What’s your passion? These days that seems a too-popular question. If you ask what to write, the answer is Write your passion.
Maybe I’m aN uptight, out-dated, and downright uncreative about that word, but I don’t think of passion in that broader context. My passion involves, um . . . er . . . other activities. When I went looking to write my passion, I found that it didn’t want to be written about. [Read more…]
Do you recognize where we are? We’ve been here before. This is the place where I tell you that ideas are already in your head, that it’s a matter of letting yourself have them — not shutting them out. It’s when I remind you that you can be an idea magnet again. I tell you that ideas are waiting for you. I ask you if you’ve started seeing and hearing them.
Whew! Now that the déjà vu is over. We can get on with sparking spectacular ideas.
When I compiled this list of ten critical skills, it was an original list — the list came from my head not from the Internet, not from some book. I’ve done continuous work on thinking skills for years so it wasn’t a huge hardship to think some more on the skills I consider critical. Is any one idea original? No. Not one on that list is unique or spectacular. The value-added is that I put them together and pointed the need to have them for success.
Originality is often how we look at things. The most original thought I’ve encountered — that hasn’t been around for years — was my six-year-old son’s drawing of the solar system as if he were standing on Pluto, looking in toward the sun. Even that was just a new take on a picture that’s been around for a long, long time.
True originality –a brand new idea — is hard to come by, but that’s okay. It rarely works in business. True originality is expensive and rarely sells. As good as I am with ideas I’ve learned if I find one that has been done before, tha it’s because of one of three reasons. [Read more…]
When I start with that blank page, whether I think about it or I stare into space, two questions are waiting in white letters on the white space. I have to make myself see them and answer them before I will ever be able to write. The questions are basic and always the same.
and
What do you want to say about it?
If I can answer those two questions, the piece pretty much writes itself.
It really is as simple as that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Related
How To Beat Writerââ¬â¢s Block
Questions about Burnout and Writerââ¬â¢s Block
Why Dave Barry and Liz Donââ¬â¢t Get Writerââ¬â¢s Block
The Power Writing Series on the SUCCESSFUL SERIES PAGE
. . . cleaning the refrigerator takes on a new and miraculous sense of urgency with a heavenly glow.
Go ahead give in and do it, but don’t lose to procrastination. Turn that refrigerator chore into an exploration for ideas. Here are three things you might think about.
Procrastination just became an idea session, and on top of that you’ve cleaned your refrigerator! That’s productivity where you could have been doing what I’ve done — standing in front of an open refrigerator door thinking about how the light goes on and off.
Bet you can think of more ideas to find inside of that Big Box. How about sharing some with us?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Related articles
Donââ¬â¢t Fear the Blank Screen ââ¬â Be a Miner
Exploring for Ideas at Technorati
Eye-Deas 1: Have You Started Seeing Things?
More ideas in the Idea Bank category and in Writing Power, Thinking Outside the Box, Customer Think, and Brand You Series on the SUCCESSFUL SERIES PAGE
If you’re following the soap opera that is Successful Blog, I’m halfway through writing Critical Skill 5 on Originality, as you might know, but along the way I was interrupted with a challenge. Ariane Benefit from NeatLiving.Net wrote an in-depth comment about process and how it works for her, which ended with these statements.
So basically I see the rules you presented that work so well in a corporate setting actually have their counterpart in the virtual, ultimately highly democratic world of blogging.
. . . if my post inspires you to write the virtual version . . . it was worth it. — from a comment exchange on Critical Skill 4: Part2-Designing a Complex Process
I really wanted to leave them on the page and continue on with the piece on originality. It was hard enough writing about process in the brick and mortar world. Still the comment stayed with me. It followed me around the house . . . and popped into my mind every time I went to write about anything else. After all, it had two things going for it. Ariane Benefit is a reader and I have a really hard time walking away from a delicious challenge like that — even when I know it will involve close contact between my head and a few brick walls I don’t need. [Read more…]