Blog - Page 126 of 137 - Zoe M. McCarthy

4 Steps to Jumpstart Your Stalled Creativity

May 16, 2013 | Creating | 6 Comments

“If people never did silly things, then nothing intelligent would ever get done.” —Ludwig Wittgenstein

Tired of staring at a blank screen? Are all your ideas frozen inside your brain?

Try this exercise. It’ll thaw your brain cells.

4 Steps to Jumpstart Your Stalled Creativity

Step 1. Randomly select a book from your bookshelf. Open the book and plunge your finger to a page. Choose the nearest noun to the left or right of your finger. The one you like best.

I plucked a book from my bookcase. A suspense novel. This was going to be exciting. Maybe my finger would land on murder, stabbing, glock, or scream. I looked under my finger and shifted my gaze to the nearest noun. Tickseed? I kid you not. The noun was tickseed. Ew.

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Step 2: Look up your word online. Even if it’s a common word like man. List facts about your noun. Ten or so. Keep it simple.

I searched tickseed coreopsis online, which led to other pages about their enemies. Here’s my list of facts:

Yellow wildflower *
Requires a sunny spot *
Heavy summer bloomer
Perennial
Attracts birds and butterflies
Suitable for cut flowers
Pests: Aphids, Beetles, Leafhoppers
Aphids live on stems and the underside of leaves; they’re sucking insects; soldier beetles eat aphids *
Beetles are leaf eating or predators; have powerful chewing jaws *
Leafhoppers jump, fly, and suck the juices from plants *

Image courtesy of SweetCrisis at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Step 3: Choose the 5 most interesting facts.

What drew my attention, besides the gross name, was the tickseed’s enemies. So I chose the facts with the asterisks (*).

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Step 4. Now create something from your five facts. Something silly or profound. Have fun. Use all five facts but don’t spend a lot of time on the activity. This is simply to get your creative juices flowing.

From my online research, I could’ve printed pictures of aphids, beetles, leafhoppers, and a tickseed plant. I could’ve made a collage of the pests attacking the tickseed coreopsis. But I’m a writer, so I wrote a short story.

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Jumpstart Story:

Alf looked up from sucking the green stuff in time to see a black-and-yellow striped tank land on a nearby leaf. What kind of alien was this? He extracted his sucking mouth part from the stem and scrambled over Buddy, Dominic, and a few other aphids from his colony to check out the invader.

Image courtesy of papaija2008 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The tank spoke. “What plant is this?”

“Tickseed Coreopsis.”

The tank took a step to the left and to the right. “Where? Where? I hate ticks.”

“Tickseed Coreopsis is a plant, you dolt. Don’t you know your asteronomy? Tickseed Coreopsis is one of the unigarden’s nine plants. The one closest to the sun.”

“Dolt! Watch what you call me, aphid. Be thankful I’m not a soldier beetle or I’d chew you up and digest you.”

Alf regarded the beetle’s powerful jaws. “Okay, okay. So you’ve checked out Tickseed Coreopsis. Now take off.”

“Why? I can see this is a plant of many suns. They’re what attracted me to it.”

Alf sighed. “They’re not suns. They’re yellow blooms.”

Image courtesy of pakorn at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A leafhopper landed on the beetle’s leaf.

The beetle crawled toward it. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Leaf hopping.”

The beetle flexed his jaw. “Then hop off!”

Alf lifted his head toward the sun. “For sucking out loud. What is this plant coming to?

The leafhopper inspected the leaf at his six feet. “What plant is this?”

The beetle spoke up. “Tickweed.”

Alf rolled his sucking mouth part. “Tickseed. Seed!”

The beetle stiffened. “I will not cede. I’m going to eat this entire leaf.”

Alf kicked the pollen off his feet and turned. Let the hopper and the tank have it out over the leaf. He was going back to his stem.

What was your noun and what creation did you come up with?

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Brainstorm Distortions of Your Idea and Make Your Creative Work Intriguing

May 9, 2013 | Creating | 2 Comments

“I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.” —Pablo Picasso

Pop! We get an interesting idea and race to our canvas, word processer, or potter’s wheel. Paint flows, words stream, or clay flies. Our critics say, “Nice.”

Nice? What happened to “Wow!”?

We can turn an interesting idea into an awesome one if we sit a while and release our creative brains from their cages to prowl. We can take an interesting idea and twist it, spin it around, turn it upside down, mash it, expand it, explode it, and add sprinkles to it. We pounce on the most fascinating distortion and work our masterpiece.

Image courtesy of Naypong at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Examples may be the best way to show what I mean. Have fun with the brainstorming process.

Example 1: Years ago the folks at a major cola company took the idea of its bestselling product and turned it upside down. The company drained the sugar, replaced it with artificial sweetener, and came up with its bestselling product: diet cola.

