1. Don’t think. Creating a story or book has little to do with the intellect or language when we first begin. Our best ideas will emerge as a spark or image. Like dreams, they will make little sense. Followed, they will hold the key to the creative unconscious.

2. Creativity is cyclical. You cannot and will not be creative all the time. What is full must empty and what is empty will fill. Creativity has its own internal rhythms. Learn to listen to yours.

3. Nothing kills creativity faster than criticism. Don’t share your work-in-progress with people who are critical or those whose opinions leave you vulnerable, no matter how much you love them. Good critiquing should leave you inspired, not deflated.

4. Spend time listening to your inner critic. He or she is not comfortable with the risks demanded by a creative endeavor. By becoming aware of the foul jabber of your inner critic, you can see how your own mind puts up roadblocks to your creativity.

5. Being a creator is risky business. Don’t underestimate the tremendous emotional and psychic risks the journey demands. Learn to push ahead even when you are afraid. Learn to love the risk.

6. Don’t be afraid to fail. Every successful creator has failed hundreds of times. Failure is an integral part of creativity. It doesn’t mean you’re wrong or stupid. It only means you’ve uncovered a path or technique that does not work.

7. Don’t be afraid to write garbage. Every successful writer writes mounds of garbage. Give your work time to percolate. Play the What If game. For example, if you’re writing fiction and a characters is sweet and loving and you’re stuck, have the character mean and hateful. In the world of the imagination, anything can happen.

8. Nurture your creativity. It is as fragile as a budding flower. Open to the dance. Listen to music that makes you feel like flying. Go for a walk. Laugh with a friend, child or lover. Creativity is about feeling.

9. Be passionate. Creativity is passionate. Passion is always creative.

10. Learn your craft. And write, write, write! The more you write, the better you will get. Discipline yourself. Successful writers are disciplined writers.

c Emily Hanlon, 1996-2005. The Art of Fiction or How to Fall Down the Rabbit Hole Without Really Trying, Labyrinth Press.

Popularity: 19% [?]

I recently finished a fairly lengthy contract negotiation with a new client on a batch of articles he wanted me to write for his spanking new web site. The theme of his site is about personal finance and since he is a capable certified public accountant, I knew that at least he had a strong understanding of the field when we began our negotiations. Still, self knowledge can derail any expert’s plans without valuable input from a writing professional. I must state that the original ideas he had for his site changed dramatically once he began to talk with me. How so? I shaped his expectations by including realistic ideas as well probable outcomes. Any seasoned content writer should be able to do this for his clients. Do you?

First Problem: Your client may want you to write 50 articles on a variety of subjects.

Questions to ask include:

Do each of these articles fit into the theme of your site? If not, why are they part of the picture?

How long shall each article generally be? Anything above 500 words will usually mean extensive scrolling for your visitors or a link to a second page to continue. Short, pithy articles succeed the most online. Scholarly reports do not. Know your targeted audience.

My Solution: I trimmed the length of each of his articles down to 350 to 450 words. Any topics not related to personal finance were thrown out.

Second Problem: Your client wants you to source all of your information, that is, include extensive quotes from other sites and periodicals.

My Solution: Again, this is the internet we are writing for, not some literary journal. Articles written will contain only our own words, however if a quote is mentioned credit will be given by way of a link to another web site, otherwise the quote will be left out altogether.

Third Problem: Unrelated photography will be included and “matched” to various articles.

My Solution: Since I am acting primarily as a ghostwriter, whatever other objects are placed on the site doesn’t concern me. Still, since I want to have a long term business relationship with this individual I tactfully mentioned that certain types of pictures would take away from his site, specifically he could be negatively impacted financially by less than studio quality photographs [when in doubt, hit ?em where it counts: his wallet, that is].

There were several other minor issues that needed to be addressed and they were handled with ease. The fact that I was honest with the client gave him an opportunity to see that I was looking beyond the original job and looking out for his best interests. A truly professional writer looks at the big picture and isn’t afraid to speak up when necessary. I helped the client make important changes, won the account, and now I am playing a significant part of this man’s success.

What could be better than all that?

Popularity: 18% [?]

Structure is valuable to creativity on a number of levels:

a) Short term goals (incremental productivity) produce more output than a “do your best” approach. With specific regard to creative writing, writing four pages a day completes a words-on-paper first draft screenplay in one month. A “do your best” or “waiting for inspiration” approach can take months or years. Witness the untold number of people with unfinished manuscripts under their beds.

b) Simply being prolific improves performance and quality. The single best creative product tends to appear at that point in the career when the creator is being most prolific.

c) Techniques such as separating creative from critical thinking increase the quality and quantity of the idea pool: they allow the production of a large number of ideas and a large number of diverse and novel ideas.

d) Sustained engagement in the endeavour increases the incidence and frequency of problem identification and thus the incidence and frequency of insight.

But before you use structure, you need to know WHAT TO WRITE. This is where the Hero’s Journey comes into its own. The Hero’s Journey is THE template upon which the most successful stories are based – ALL of the Academy Award winners (Best Film) of the past fifteen years (at least) are based upon it.

