Archive for 'creative exercises'
The importance of dreamtime in your creative routine
Posted on August 6, 2008, by dazzer67, under creative exercises, creativity basics, inspiration, preparation.
One of the dangers of living in a highly productive, creative environment is that we can easily neglect one of the most important parts. If you suffer from burn out, or times of creative drought, one of the possible causes is that you have neglected your dreamtime.
Finding time to dream is important. We’re not talking about sleep here either. This is primarily the time to down creative tools and let your mind wander. And this isn’t about sitting down with a blank piece of paper, planning the next stage of your creative master plan. Dreamtime is about space and connection, perhaps even a little spiritual. But it needs to be taken seriously and this is where many of us fail. We don’t see it as important, we squeeze it from our schedule (if it was ever there) and then wonder why we are becoming less effective creatives.
So what exactly is dreamtime? Well first and foremost it needs to be an integral part of a creative lifestyle, we’re not talking huge amounts of time, we’re not even talking every day. But it should be seen as something regular. Dreamtime isn’t wasting or dead time, it is essential for your creative life.
Dreamtime isn’t the same for everybody either, what works for one may not work for the other. Here are a few ideas and thoughts that may be of use to you. They are not structured and I’m sure you can find variations on the theme. This is all about scheduling the time and then finding what works for you:
- walk barefoot in the damp grass while breathing in the air
- watch a film in a foreign language, without the subtitles on
- read a religious book, from another belief system to your own
- listen to music from a musical genre that is not your preferred
- go for a walk or journey without your capture device
- cook a meal with no predefined recipe
These are only vague ideas, but you should be getting some thoughts of your own by now. For now, it is time to dream…
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How to achieve what you find difficult
Posted on July 24, 2008, by dazzer67, under creative exercises, preparation, quick tips.
This all boils down to a little critical self-analysis. No really I mean it, we aren’t always great at what we do :). Sometimes we will fall short in our creative endeavors because of tiny mistakes or because we are unable to do one part of what we are trying to create. A lot of the time the answer can be found through a learning process. Don’t know how to style that web page? Then find a tutorial on CSS and learn. But it can be a little less obvious than that.
This is where a little self-analysis can help out. We need to find the little blind-spots that we have, and we all have them. Questions like ‘What am I not good at?’, ‘What do I struggle with?’ and ‘Where do I often get things wrong?’ are ideal for this self-analysis. The point is not find out your faults and beat yourself up over them, but to identify them and then find some solutions.
Find out the problem or issue and then look for, and implement a solution. Let me give you some simple examples. Although you’d not notice it by reading the posts (ahem, I do apologise) here, I have a blind spot when it comes to spelling certain words and also grammar issues. I could blame it on the teaching systems in the UK during the 80s and never improve my creative writing. However, realising that I do fall short here I looked for a few simple solutions. One that I found really helpful was to keep a list of words that I always seem to spell wrong. I found the words quite easily by using the spell checker, but I kept spelling them wrong. Now I have the list I am finding I am getting them wrong less often.
In a broader sense you may feel that all your creative output ends up looking, sounding or reading the same. One solution here is to change your process. Again I notice a distinct difference to a song I have written strumming the guitar to one I’ve come up with at the piano.
So, don’t be afraid of a little critical self-analysis. Identify the problem and then act on the solution, your creative output will benefit.
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Is anything impossible for the creative mind?
Posted on March 7, 2008, by dazzer67, under creative exercises, perspiration, quick tips.
“I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”
Pablo Picasso
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getFreshMinds answer the ultimate question
Posted on December 7, 2007, by dazzer67, under creative exercises, inspiration, links.
There is a wonderful post answering one of life’s ultimate questions, ‘can you make me be more creative?’ Being a creative boffin myself I already knew the answer, but this post answered it with more than a simple yes / no. We have a practical example and undeniable proof with a worked through apllication. So take a look and be creative…
‘Can you make me be more creative?’
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A tale of two window panes
Posted on September 12, 2007, by dazzer67, under creative exercises, inspiration.
My desk is situated at the top of a modest office block that overlooks the town where I live and work. I am fortunate and have a large window by my desk, there is no cubicle for me! The window is divided down the middle making two panes. The view is interesting. Through one pane / view, I have greenery from some very tall trees, which change colour throughout the seasons. We go from luscious green, through autumnal yellow and brown. Then in winter we have the beautiful contrast of leaflessness and barrenness whilst hiding the latent life that will soon spring forth again.
The other view looks across the top of my town; roofs of slate, concrete and bitumen. A total contrast between panes, but unified in one view. I often sit looking out at this view and try to blur the two, bringing the man-made into the natural or the other way round.
This is one of the most basic ways to be creative, and let your imagination run. So your mission for today, should you choose to accept it, is to take two contrasts and merge them into one. Let your imagination free and let your creativity flow.
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Meditate to create
Posted on July 26, 2007, by dazzer67, under creative exercises, inspiration, quick tips.
Stuck? Need some inspiration? Here’s a quick tip to release the creative juices.
Silence, space, solitude.
At times we can crave these things, our minds need time to relax, to settle and then move forward. The same process is helpful for creativity. One way to achieve this is through meditation, so here’s a little guided meditation that you could use.
- Turn everything off, so there are no distractions, no radio, no TV, no net.
- Find a comfortable place to sit down and close your eyes.
- Place your hands on your lap.
- Imagine a bright, white room. You are there sitting in it. The room has no furniture, no windows and no distinguishing features, it is pure white. Even with open eyes it contains no distractions.
- Focus on one wall of the room. It is featureless, there is nothing there.
