Write This: A Child's Heart
How Seeing Like a Child Fuels Our Literary Life
Welcome to the June installment of Write This, where Solum presents a brief reflection and writing prompt for you to engage with in your preferred medium. You can either delve into the prompts on your own, or join our Paid Subscriber Workshops in our Substack chat, where you can submit your piece to receive enriching feedback from fellow peers and members of Solum’s masthead.
One of my most vivid childhood memories is shrouded in moonlight. My brother and I were playing a game with our neighbors called Jackpot, in which a person threw up a ball and the first to snatch it was the winner. It was winter, beyond the edge of a frosty evening. A cold moon was up. Each breath was a blade into our lungs, but there we were: running, panting, grappling for the ball like nothing else mattered in the world.
It was a simple but eternal moment: all the light, all the cold, all the laughter. It was like we were amid a celebration and we were the only ones who knew how to dance.
But then we grew up, and the celebration was over.
This sad tale isn’t unique to me. Childhood is an elusive land, a kind of mystical shore that holds our old springs and half-buried dreams. Once left, we can never build the boat to reach it again no matter the tools we find.
And yet, I don’t believe that wailing about long-gone childhood has to be the whole story—especially for writers. Growing up comes with losses, the acute being a child’s simple and loving heart. Child-life’s sense of imaginative wonder and unquenchable curiosity fades when the clocks plow forward. However, I think recovering this sense is essential if we are to write well.
Writing begins as a journey into unknown places. What better person, then, is there to lead us than a child—capable of dreaming across valleys and sunsets without expecting them to give anything in return? Wonder is the only end the child seeks. With vision centered on anticipation, perhaps we will be able to glimpse rivers running with wine and trees swaying to the tune of hidden music once again.
“Putting away childish things, surely, has nothing to do with putting away the child. It is a total distortion of terms. The child should go on inside you helping you to reach out to each new emotion, helping you to excite to each new encounter, helping you to delight unconditionally to each new experience of the sense.”1
Childlike seeing reminds us of who we are and just how magical the world truly is. Having a child’s heart allows us to write about beauty and joy without the need to explain them. The bright eyes of childhood keep us awake, and they give us a readiness for excitement and adventure that can—and will—animate and deepen our writing.
As poet Dylan Thomas writes, “Children in wonder watching the stars, / Is the aim and the end.”2 This isn’t to say that we should forgo intellect and reality when we write; I think the best writing is grown-up and brimming with childlike wonder. It combines maturity of thought with a perpetual return to a forgotten form of astonishment.
Of course, this is easier said than done. But writing starts with vision. It’s the child who knows best how to experience ordinary moments as marvels and adventures. Adopting these deeper eyes will help us write about everyday things with the precision and awe they deserve. With this in mind, we invite you to Write This:
Write an imaginative piece about something that reminds you of childhood, with a special focus on how it affects your present view of the world.
Today’s piece is brought to you by Solum’s friend and previous intern, Sarah Tate.
“Sources and Responses,” Ivan Southall, Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, vol. 31, no. 2 (1974), p. 85.
“Being But Men,” Dylan Thomas, lines 15-16.
Wow! Thanks for this piece and the invitation and reminder to wonder and ponder those elusive "simple but eternal moments." May we have hearts of children again. Reminds me of Lewis' description of joy from his childhood too - "The first is itself the memory of a memory. As I stood beside a flowering currant bush on a summer day there suddenly arose in me without warning, and as if from a depth not of years but of centuries"