When I was in high school my mom worked part time at a fabric store.  They had a huge sale going on that was going to be over at the close of  business that day. About five minutes before the store closed a lady came rushing in the door asking for the sudden buckle.   Mom thought a few seconds and realized the lady was looking for a fabric called suddan boucle (boo clay).  She was able to show the lady the fabric, help her pick out what she wanted and cut it off the bolt so the customer could have the sale price.

Had she not been able to convert the words the lady was speaking it would not have turned out well for the customer. So do what you can to help your reader follow your story.

Or would you have to first make sure you were up to date with your emails, then get on with creating?

Oh, but only after you’ve checked you favourite creativity blogs, just in case someone had posted that article on being more productive and overcoming procrastination that will finally help you create? Then you’d begin creating…

But only when you made sure all your materials were perfectly organised, pens in line, paints in colour order, and so on. Then you could begin creating.

After you’d made a snack, because by now, with all this preparation you’ve worked up an appetite. So once you’ve made something to eat, and eaten it, then you can get on with creating.

Oh but maybe while you were eating you’ve received a new email, or someone has posted some great new tips on being more creative, or you feel that having your materials lined up in colour order is not so conducive to creating and you’d rather have them strewn randomly to make the process more exciting?

And suddenly three or four hours have disappeared.

The Rocketeer

You can see the idea. I know this kind of procrastination well, I’ve done it myself many a time.

In my own experience, given an almost unlimited time to create, it becomes overwhelming. There are so many things you could do, and you have all day to do it, so why rush? Surely if you take your time, ease yourself into it gently, something will come?

But before you realise, half the day has gone. And all you’ve added to your life is even more information about how to create, a beautifully organised and reorganised set of materials and a bit of food in your tummy.

This is why actually giving yourself a specific, shorter chunk of time to create is far more productive. And satisfying.

When you set yourself, say, two hours only, to create, it instantly encourages you to be more focused.

Here are some additional tips to help you create more than a day’s worth of creativity in two hours (or even less):

- Pick one thing. It doesn’t matter what it is, you don’t need to spend another two hours choosing the “perfect” creative project. That doesn’t exist. The best projects evolve into something wonderful and unexpected. For that to happen you need to actually get stuck in and create. Choose one idea, and start to explore.

- Have your creative space ready. You don’t have to have every possible tool and material available, or an elaborate studio set up. But make sure that you have somewhere you feel comfortable and free to create in, whether it’s the kitchen table, a study, or in the middle of a field somewhere!

- Eliminate all distractions. One of the biggest creativity killers is distraction. We’re so connected and wired up these days it’s SO easy to procrastinate. Unplug all distractions. Tell people who need to know where you are and politely ask them not to disturb you. Offer them the same opportunity and courtesy at another time.

Then, start a timer for two hours, and just create whatever comes, without analysis, without judgement. Just outpour, just create.

Getting focused in a short space of time like this a very powerful way of creating.

What tends to happen is one of two things. Either you become incredibly focused on one project, and create more in a couple of hours than you have in the last couple of months.

Alternatively these kind of focused sessions become like a huge creative brainstorm, and given this opportunity, your creative mind generates enough new ideas for months worth of future creative projects.

Either way, the key is getting focused, and just creating. When you do, you’ll find that you too can create more in two hours than you’ve done in a whole day.

So, when are you going to try this technique yourself? Make a date with your creativity, write it down in your diary, let people know if anyone needs to know, and stick to it. Enjoy your creating…

image: suburbanslice

There are many practices we can put in place to ensure that these kinds of creative block happen more rarely, if ever, but that’s for another post.

For now, let’s talk about 5 effective ways to be creative when you feel you absolutely cannot be creative.

1. Focus on a single sense. Sit somewhere still, and focus entirely on just one of your senses. Sight is a great place to start. Block your other senses and absorb your surroundings purely through your eyes and what you see. Imagine your vision is like a language, communicating to you the complexity and beauty of what’s around you. Then after 5 or 10 minutes, when you’ve seen every last detail, do the same again with another of your senses.

2. Write down a secret procrastination list. Reveal everything, all the most cunning and devious tricks you know and use regularly to help you to avoid actually getting down to creating. Once you start writing you’ll be amazed at how many there are. When you think you’ve got them all down, step back and take a look. impressive isn’t it? All these can surely only have come from a highly creative mind.

3. Write a word at random. And another. And another. Once you have your three words, you’ll notice your creative mind instantly begins making connections and associations between the words, forms sentences, ideas and images that weren’t there before. You can’t help it, you can’t turn off your creativity, it flows constantly. Don’t forget this!

