Tweaking Your Creativity

"Keep A Close Eye on Your Candidates"

Photo by Richard Chicoine, All Rights Reserved

Tweaking Your Creativity


Want to know the secret about the way this blog is created?

We’ve received comments about the great photos that have been posted as the visual component of each Tuesday’s headlines. You might think that I find a photo to match the theme for posting. That’s traditional thinking…

At the Mag-OH!-Zine, we try to match our way of working with what we say we do for our clients. “A Twist of Ingenuity” is the un-status-quo… so the blog gets written from the belly up.

The genius behind the photos is my sweetie, Rick / aka Richard Chicoine who snaps a bunch of images during the week and then chooses his favourite for the blog. It's a secret he keeps until Monday morning, when he sends me a photo – ready to go – totally his choice. The challenge for me is to tweak my creative juices and let the image do my writing for me.

What? Quoi?

Example: If it’s a “seagull on a fence post”, what relevant message can we convey to you, the reader?

Idea 1: The seagull theory of meeting management – supposedly an aboriginal metaphor from the west coast of Canada, used as a "rule of engagement". Don’t drop anything (wet and white) on your colleagues during an agenda item. Well, from what I’ve witnessed around the Board Room table, this works in theory... but I have cleaned up some messes!

Idea 2: With a focus on the “eye” of the seagull - I chose one key aspect of the image - and with the current political scene hot and heavy in the United States, and much more polite in Canada, how about “Keeping an eye on the Candidates”? This theme could lead into a dialogue about a variety of issues, leadership styles, ethics and comedic relief.

If you’re interested, Idea 2 won out, and was written for Leadership Thunder Bay's Class of 2008; you might want to click into http://xowhat.blogspot.com/ for the post titled: "Reading for More than the Rhetoric". I included a variety of links into the vast virtual world of pre-election bantering.

The bonus, as I was researching, was to discover the first televised debate between Nixon and Kennedy in 1960. Not much phrasing between democrats and republicans seems to have changed! And of course, I had to post an eye on Saturday Night Live’s Palin/Clinton podium exchange as well as Canadian Content and "She-lections" info.

Your Turn

If you’d like to try this technique for sharpening your creative wits, this is how you start:

1. Ask a friend to tear a photo out of a magazine, or choose one out of the photo album – or send you a digital. One image only. NO CHOICE!

2. and then let the image tell its story. Choose one aspect, one impression, one take-off idea that links in any way at all to the picture. Then write - don't judge, generate - for a block of time (eg 16 minutes). Don't scrap anything - keep generating - let loose -

3. Do some research. Find examples to link with your writing/thinking.

4. Time out....til tomorrow...

5. Edit. Re-write. Read your work out loud to someone.

Imagination is becoming a lost art – and even the folks who claim that they can’t write – will find that the exercise is “interesting”.

The theory? Your right brain kicks in with the image…your left brain writes the script. Your right brain tells the story…your left brain fills in the analysis and facts.

Send me your post - picture and writing - via the "comments" below, and give me permission to post. (I do not post comments automatically.) I will send you feedback.

Give it a try! Take a look at the archives and see if you can link the photo to my decisions about content.

And remember to read to A-Z column on the right side for more inspiration and activity.

TTFN,
Maggie and Rick