Be like Shakespeare: use constraints to free your writing
Your results may vary
Working within certain limits — whether self-imposed or not — can often be liberating. This is especially true when it comes to creativity. A specific material, a defined word count, a time limit.
The most famous among modern writers who embrace limits are the members of Oulipo. And possibly the most well-known of their creations is La Disparition (The Void) by Georges Perec. This is a novel written without a single use of the letter ‘e’. That’s hard enough in English; in French a task only a madman (or genius) would attempt. The purpose, of course, is not only to have fun and solve some sort of puzzle but to create works that, well, work.
Self-imposed limits have been around for as long as writing.
Shakespeare worked well with constraints. He also worked well with others, according to some accounts but that’s neither here nor there. Constraints. The most obvious place to look at those constraints is in the Sonnets. A sonnet is, by definition, a poem written to a particular format and Shakespeare’s Sonnets have a format that he made very much his own. In his own way, Shakespeare is an Elizabethan Oulipoist. Oulipotary? Oulipont?
So, what’s with the sonnet?