4. Remember the times when you were most creative. Go for a walk, don’t set a destination, just head off and walk where the mood takes you, all the time recalling those times of abundant creativity. What were the key elements in place during these times that allowed you to be so creative? The little differences that made the difference? Let them come to you, they’re right there. When you return, set about recreating these conditions of creativity so you can be that creative again as soon as possible.

5. Write out the advice you’d give a good friend who’s stuck. If one of your closest friends came to you and said they felt they absolutely could not be creative, what would you advise? Write exactly what you think they should do to help them get creating again. Write all the ways you would encourage them. Then look at what you’ve written. Isn’t that great advice? Now turn it around and apply it to yourself.

Try one of this tips, any of them will help you get creative again.

Try them all and you can’t help but feel that creative flow slowly return.

As a bonus, what you’ll notice as you try these techniques is you’ll adapt them as you go to help you even more, to make them even more effective too.

Ideas are the starting point for all creative projects. No ideas means no creativity! So here’s a very effective way of using your senses to give you a plentiful flow of new creative ideas:

It’s all too easy to forget we have five senses (at least!) through which we experience the world.

Our senses are not only the channel through which we receive all of our experiences, but also the channel through which we broadcast them back out as our art. Let me explain this more clearly. Say you’re out walking and see a beautiful weeping willow tree. You experience it through your eyes, maybe you hear the wind rushing through the branches too, and maybe you get up close and touch it. The main sense is your vision and this is then captured in your mind as a memory.

So, then when you come to create new art inspired by the willow, the only way you can do this is by recalling this memory and using your senses to create it. This could be a poem, a painting, a sculpture or something else. You’re bringing it physically into the world so that others can then experience your work through their senses. Your senses were both the input channel and the output channel.

Can you imagine how any of this could possibly be done without using your senses? The answer is simple – it COULDN’T be done.

So how does this relate to helping you have more creative ideas?

A great way of giving yourself more inspiration for ideas is to focus on your senses more. And the best way to start is to use one at a time, and give it your full attention. Try this simple exercise:

Take yourself somewhere where there’s likely to be plenty of stimulation. Maybe a busy town, if you prefer the stimulation of bustling people and buildings, or it could be somewhere more rural if you prefer nature to be your main source of ideas. Find a comfortable place to sit. You’ll need a notebook and pencil for this by the way.

Now, choose one of your senses to begin.

Let’s say your sense of sight. Begin looking around you, forgetting all your other senses for now, and giving your eyes full attention. Look in a way that you don’t normally look, see every detail, every colour, shape, texture and movement. Then begin writing about what you see, as vividly as you can.

Once you’ve written as much as possible, give yourself a short rest. Then, begin with another of your senses, for example your hearing. Again, use this sense with far more attentiveness than you usually would. Listen carefully to the many layers of sound that are occurring around you, you’ll realise wherever you are there’s a virtual symphony of sound effects surrounding you. And, as before, write down what you experience as fully as you can.

Repeat this process for each of your five senses.

Obviously, depending on where you are, you’re likely to feel more through some than others. Just write as much as you can for each. You will amaze yourself with how much detail you notice and record. Just doing this once is a great exercise and will show you how much more stimulation and material for new ideas there is around you at any one time. Make this exercise a habit though and soon you’ll realise that you are doing it automatically.

Wherever you go you will instinctively absorb more of your surroundings, and creative ideas will literally be forming before your eyes. And ears. And nose. Oh you get the idea! Start today, pick somewhere to visit, take a notebook and pencil, let your surroundings fill your senses, and ideas fill your mind!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dan_Goodwin

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dan_Goodwin

Anyone who creates needs a steady influx of new ideas. Everything every created, everything ever invented, began with a tiny gem of an idea in someone’s mind. Every single one began the same way.

So it follows that if we don’t have any ideas to work with, we’re not going to be able to create anything.

Here to help you out then are 7 brilliant ways to have more creative ideas than you thought possible.

1. Use your senses. We experience the world through our five senses, and we create using them too. But often we ignore our surroundings so much that we might as well be wandering around with a bucket of jam on our head!

Wherever you are, the world around you is thriving with stimuli. Focus on just one of your senses, for example your sight, for five minutes, and write down everything you experience, every last detail. The more you do this simple exercise, the more alert and aware you’ll become, and you’ll realise that stimulation for new creative ideas is everywhere.

2. Write lists. Ideas often come and go in our minds, and the problem is not actually manifesting the ideas, but capturing them before they disappear. How often have you had a flash of inspiration, vowed you’ll work on it later, only to completely forget it moment afterwards?