The Hero’s Journey allows you to construct a story from the ground up using at least 17 macro stages and more than 188 micro stages and gives the writer more structural elements than simply three or four acts, plot points, mid point and so on – it works because it attempts to tap into unconscious expectations the audience has regarding what a story is and how it should be told.

The Complete 188 stage Hero’s Journey and FREE 17 stage sample and other story structure templates can be found at http://www.managing-creativity.com/

You can also receive a regular, free newsletter by entering your email address at this site.

Kal Bishop, MBA

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You are free to reproduce this article as long as no changes are made and the author’s name and site URL are retained.

Popularity: 11% [?]

You’re going to write a speech. And you’re scared to death. Sure, I know you’re not afraid of the speechmaking. Spouting it out is comparatively easy. In fact, it may be fun. But writing-ah! That is another story.

At the start let’s write this speech to Joe. We’ll pick out a typical Joe from your audience, a fellow who is a fairly good composite of the group. Then we’ll write our speech directly to Joe.

How do you think of the group to whom you’re going to talk? Perhaps you think of them as gentlemen and scholars. Again as brothers. Or maybe more familiarly as ‘you guys’ or ‘you lugs.’ But no matter how you have them pegged, there is one Joe among them who is a cross section of all of them.

Let’s put the words down on paper just as you would speak them to Joe. Write the word ‘Joe’ up there at the start of the first paragraph, put a comma behind it, and write:

Joe, as I stand up here on the platform tonight I can think of the time a few years ago when I met you in Kansas City. Remember, Joe? It was in that little restaurant with the blonde waitress. I still remember, Joe, what you said that night.

Would Joe and a group of Joes listen to a story like that? You know they would. And whenever you start off so closely to this Joe’s thoughts and interests, you are certain to get attention. Once I heard a speaker start a talk to a group of his dealers with, ‘Gentlemen and Chiselers.’ He smiled when he said it, of course, but the crowd roared. He was talking right down their alley. And all through the talk you could see that this man had thought of the Joes out in front of him when he was writing it to the one Joe who was a composite of the group. He wrote it just as he would talk to that Joe face to face. His talk was on the beam every minute.

Writing to Joe, you keep your talk on a conversational level. Sit him across the desk and talk to him as you write. You can’t go high-hat on a guy across the desk. You won’t get up in the blue sky, over his head, if you imagine he is right there talking to you, asking a question now and then. Putting in an argument occasionally. Adding a thought or two. No, you’ll keep down to earth where your talk belongs.

This goes for any kind of audience. All groups are made up of Joes. You may be talking to bankers, lawyers, merchant chiefs, rich men, poor men, beggar men, or thieves. But in each group there is an average Joe. Pick out that individual and write your speech to him.

By simply following this one piece of advice, you will be on the road to writing conquering your writers block, shoving nervousness aside and end up writing a great, audience captivating speech!

Popularity: 10% [?]

When you plan your lesson for your Language Arts classes, you need to have your curriculum guide by your side. Contrary to what most people think, you should never let the textbook be your guide. The objectives for your lesson come from the curriculum and if there is something in the textbook that fits with that, then good. It makes it much easier to plan.

Let’s take a look at a common objective in Language Arts:
“Students will make personal connections to the text and share their ideas in a variety of ways.”

This objective leaves the door wide open for a whole host of possibilities. You might have three Grade 1 or Grade 5 classes in the same school and the objective is the same. The expectations are different for each grade level and the three teachers can teach completely different lessons and still achieve that objective.

What part does writing and speaking play in achieving this objective? Let’s start by looking at what writing and speaking actually mean in the classrooms of today. Students are expected to communicate in various ways – through role-play, thinking out loud, small and large group discussion and by writing. Connecting with the text invites the students to give their own interpretation of what they read. They can use small group discussions and speak their minds by discussing the text with a group of classmates. This is often the strategy most teachers use in the higher grades where you have students that tend to be too shy to speak out in class.

Although discussion is common in the Primary classroom, quite often the teacher has to draw out the student responses by asking questions, such as:

How did that story make you feel? Why?

Did you like the main character? Why or why not?

What would you have done differently? Why?

Would you have done the same thing as ???

This type of questioning helps to invite the children to speak out in class. The teacher accepts all answers and often records them on the board or chart paper. While young children cannot do a lot of writing, they can still express their opinions by drawing a picture related to the text and write a sentence explaining the picture.

Once students are exposed to this type of writing and speaking in Language Arts classes, they know what to expect as they move up through the grades. Open-ended questions are the norm in elementary, junior high and high school classes, as the types of writing and speaking take on a more formal mode. The types of expectations are also varied, so a formal connection does not have to take place with every text. Some examples of connections through writing could include responding to the text as a journal entry or writing a formal essay. Speaking can take the form of just stating an opinion, class discussion or a formal debate.

Using these techniques you can use literature to teach proper conventions in writing and speaking without the drill and practice techniques often used in schools.

Popularity: 9% [?]