- Let yourself ‘fall’ into the wall and become part of it.
- Imagine that you are the white wall, a blank canvas.
- Imagine that the ends of your fingers are the end of the canvas, they begin to tingle. You notice your toes are tingling too.
- The tingling spreads up your arms and legs toward your centre.
- Your whole body is now tingling, the whole canvas is tingling.
- The canvas explodes into colour, images pour from it and sound fills the room
- Capture the colours, images and sounds.
- Open your eyes and create
You can use lots of similar ideas, but the process is the same:
- Empty your mind
- Capture what comes out
Have fun
In the next couple of weeks I’ll try and pull together some audio files that you can use to help your imagination run free.
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Five things to do when appreciating creativity
Posted on July 12, 2007, by dazzer67, under creative exercises, inspiration.
How often do you take the time to really look at, listen to, or understand a good piece of creative work? We can find so much inspiration from other people but it is rare that we actually delve into why the ‘piece’ is creative and how that can help us in our creative journey. Well here are a couple of things to bear in mind to aid us when we do decide to look a little deeper.
- What makes this piece original? Has the piece mixed two different genres, has it pushed the boundaries further than the traditional medium? Try and ask yourself these and similar questions and discover why and how creativity was used.
- What has the creative put in? Moving on from the first question you need to look for what has been added to the piece that makes it different. These are the constituent parts of the piece. You’ve looked at the whole, now look at the pieces.
- What has the creative left out? Space is equally important, less is more, so they say, and it is the same in art, in all its forms. The pieces that the creative has left out are as important as what the creative put in.
- How would you have expressed the idea? This isn’t about how you would improve what has been done, but it could easily end up that way. What you need to do here is take the end result (what the ‘piece’ says to you) and think about how you would have expressed that.
- What would this look like in another medium? The book is always different from the film. The play is always different from the film. The live performance is always different from the recorded version. What if you were to think about what you were analyzing in a different medium. What would that image look like as a piece of prose? What would that story sound like as a song?
Give your creative energy a boost by taking note of what other creative pieces there are surrounding us everyday.
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5 simple ideas to provoke your creative imagination
Posted on June 11, 2007, by dazzer67, under creative exercises, creativity basics, inspiration, quick tips.
We’re all naturally creative, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t get stuck at times as we try to express ourselves. Here are five simple ways to kick-start your creative imagination; very simple yet very effective.
- take a different route - routine is one of the worst enemies of creativity, get stuck in a rut and you’ll stay there. Think differently and you’ll be creative, take a different approach than you normally do and you’ll solve the issue.
- lie down - this is basically making you relax, putting out of your mind all the worries and cares of the day and letting your creative thoughts run free. I often lie down, forget about everything and then focus on one creative task, within minutes my mind is being creative, the only danger is drifting off to sleep but that is my problem.
- stand up - ‘eh? You just said lie down.’ Well, if you are hunched over a blank piece of paper, trying to be creative, concentrating and worrying, it can be deadly. If you focus too much on an issue or problem you may miss the simple solution. So stand up, walk around and change the environment, stretch, rub your neck, anything… just get away from the blank paper.
- change the genre - still stuck? If you were a musician how would you solve the issue if you were a writer? Or vice-verse. If you’re stuck think how someone else would think, it can be a revelation.
- phone a friend - and remember you are not alone, two creative minds are better than one. Working on the same problem two minds can solve a seemingly insurmountable problem.
Go on, have some creative fun.
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Five ideas to spark creativity
Posted on February 5, 2007, by dazzer67, under creative exercises, inspiration, quick tips.
Many of us don’t sit around with paper and pad on the arm of our comfy chair waiting for a light bulb to appear above our heads, bringing the most amazing creative thought into being. Many of us, okay me, (but feel free to join in as I go along) often get frustrated that creative ideas, of any shape or form, never materialise or even threaten to appear.
With this in mind here are a few simple ideas to provoke an imaginative spark in your life that can be fanned into creative flames.
- Think in metaphor: Just like I did above, by describing the creative process as a fire. Thinking in metaphor allows the brain to make connections it doesn’t normally make, and new connections mean new ideas.
- Describe in another sense: We normally describe something we see by describing what it looks like. However, why not try describing an image by the sense of sound. Or a sound by the sense of smell. Again this will provoke your brain to go against its normal programming.
- Excessive use of adjectives and adverbs: This could well annoy those you are near very quickly, so perhaps put a time limit on it. Use adjectives and adverbs to ‘colour’ your language everytime you speak. You’ll notice how often you use the same few words, so try to think before you speak. This in itself will stop any automatic phrases being spoken.
- Imagine you are a famous artist: Take a few moments to imagine you are a famous creator. This could be any type: artist, author or musician. Now what are you going to create today as them? This can help you think in a different way to how you normally approach the creative process.
- Doodle design: Take a piece of paper and doodle on it, preferably without looking at what you are doing and definitely without thinking of what you are drawing. After a few seconds or minutes, look at what you have done and use it as the basis for creating something, perhaps a picture or piece of prose or even a song. This will force you to think about being creative and open up new creative connections.
Have fun, and may your days be creative.
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Simple poetry
Posted on January 28, 2007, by dazzer67, under creative exercises.
Here’s a nice and simple exercise to get the creative ideas flowing. And all you need is a piece of paper and a pen or pencil.
- write a word on the centre of a piece of paper
- around this word write ten others that are related
- use these words in a poem, or piece of prose
Very simple and a quick exercise that can be done at almost anytime - not that I would advocate such a thing in the middle of a long meeting at the office.
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