Writing lists firstly is a way of recording those ideas as soon as they occur, but the added benefit is that once you have a few items in a list, your mind naturally wants to add more. Plus you’re creativity will begin looking at different things in your list and ways of combining or cross pollinating them. A very powerful idea breeding ground. Try it!

3. Read a range of materials. If you read the same magazines, articles, websites and books, then although you are getting new content, it’s likely to be in a very similar style and tone to that you’ve already seen. So after a while, its ability to stimulate new thoughts in you will diminish and eventually dry up. Which isn’t very helpful for generating new ideas.

There’s an easy solution. Read a range of materials, and especially in areas you’ve never read before. Try a gardening magazine, a carpentry blog, a biography of a racing driver, or a novel set in 14th century Japan. Find stuff that’s very new to you, and it will instantly stir up new connections and ideas in your mind.

4. Visit new places. When we visit the same places the whole time, travel the same routes to work, or college or to our favourite haunts, we can become blind to everything around us. It’s as if we travel on autopilot and become immune to any fresh stimulation.

An obvious remedy is to visit a few new places, where your mind and senses are going to automatically be more alive, because of the different surroundings. Even better, take a camera, sketchbook or notebook and record everything that interests you. New ideas will be triggered left, right and centre.

5. Write freeform, edit later. Sometimes the best ideas aren’t right on the surface, beautifully formed and waiting to be plucked like a fresh juicy peach on a low branch of the tree. Sometimes the best ideas take a bit of probing, a little digging up.

A great way of doing this is to just write freeform about whatever you wish to. Even if your first few lines seem boring, or even nonsense, keep writing non-stop for at least ten minutes. As you go, you’ll find your creative mind going off at intriguing tangents that will spur exciting new thoughts and ideas. Then, simply pluck out the best bits and expand them into new creative projects.

6. Keep an ideas journal. Your mind is just as capable of having an endless supply of creative ideas as the next person, but sometimes it might not fee like that. The main reason is nearly always that you’re not capturing the ideas you do have.

Get a simple notebook or journal to become your Ideas Journal. Every time you have an idea, write it down. The more you use the journal, the more ideas you’ll notice. An added bonus is the ideas you record will magically begin to grow, so when you return to them you’ll find all kind of offshoot thoughts appearing too. Start your Ideas Journal today!

7. Believe you’re capable of having ideas. This is crucial. If you’re going around with an inner monologue that goes something like: “I’m not creative, I NEVER have any good ideas” then guess what? You’ll never have any good ideas! By believing you’re creative, you greatly increase the frequency of ideas you have.

Here’s a simple way to prove you’re creative. Imagine a small boy called Peter, who wears blue shorts and has a magic horse. Now I guarantee that you’ve already pictured Peter and his horse in your mind, and are wondering what he’s like, why the horse is magic and what adventures they might get up to. Am I right? See! You’re far more creative than you think, believe in yourself and your creativity!

These are 7 ways to have more creative ideas than you thought possible. Which tip are you going to pick and put to use first?

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dan_Goodwin

Do you struggle to have enough good creative ideas?

The trouble with creative ideas is they’re often a little shy. And a little nervous.

They need coaxing and encouraging, and don’t tend to rush up in a clown costume with blaring trumpets going “LA LA LA we’re heee-errrre!” to any party they’re invited (or not invited) to.

You have to create the right kind of conditions for the ideas to form, so they feel safe and respected and valued.

This may sound a bit of a soft focus fuzzy edged kind of approach to having ideas, but it works!

If you just sit down with an empty notebook and pencil, and say: “right, there’s a blank page, in fact a whole BOOK of blank pages, come on you ideas, fill it up!” then not very much is likely to happen. Remember how shy they are?

For them this would be like arriving early at a party, feeling awkward that none of your friends have arrived yet, struggling to make small talk with people you seem to have nothing in common with and swearing next time you’ll arrive two hours after the party’s started!

So how can you get the ideas to flow, to come out of hiding, to know only come to the party, but to have a great time?

You simply write. Write whatever comes, it doesn’t matter how you begin. You could start by writing out your shopping list, or writing “I don’t know where to begin” ten times. What matters is that you do begin.

What happens then, is the blank pages start to fill with words, and all those ideas waiting in your mind for a good opportunity to come out to play, start to think “Hey this looks like fun, there’s lots of people gathering, we won’t be the first in and feel awkward. Let’s go!”

So they begin to appear. And appear.

You see, we’re all creative, and far more so than we think we are. We can’t turn off our creativity, but we can neglect it, ignore it, or not welcome it.

Back to writing in your notebook, and the ideas will start to flow before you realise it. As soon as you have a few words down, your creative mind will make other associations and connections with those words, images will form in your mind, you’ll write those down and pretty soon they’ll start to snowball.

