“When you’re an adult watching a kid playing with a little toy, you just think that kid’s doing that and there’s nothing else to it. But from the kid’s perspective, that toy is playing with them. It’s interactive” (Lynda Barry, interviewed by David Marchese in “A Genius Cartoonist Believes Child’s Play Is Anything But Frivolous,” The New York Times, September 02, 2022). As a writer, as well as a developmental psychologist, I wholeheartedly concur. Creative writing is a form of play. The story is a toy and the writer must be open to playing with it. Psychologist Jean Piaget said, “Play is the work of childhood” and Mr. Rogers described play as serious work. Creative play should also be the work of adulthood.
