Saturday, August 11, 2007

6 Steps to Tapping Creativity Right Now

Sometimes finding ways to tap creativity can be a bit involved. Hey, this creativity thing doesn't always come so easily. Today, we're going to look at six quick steps to help you get past creative block and get the ideas rolling right away.

1. Go for a walk. Try someplace familiar, like your own neighborhood. Take a look around and see if you notice anything you hadn't seen before.

2. Go to the library and get a short book you know nothing about. Sometimes reading new writers is enough to spark new ideas.

3. Give Google and Yahoo a break. Try using alternative search engines for a while, such as Ask, Hakia, or Mahalo. They return information in different ways.

4. Write a poem. Retell one of your other works in a series of haikus.





6. Read some local news stories, then journal about what they mean to you personally. I mean...you do journal, right?

These don't have to be one-time fixes either. For instance, every trip I take to the library, I bring back a short book for new writer voices. I walk every day during my lunch hour and look for different things. I have reams of bad poetry lying around; I also have some good short stories that started as bad poems. And I do all of my journaling by hand.

Remember, creativity can be a lifestyle, not just a character trait.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your tip No.5 is excellent. There is something in putting pen to paper, which lets your creative juices flow.

Anonymous said...

Great list. As ottayan, I agree there is something to putting pen to paper. This is something I realized about my own writing over the past 20 years. I do most of it on paper first. At least an outline that is very close to a sloppy copy draft. I was wondering why I was having writing blocks and then it just came to me, I was trying to write using a word processor rather than on paper first.

Anonymous said...

Great post Geoff, I often find that taking walks helps out tremendously. I usually take along my digital voice recorder and make “Notes” of posting ideas.

Jim Moon

bhumika said...

thanks geoff, that's a great post. i love writing by hand and feel that the words flow smoothly when handwritten. when i type, the only thing that comes to my mind is the backspace key :)

Patricia Singleton said...

Geoff, #5 is my favorite. Most of my blog articles are first written by hand, then transfered to the computer. Writing by hand just seems to involve more of me when I write than typing. Writing can be a form of meditating for me. The more I read of your articles, the more I like what I find here.

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