A bit like a few people going along to a party, realising how brilliant it is, and calling up all their other friends to come along too. This is how creative ideas are connected, they attract and breed off each other, so the more you write, the more will be queuing up to join the fun!

Of course the same principle applies what ever your preferred creative media. Once you get started, the ideas will start flocking to your party in droves!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dan_Goodwin

Creative writing gives many different benefits and pleasures to many different people.

We don’t all write for the same reasons, we each have our deeper values and motives for why we write.

However, there ARE common motivations that all of us who write creatively share. One of these is simply because it’s enjoyable.

It helps us feel good to write, to create words, sentences, scenes, characters and WORLDS that weren’t there before.

The problem is, when we go through more challenging and difficult times with our writing – those times when we find ourselves stuck, blocked, out of ideas – “fun” and “enjoyable” are some of the last words that come to mind to describe what we’re experiencing.

During our creatively barren times, “anguish”, “torture” and “despair” are words that are more likely to spring to mind.

We feel like a lost rabid animal in the desert, desperately scavenging for food and water, yet withering steadily under the fierce relentless sun.

So what happens? Why does it all go wrong? And where does all the fun in writing go?

Here are 5 of the most common reasons why we lose the sense of fun and enjoyment in our creative writing, and how to start to get them back.

1. We expect too much too quickly. Maybe it’s been a while since you wrote much creatively and you’re just finding your way back into it. If you expect to write a novel by the end of the week, you’re likely to be very disappointed.

Set yourself small writing projects, and write little and often. This way you’ll write more freely without the expectation of having to produce a large volume of words in a short time hanging over you.

2. We always start in the same place. Often, set routines and patterns of working can be very beneficial and help us write prolifically. But if your aim is to have more fun with your writing, it’s important to mix it up and experiment.

Try writing from the middle of a piece and work outwards. Or start at the end with the final line of a short story. Then work backwards and uncover the details of how the story reached that point.

3. We always write to produce an “end product”. If we have an end point in mind the whole time, we can get too wrapped up in how we’re going to get there, and forget to make the bit in between interesting.

Sometimes it’s more fun just handing the reins over to the story itself. Concentrate on the richness of your descriptions, and just write and see where the writing takes you, without worrying about the plot structure or development.

4. We get stuck writing the same way over and over. Even if we start in different places, we can soon fall into a familiar groove and write in a predictable way every time.

If we’re going for volume this reliability is just what we need. But if you want to write for fun and the enjoyment, then try writing in as many radically different ways as you can. Make up a new language even if you want to!

5. We’re afraid of messing up. This is one of the biggest creativity killers there is, whatever you create. You’re so scared of making a mistake or doing something wrong you keep it super safe. Or worse, you don’t write at all.

Let go of the concept of “messing up”. In creative writing, there is no messing up. You can write how you want, about whatever you want, using whichever words you want. Use this freedom and let your imagination and creativity loose!

These are 5 of the most common reasons we lose the sense of fun and enjoyment in our creative writing.

Which do you most relate to in your creative writing experiences? Which are you going to take steps to improve today?

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dan_Goodwin

Creative Writing is something that everyone is capable of. And we can all improve our creative writing – and our enjoyment of it – in a great number of ways.

One of the key factors to writing creatively and freely is confidence.

It doesn’t matter how talented you are as a writer, if you lack the confidence to write and to explore your writing potential you simply won’t create as well or as often as you’re capable of creating.

So here are 5 powerful tips to help you increase YOUR self-confidence as a creative writer -

1. Believe you’re creative. If you didn’t believe you were capable of writing creatively at all, you wouldn’t even be trying, so you’re off to a great start. Now you can build on this core belief.

One way of doing this is to spend some time visualizing how your life would be if you were wildly successful as a creative writer, whatever “wildly successful” means to you.

Put yourself into this future visualization of yourself as strongly as possible. Ask yourself what beliefs you hold about yourself that have enabled you to be this creative, this successful. Then start bringing them into your life today.

2. Use your senses. So much of the time we walk round virtually oblivious to the highly sensory world around us. We may as well stick cotton wool in our ears, a sock in our mouth and bag over our heads!

It’s through our senses we connect with and experience the world. Take some time to go somewhere new and practice using your senses. Concentrate on each of your senses one at a time, what you’re really seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling.

Do this regularly and you’ll have an abundance of rich experiences to draw upon in your writing, which in turn will increase your confidence to write.

3. Set small achievable goals. If you haven’t written for a while – months or even years maybe – then to set yourself the task of writing a new novel this weekend is ambitious at best. At worst it’s simply setting yourself up for major disappointment and blow to your confidence.

