. But it can also be that play can really go a long way in helping us relax, turn off our judgement, and step into our creative [wig] powers!

TRY:

• Next time you’re haunted by writer’s block or you’re on your 14th rewrite — give yourself some play time! Whether it’s dancing to some songs in your room, doing a round of ping pong with a friend, or playing with your sweet dog, make time to turn off your brain. You’ll get back to work with fresh eyes!
• When you’re in the editing or development stages of a piece, try using a different art form to explore your work from a new perspective, with lower stakes. Try reading your work in funny voices. Build a diorama of the setting of your story/play. Create a playlist for key scenes in your story/play. Make a mood board that reflects your poem.

“How Might We” find inspiration in our problems?

Since i started working at the Hive, i heard “how might we?” tossed around in meetings frequently and was admittedly unimpressed every time. “Big woop, you just turned our problem into a question,” i kept thinking to myself. (Sidenote: i hope my co-workers still like me after reading this piece.)

A few months ago, i sat in an HCD crash course that my colleague Shannon Randolph was facilitating for faculty, and i finally started to get it! First, she had each of us share a challenge we were experiencing. Something like, “Aw man, my students are really tuning out during class discussions :( ” Then, she had us turn that problem into a question, a “How might we?” (HMW) statement. She explained how this reframe was going to turn our challenge into an OPPORTUNITY. Huh? How? So it was now: “How might we keep students actively engaged during class discussions?” It worked. Suddenly our attention was on the possibilities, not the obstacle. Such a simple but powerful shift!

Earlier this semester, i was incredibly nervous and stressed about a poetry reading i was scheduled to deliver at a college. I was editing the 30th version of my poet bio, and it was making my imposter syndrome even worse. I thought, “i hate artist bios so much, they sound so fake… what would an authentic bio look like?” I won’t lie to you and say that i proceeded to roll out a white board, write a HMW statement, and sketch 8 different ideas on Post-it notes. However, i did let that problem open the gates of, dare i say, opportunity? (Shannon, are you reading this, and how proud of me are you on the scale from 1 to tears-in-your-eyes?) I wondered, “How might i use my bio to remind me of my priorities and values?” “How might my bio actually pump me up before i go on stage?” “How might i convey to the public what i actually want them to know about me?”

I started drafting an alternative artist bio — a REAL artist bio! I eventually called it my “A-side Bio,” and it went something like “linett’s gotten rejected from ___ magazine, ____ journal, ___ fellowship. She’s a slow reader, and even slower writer. She’s gotten no prestigious writing awards. Doesn’t even have a book published,” and so on. It also included sweet, grounding feedback quotes from my past workshop participants, who are my #1 target audience. It was all factual and it was so fun to write! It was even more fun to show up at my reading and ask my host, “Can you read this to introduce me?” which, luckily, she found amusing and didn’t lead the college to sever ties with me.

TRY:

• Create a few HMIs (How Might “i”s) to turn one of your most recent, annoying writing challenges into a creative opportunity. Example A: You have a great plot going for your next one-act play, but your ending is still feeling cheesy and predictable. An HMI might be, “How might i create an ending that is more grounded in my characters’ world?” Example B: You have lost motivation to finish that one essay you’ve been revising for two years. An HMI might be, “How might i reconnect with the passion i felt for my subject matter?” Now drop and give me five more! (Click here for tips on how to write some killer HMWs.)

Not a one-trick pony — a renaissance pony!

Let’s go back to my story about Shannon’s HCD crash course. After we came up with our HMW statement, she had us come up with eight — not one, not two, but eight different potential ideas to address our HMW. I felt it was a bit much, to be honest, but i went along with it. Friends, it worked like a charm. We had so many ideas that we didn’t even know lived in our heads. “Bring snacks to every seminar session!” “Do a stretch or exercise at the midpoint of the discussion!” “Have a perfect attendance competition,” and so on. When you have to come up with eight ideas, some will be a little silly, some serious, some fancy, some terrible, some simple, some complex … and there’ll be at least a few golden nuggets! This is what the “generative mindset” is all about — to trust our creative abilities and let ourselves crank out as many ideas as possible without judgment.

In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron explains that artists often fall into the self-sabotaging behavior of not making space/time to create because they are subconsciously afraid that if they get their creative ideas out, they’ll run out of all their material. When i read that, i felt silly to realize how much i resonated with that thought pattern. The wonderful thing that HCD instructors accomplish by insisting people generate many, unfiltered, shameless, none-is-too-outlandish ideas, is that they allow participants to both acknowledge their creative abilities and realize how vast their creative potential actually is.

So is it a matter of simply saying, “Why write one poem when i can write 75!”? That’s not quite my takeaway. But the emphasis on our inherently generative ability has helped me keep at bay the deficit perspective that was once so prevalent. That is, it is not true i’m carrying around one story, or one good poem. My artistic well will not dry up after i write them, largely because i don’t have a personal artistic well. Rather, i remember i’m part of a vibrant, mycelium of creativity that transcends my consciousness, as well as time and space. My creation honors and builds on the work of socially committed creatives before me, continues the journey of my ancestors, and i plant it in the world with the trust that it may serve other beings in the future. Artmaking is thus a spiritual exercise in expansion, not a capitalist venture in extraction. A generative mindset helps us trust and lean into that infinite source of creativity and imagination.

TRY:

• What’s your mycelium of creativity? Take 5-10 minutes to write down your artistic ancestry, the creative communities you’re a part of, and the legacy you wish to leave behind. Save this motivation and accountability reminder for a rainy day.
• Refer to the HMWs you wrote above. You already know what’s coming — write at least eight different prototype ideas for your HMW. And one of them better be ridiculous!

Friends, we’ve come to the end of this journey together. Whether you call yourself a writer or not, hopefully you found some helpful tips! (Or at least an okay way to distract yourself for 20 minutes during your Zoom work meeting that went on for too long.)

Thank you for reading, i hope we get to prototype together some experiments in creation-for-liberation sometime!

linett (she/ella) is an undocumented writer, actress, and facilitator based in Pomona, CA by way of Zacatecas, MX. She has worked in youth empowerment, immigrant justice, and cultural organizing for over a decade. Hit her up if you’re about activating our innate creative abilities toward collective liberation!