If you have ever acted a part in a play, you might know that putting on a costume can bring about a sudden transformation.  You might suddenly talk differently, even with a foreign accent.  If you are playing the part of an old man, you might begin to walk more slowly and shuffle stiffly, and you might naturally put a hunch in your back.  If you put on a lady’s dress, you might feel older, and you might feel like a mother, even though you’ve never had any kids.  If you put on the tattered rags of a beggar, you might sense what it is like to have nothing, and no one to look after you.

Costumes get us thinking and feeling in different ways.  Even without trying, we begin to match our voice, our movements and our personality to the costume—whatever it might be.  Even more curious is that we are capable of doing this if the costume is an animal or something that the other sex would more naturally wear!  How could we possibly know how to do all of this??  It is a mystery!  But we do!

New idea:  When you next sit down to write, pull on a costume.  Why, even one article—a Tam o’ shanter cap or a shield or a slippery feather boa—could start this transformation.  Arrive to your blank page as someone else!  You might be surprised to find that this character picks up the pencil and launches the story with great confidence.

This character might also be more fearless, more wily, more bold than you are used to being!  He (or she) might teach you what it’s like to write that way.

And when you need a new character, you only need to put on another costume.