My five-year-old told me yesterday, “When You’re Sad, You Make a Rainbow.” I didn’t quite get it until he pointed to his frown.

My son knows one of the secrets of good writing—let your mind wander. When I asked him how he came up with the idea, I’d already assumed he’d heard it somewhere. Not so.

“I made a frown and then I just thought, ‘It looks like a rainbow.'”

In his free state of feeling his emotion, his mind wasn’t trying to talk him out of it or do anything with it. And so he happened upon a metaphor.

The metaphor he discovered for frowning was not only fresh—it added meaning and texture to a simple observation. I found myself reading more into the symbol:

Perhaps it means that within our sadness is a seed of happiness. Or that one can always find beauty or meaning in our less-than-happy moments. It also seemed to me that in tapping into his creativity, he quickly shifted from sadness to wonder and discovery. It lifted his mood immediately. The creative act is healing.

In the same way his statement took me deeper into meaning making, good writing can take us on a journey—particularly writing laced with metaphors and symbols. (I almost wrote “laden” but you don’t want to overdo it). We can access symbols on many levels—conscious and subconscious—and get more out of a piece that way.

Think of something you wrote about today—or something you plan to write about. Get into the space of it and let your mind wander. Do you land upon a symbol or metaphor?  What’s your rainbow?