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Example 2: Someone had a teen gleaning ministry idea but spun it around. My oldest son attended a Society of St. Andrew’s gleaning weekend. On the last night after gathering potatoes all day, exhausted teens sat at three tables for their evening meal. The staff served the teens a full dinner at one table: chicken, mashed potatoes, salad, buttered rolls, and dessert. At the second table, they served the teens sandwiches and fruit. These teens balked.

The teens at the third table stared at the single plops of rice on their plates. These unfortunate teens were outraged. The rice didn’t satisfy their hunger. Some begged at the other tables. Others went to bed hungry.

A few teens from the first and second tables ate faster to protect their meals from the rice-eating teens. Several felt compassion and shared their food with the ones without much to eat.

Teens learned first hand how it felt to have little food when others around them had plenty. The better-fed teens experienced unmerited favor and the reality of the needy. The lesson this creative ministry taught impacted the teens more than preaching about the less fortunate in our societies.

∞

Example 3: Courses in the writing craft teach us how to write good scenes. Among other things, writers are to look at the characters’ goals for the scene, then explode their goals. Writers are to ask themselves, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” and write their answer into the scene. Characters facing and overcoming conflicts and obstacles make a great story.

∞

Example 4: While sitting at the green of the Champions Golf Tournament with my sister, I saw young caddies standing next to each other, one female, one male. They looked cute together. He was tall and slim, and her blond ponytail protruded from the back of her pink ball cap. The what-ifs exploded in my mind. I mentioned the romance idea to my sister.

At home, I brainstormed how I could turn “cute” into a gripping story. This is the story I’m working on. I twisted their normal-looking lives into challenging heartaches below their cute appearances. I hope my sister will be surprised at the finished product.

Can you share examples of how you have warped an idea into something intriguing?

8 Tips on How to Respond to Fans of Your Creative Work

May 2, 2013 | Leading | 4 Comments

“Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.”— Winston Churchill

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What are you going to do when:

emails pop up about your presentation,
comments appear at the end of your blog post,
notecards arrive in your mailbox about your art show,
mothers stop by your class about your creative teaching,
people greet you backstage, or
colleagues flock around you after the meeting?

Remembering the following tips, you can reply to fans, followers, and admirers with a P-O-S-I-T-I-V-E generosity of spirit that will make them glad they took their time to respond to your creative efforts.

Tips for P-O-S-I-T-I-V-E Replies

P-leasant: No matter what our fans say or how they say it, they own their response to us about our work. We own our reply. If they encourage us, returning a pleasant reply is easy.

If they come across as vindictive, will we change how they feel if we reply with equal fire? We don’t have the full picture of what’s going on in their lives. But we might surprise them if we respond with kindness. If you can’t return kindness, then no reply is best.

Trust Proverbs 25:21-22. If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you. (NIV)

Image courtesy of Idea go at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

O-pen-minded: Often fans aren’t being negative but have a different opinion than ours. We can wrench open the door to our minds and try to understand what they’re saying. We may find we can agree with them to an extent and can affirm that to them. If we still disagree, we can acknowledge they have a viewpoint different from ours.

S-imple: To avoid putting our fans off with a treatise of our opinion or to further educate them, we can keep our response simple. The more we say the more likely we’ll push wrong buttons. Plus, our work excited or touched them enough to respond to us, so we should avoid boring them and lessening their enthusiasm.

I-nterested: Often fans will share an experience similar to ours or add ideas to what we’ve presented. No doubt we’re busy people. But instead of replying with two-second responses, we can give them the respect of two-minutes of our attention. Hopefully they’ll feel encouraged that we’re interested in their thoughts.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

T-rue: Yes, we must avoid lies, but I’m speaking more of genuineness. If we try to impress our fans by morphing into someone we’re not, we risk sounding phony. Fans are smart.

I-mmediate: To have the greatest impact on our fan’s enthusiasm, it’s important we reply as quickly as we can. We want to affirm our fans while they’re still excited about our work. This is another reason to keep our replies simple.

V-alid: Respond to what fans say. If we ignore a point they’re making and reply with self-promotion or something off point, we diminish them. When they solely express their excitement for our work, sticking to appreciating their enthusiasm is probably best.

E-dited: If our response to fans and followers is written, we can take 10 seconds to reread our simple reply. Most of us enjoy responses to our work that come across better than a text message full of abbreviations and typos and no caps. (Unless it is a text message.) If our response is verbal, we can take a second to think before we speak.

If we stay P-O-S-I-T-I-V-E we’ll keep our fans coming back for more of our creative works. For me, like an electric fan, I wave praises to God the Creator. God always replies with mercy and kindness. I keep returning to Him.