The Surrealists Game

Day 4 of 18 days of small creative acts

Good morning

I’ve had a broken nights sleep and been up since 4am. My brain is tired and pre-menstrual foggy. I decided to take things easy and play a game with my morning lemon and ginger tea, hoping to prepare the ground for writing tomorrow.

The Surrealists Game is a great game to play if you want to break out of your tired descriptions or form different connections. Here’s how it works…

1. Take a piece of paper and cut it into 16 squares

2. Write a concrete noun (e.g. bird, well, computer) on one piece of paper. Fold it.

3. Write a description of that noun on another piece of paper. Fold it and put it in a separate pile.

4. Write an abstract noun (e.g. fear, hope, love). Fold. Write a description. Fold.

5. Keep going until all the paper is gone. You should have 2 piles.

6. Unfold one noun and one description and lay them next to each other. Keep going until all are unfolded.

Here’s what I ended up with. Spot the sneaky adjective.

Most of what you end up with will be gibberish, but there is usually at least one thing that sparks a new idea. I’ll pick one of these pairings as a jumping off point for writing tomorrow, as I’m finding that the best way to keep momentum is to lay a breadcrumb trail for myself so that I am not starting from a scratch every morning.

Took about 15 minutes and was a lovely start to the day.

Let me know if you try it!

Much love

Em x

(Oh and yes I said I was going to reduce these newsletters to weekly, but i was encouraged by some kind folks to keep going daily, and so I am!)