Typos are very important to all written form. It gives the reader something to look for so they aren’t distracted by the total lack of content in your writing

Randy K. Milholland

I’m sure there are countless mistakes throughout !maginality, and for this I apologise. But I try to limit them. I read and re-read everything I post here. The point is we should always proof-read anything we are about to post. So create and stick to this habit:

Before you hit the post button, re-read anything you have written.

There’s a great list of twitter tips for artists over at Mashable… so click here

Habit forming can be a positive influence on your creativity. Once formed the habits will have a long-lasting effect on you. Just as ‘bad habits’ eat away at us and have negative effects, ‘good habits’ are the opposite. Take one habit at a time, keep at it for up to 28 days, and then you’ll find that the habit is formed. It will become part of you; a creative habit to fuel your ideas.

1. Meditate – Take five minutes each day to clear your mind of everything, or as much as you can. Keep it simple, a basic breathing exercise… in through the nose out through the mouth. Perhaps with a simple image in your mind, the sea, a mountain, a cloud. This will help build up your sense of self. And when you know your ‘self’, you’ll be closer to the creative genius that you are.
2. Read - This does not mean books only, but that is as good a place as any to start. The habit is to set aside time and space each day to read. To see the input of other ideas as important as your own. In the busyness of trying to be creative it is easy to forget about feeding ourselves.
3. Create waste – This is all about not being afraid to have a go. It is about giving yourself permission to create rubbish, to make a mess, to do something that may well be thrown away. If you have an idea, just a glimmer, pull out a piece of paper, or any other medium you use, and get on with it. It doesn’t need to be perfect, in fact it shouldn’t. This will get you into the habit of capturing ideas and letting them develop in a quick and easy way. Then you can either choose to create the final piece or, throw it away.
4. Journal - This can be done in a variety of ways from simple notepads to online scrapbooks. The habit is similar to meditation, in that you are focusing on self. However, as opposed to clearing your mind by thinking of nothing, here you clear your mind by writing, drawing or sticking all the thoughts and ideas, fears and worries, hopes and dreams into your journal. It has the added benefit of being a constant source of inspiration as you reread what you have added.
5. Doodle - Have you any idea how much ‘dead’ time you have… stuck in meetings, on hold whilst making a call or crashed out watching that very interesting documentary on inner city gangs? Utilise that time by doodling. Keep a small, cheap blank pad and pencil handy when your having these ‘down times’ and simply doodle away. The shapes you doodle may make connections, they may spark creativity and then… off you go. Of course you should always have a capture device nearby but I’m talking here about non-premeditated ideas, doodling is doodling not drawing.

There are a lot more creative habits that you could take on, if you have any ideas to add, do leave a comment. In the meantime, pick a habit and begin.

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.

I must admit that I have been struggling recently in the creative arena, and the posts here have been few and far between because of that… well okay I have also been extremely busy with the day job, but that is no excuse. Still it got me thinking about what you can do when the ‘muse’ has gone away, when the creative ideas just don’t seem to flow. (You’ll find this is a recurring theme here and I’ll return to it quite often).

So here are five quick ways to rediscover your muse if she’s gone away:

• Open your eyes – It is very easy to crawl into our own creative ghetto and just keep putting out. But that eventually leads to creative burnout. Find others who use a similar creative genre and look at what they are doing, immerse yourself in their creativity for a while.
• See the ‘real’ world – Nature is organic and as such can provide us with limitless inspiration. It isn’t bound by our human ideas and so reaches beyond what we can imagine. Tap into that creativity by taking a look at what is beyond the concrete. It also gives you any excuse to get out of the studio!
• Close your eyes – Sometimes you simply need to down tools for a while. Simply close your eyes and get away from the paper, paint, materials or music, and relax. It is surprising how often the muse will return when you stop looking.
• Make a list – The brain fills up quite quickly with a lot of junk to distracts us. One of the best tried and tested methods of helping the poor brain during these times is making lists. Even if you don’t do anything with them, just getting it out of your head helps a lot, and gives space for the muse to move back in.
• Fall in love – Find your soul mate, spark up the relationship and voila. Okay, that is easier said than done, but what you are looking for here are strong emotions. Emotional energy has a big impact on creativity, so if your creative levels are down, perhaps you need to hold an emotional audit.

I’d love to hear any other ideas you may have to woo the muse back into your life, so please add them to the comments.

“I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”

Pablo Picasso

Being a dedicated creative isn’t all fun, frivolity and artistic fecundity – yeah sure. Sometimes you have to deal with disappointment. This can come in a variety of ways, the piece you have spent hours on is actually quite crap, or you pitched for a commission and someone else got the job or you’ve gone for a promotion within the creative department you work and you didn’t get it. How we deal with disappointment can be the difference between later success and continued failure. Here are are a few thoughts to help you overcome and come back fighting.

• Why did you fail?Whether in something you created, or something you have strived for, you need to ask this question.
• What can I do to avoid this in the future? Once the first question is answered you can then list things to do to avoid following the same route.
• Be direct in who you ask. To find out exactly why you didn’t win the pitch or get the job, don’t be afraid to ask direct questions to those who made the decision. Quite simply you need to now why you didn’t succeed and what would you need to do to succeed at the next opportunity.
• Don’t give up.It is all too easy to see yourself as a failure and give up, we can do this in a big camp way or we can wallow in despair. There is nothing wrong with being upset, but we shouldn’t let it control our destiny. Keep going, find out what went wrong and work toward succeeding next time.

So dry your eyes, and go create.

One sure way to stifle your creativity is to get too stressed out. This could be due to other pressures in life or simply by stressing out on the creative project you are currently involved in. If you are suffering from a little stress then these five, simple and well-used ideas will help.

With the stress now sorted you can be as creative as your talent deserves.

“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.”

Linus Pauling

But remember you need to capture those ideas. Always make sure you have pen and paper, or another capture device handy. With reference to the above quote, pen and paper is proabably the best. The concept is to get as many ideas out as quickly as possible, then review them later. Amongst all you have captured there may well be the gem.

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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