Instead, set smaller achievable steps. For example, “Today I’m going to write 250 words about the past life of my book’s new character Jake.”

Start small to build your confidence, then add more challenging tasks for yourself as you go.

4. Write aimlessly. By this I mean don’t set out to write a perfect wartime romance, or a wonderful poem about the cherry trees in your back yard.

It’s great to have writing ideas and aims like this but the problems come when we get too attached to them. Then, when our creative writing takes us elsewhere, instead of exploring what could be a wonderful new direction, we just feel we’ve failed in writing the piece we set out to write.

Pick an inspiring starting point, then just let your imagination – and creative writing – flow wherever it wants to.

5. Join a supportive group. Being able to share with other writers is a very rewarding experience. It can be very supportive and healthy for our confidence on two levels.

Firstly, with other creative writers we get to share our creative writing, the work we produce, and get their feedback, tips and ideas, as each of us look to develop ourselves.

Secondly, we’re able to share the experience of being a creative writer. The joys, the frustrations, the rewards and the disappointments. Knowing that others feel similarly to us can be very reassuring. The help and encouragement of others can help boost our confidence no end.

Increasing your confidence as a creative writer is sometimes the only route to helping you unlock your creative writing potential.

These are just 5 of the best ways you can do this.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dan_Goodwin

Labels can be so useful. When you go and buy your food and groceries, you can pick out what you need easily by what’s on the label.

Imagine going into the canned vegetables aisle of your local supermarket, and none of the tins having any labels. There are just shelves and shelves and naked silver tins, with a hundred different types of vegetable inside, but absolutely no way of knowing what they are without opening the can.

Labels in this instance are a very helpful idea!

Not quite so when it comes to people though. Because when you give someone a label, they will more often than not live up to it.

Tell someone they’re a loser, a waste of space, stupid and incompetent, and they will probably do a very good job of being a loser, a waste of space, stupid and incompetent. In fact they might even been so good at it they virtually make it into an art form.

On the other hand, tell someone they’re creative, talented, capable and courageous and they will most likely rise up to this label and prove it to be right.

But we’re not just talking about “someone” here, we’re talking about you. And when it comes to labeling, the person who labels you most is you.

To reveal some of your favourite labels for yourself, try this quick exercise.

Take a sheet of paper and write in the centre – “I am…”, and circle it. Then, start drawing lines coming out from that central circle, filling them in with all the things you believe you are, all the labels you have given yourself.

Write whatever comes to you, maybe “a father, a writer, a photographer” and “capable, inconsistent, talented, naive”, get down everything that comes.

This will soon give you a good idea of how you see yourself.

What kind of phrases came up? Did you write things like “I am creative”, “I am intelligent”, “I am compassionate”?

Or were they more like: “I am an underachiever”, “I am useless”, “I am lazy”?

If you wrote the positive stuff, then that’s brilliant, you obviously have a strong belief in yourself.

If you wrote the more negative, restrictive phrases, then your beliefs about yourself  won’t allow you to be all you can be, and to be yourself.

Let’s go back to our aisle of canned vegetables for a moment. (Please try to contain your excitement.)

What if there was a mix up at the factory? What if, you thought you were buying the basic, own brand mushy peas, because that’s what it said on the label. But when you got home and opened the tin, inside was not cheap mushy peas, but caviar, worth fifty times what you paid for it.

Labels aren’t fixed, they’re not permanent.

And it’s likely that though you’re more precious than caviar, early in your life (in the labeling area of the factory) someone slapped on a label that said “mushy peas”. Or “kidney beans”. Or something equally uninspired and unfitting.

It’s time to rip off those labels and run free.

How do you do this? It won’t happen overnight, but there are steps you can take today, and every day, to help you live up to all the incredible talents you really do have.

The first step, you’ve already taken. Identify all those negative labels you’ve attached to yourself.

The next step is to remove and replace them, one by one. Turn them around.

“I am an underachiever” becomes “I can achieve anything I set my mind and focus to”.

“I am useless” becomes “I have all the talents and abilities I need to be whoever I want to be”.

“I am lazy” becomes “I am focused and committed to becoming the best version of myself I can be”.

And so on. Start now, take the label that you feel holds you back the most. Write it on a piece of paper on its own. Then rip it up into tiny pieces.

Take a new sheet of paper and write down your new label, the positive turnaround. Doing this once will help, but you must keep reprogramming those old labels every day, many times a day, to make the new positive ones stick.

So, are you ready to rip off YOUR ragged old labels and run free?

Share with us below the labels you carry around with you that hold you back most.