By the time I learned about the Oulipo, a collective of Parisian writers and scientists who use strict formal rules to generate literature, I was already doomed to love it. I was a kid with an unwavering penchant for crossword puzzles and unlicensed Scrabble variants, who thought in elaborate anagrams and once spent a day compiling a mix tape whose song titles and artist names all omitted the letter E.
My discovery, at age 17, of an esteemed group dedicated to exploring the literary potential of frivolities like this—a group whose most notorious output, I might add, is a novel that omits the letter E—was affirming to no end. But it also came at a time when I'd begun to wonder whether my own flirtations with literary writing were founded on anything serious, or whether I just got a kick out of playing with letters and words.
The lesson I learned from the Oulipo, which celebrated its 50th birthday in 2010, was that there's little use in that distinction. Indeed, there's an enviable freedom to be gained from approaching literature—or any pursuit protected by a veneer of seriousness—with the same carefree spirit that guides us through the puzzles page of the weekend paper.
In methodically filling out the squares of a crossword grid and in composing a text that obeys some arbitrary and demanding constraint, there is the same feeling of idle, unhurried and sublimely purposeless productivity—the feeling of being at play.
At best, we tend to think of wordplay as a ploy to amuse readers. But this mind-set shortchanges the importance of amusing ourselves. We are, after all, our first readers, our harshest critics, our most doting fans. Why should we turn up our noses at something that makes writing feel a little less like work?
This is not to say that we should all adopt the algorithmic labyrinths favored by the Oulipians—simply that good things can come of allowing ourselves to be attentive to, and complicit with, the happy accidents that happen as we tap-tap along in pursuit of the perfect well-tempered sentence.
Take that last remark, for example: suppose you notice that there is only one vowel used in the phrase "the perfect well-tempered sentence." What might you do with that?
On one hand, you could even out your vowel distribution by following it, as I have done above, with a sentence from which the letter E is absent (and also, quite inadvertently, in which all the other chief vowels occur in alphabetical, and then reverse-alphabetical, order).
Or you could see how long you can keep writing without using A, I, O or U—just as you might see how long you can ride a bicycle without using its handlebars—until you wipe out in a senseless fender-bender.
Little experiments like these are unlikely to result in phenomenal, or even particularly readable, writing. But they are likely to be fun, and to help you see words not as rigid instruments of meaning but as puzzle pieces, as playthings—components that you can manipulate and tinker with to make whatever you like.
Language is a playground. When not serving some utilitarian purpose, letters and words flirt and frisk and frolic; sometimes, without supervision, they build spectacular sand castles. As a would-be writer, the most inspiring—and, paradoxically, useful—thing to happen to me was finding others who believed in rolling up their sleeves and playing in the sand.
—Daniel Levin Becker's first book, "Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literature," will be published in April.