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#CheckIn @s banerian @Andrew Pam @Christoph S @Griff Ferrell @hackbyte (friendica) 13HB1 @David Sterry @robb @Guy Geens @Joseph Teller @Susan ✶✶✶✶ @smellsofbikes @Richard @Rob Anybody @Michele Hax @Nora Qudus @Isaac Kuo @Carsten Raddatz @Muse @Bob Lai @Mark Wollschlager @Alexander @Cass @su ann lim @Phil Landmeier (ᚠ) @Miguela @Klaus Lademann @Joltrast @Alrekr Járnhandr @Jacob C @That Harp Guy @David Calderon @Corinne Howell @Cats of Commons 💫 @Andreas G @John MacLeod @libramoon @Aline @davidamerland @gregg taylor @Holly Jahangiri @Phil Setnik @Dave Higgins [Main Account] @Lisa Stranger @Lee Rothstein @Deb Zaccaro-Rojas @Stan McCann (Uncle Pirate) @debo @Nat Weaver 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 @Debbie D. 🇨🇦 🇩🇪 @tomgrzybow @John Douglas Porter @Joyce Donahue @Samuel Smith @Janet Logan 🏳️‍⚧️ @Jodi @Katherine Bond @Kenny Chaffin @Jay Bryant @Jess Nut @Beej Cobalt @Jon Alcibar (main) @((( David "Kahomono" Frier ))) @roddio @Karl Auerbach @Paul Ferguson @Pedro Subrosa @sheilanagig @deanc @Don Little @John Hummel @randy.galbraith @⭐ Vinny ✔️ @tomgrzybow @V. T. Eric Layton
Jay Bryant
I used to teach creativity as part of a writing class. I used Vincent Ryan Ruggerio's The Art of Thinking: A Guide to Critical and Creative Thinking. I taught them to first engage their creativity to build up ideas and then to select the best of those ideas for their essays. It was a good class. I enjoyed teaching it, and the students loved it.
Jay Bryant
@Muse Thank you. 🙂
@Muse
Jay Bryant
The best thing about that class was that it was for future English teachers. I like to think that at least some of them learnt to engage their students' creativity, too. 🤞
Muse
@Jay Bryant You win on so many levels today!

🏆

@Jay Bryant
tomgrzybow
Contrary thinking is a neverending source for creativity. When most people are saying something, in order to take the opposing view, you had better come-up with something good.
tomgrzybow
Another good source of creativity is dyslexia. Yep, you read that right... dyslexia often mixes things up in ways that they would not have been otherwise, and then the brain can try to make sense of the mix-up - thus generating new ideas. One of my early work achievements started out this way, when I suggested and then tested the ability of a spectrophotometer to "grade" the amount of glass adhering to Monsanto Saflex(TM) in the QC lab, where previously it had always been done subjectively by trained eyesight alone.
tomgrzybow
Let me tell you, creativity in the work place is often a liability (unless you are a bonafide recognized genius, and then you might get to use it).
Karl Auerbach
Once upon a time (when Chimera still darkened the skies at night) I worked on a play. In that play there was a beauty contest. In the talent section one of the beauties revealed that her talent was that she had no imagination. I felt an immediate connection, a fellow dullard. But neither of us could imagine how to move it to the next level. Oh woe. Oh woe.

Of late my biggest feat of invention was choosing the color (a dark sage green - pretty close to Army Olive Drab) to paint my four new horse watering troughs (that will eventually be used as planters.)

For years I worked among very smart people; I felt that I had no imagination.

By-the-way, did I mention that I created a chocolate cake icing recipe that is so impenetrable that it can be used as tank armor? I think we finally got into the cake through the gentle mediation of a meat clever.
kennyc
I've always thought of myself as a 'creative,' but of late....it just doesn't seem to be there.... 🙁
Muse
@kennyc Please consider helping me with my Creative Resistance group! I'm juggling more than anticipated. I thought I was going to be just having a fun time with maybe five people.
@kennyc
deanc
I tried making a mint sauce using Altoids. It was very minty, but rather stiff. I keep meaning to take another stab at it.
Deb Zaccaro-Rojas
I'm here reporting that I've been creatively reading of late, that's about it....
kennyc
Yeah I'm trying to read a lot lot more!
Cass
My creativity is more tweaking than new stuff. I add different spices to cooking or fine tune my home screens.
Cass
I also feel like I interpret questions/solutions in an atypical way but that mai be a culture clash🤷‍♀️
Mark Wollschlager
Making it as long as I have, without major damage.
Jodi
I just saw a fun idea: sending a rubber ducky to your congresscritter and telling them to impeach the quack (RFK, Jr).

https://bsky.app/profile/cdelawalla.bsky.social/post/3lww3edotwk2j
Jay Bryant
@Cass Culture clashes are great for creativity. The whole DEI thing was a damned good idea for any organization that wanted to boost creativity. I very much approve. More voices from more backgrounds means more ideas.
@Cass
stefani banerian
i'm not super creative.
not super.
not creative.
Jay Bryant
@stefani banerian and everyone: You CAN increase your creativity. The first big step is just being open to it. The second big step is to embrace the silly. Let those odd ideas out rather than shutting them down the instant they occur. Pretty soon, those ideas engender other ideas, and off you go on the creativity train. Sure, lots (most, in fact) of those ideas will never amount to anything. That's fine. That's how it works.

There are tools for boosting your creativity, too, such as the Creative Whack Pack: https://www.usgamesinc.com/creative_whack_pack_deck.html

I hope I don't come across as preachy, but I value creativity a whole bunch, so I promote it when the topic comes up.

Creative Whack Pack® Deck

Roger von Oech’s Creative Whack Pack is a creativity tool designed to "whack" you out of habitual thought patterns and allow you to look at what you’re doing in fresh, new ways.
U.S. Games Systems, Inc.
@stefani banerian
Cass
Yes @Jay Bryant and Target is a prime example of that.
@Jay Bryant
Karl Auerbach
@Jodi - The rubber ducky thing is great!!

But my Congress Critter is kinda slow on the uptake; he would probably think we wanted to enter into the yearly Rubber Ducky race in Capitola (a town near Santa Cruz.)
@Jodi
Jodi
@Karl Auerbach well that could be fun too. Get a bunch of ducks with messages, and enter them in the race!
@Karl Auerbach
Carsten Raddatz
in an earlier version of internet, in a literature and creative writing forum people had assembled and planned an RL meet-up in Berlin. However organizer got cold feet, weeks before it started, and asked around, so I ended up having a bunch of teenagers around me for a week. Very much to my own surprise.

Since I had just returned from England myself my head was full of ideas for all the things too, some culture clash involved there too. It was productive and The Group went to poetry slams, a concert, a swim in the lake, and we grew together. Good times.

Rubber ducking is common among IT people and knowledge workers. Same effect as entering a room with experts, beginning to ask them a question.. then stopping, because the answer, an idea, a second round of brain cycles came the second you talked about it. But with a ducky sitting on your desk to talk to aloud in your head.

This classic Werner cartoon shows a version it. Technique works with dogs too. And probably with other cats.

Image/Photo
Bob Lai
With creative writing, I just write. As the late Erick Wujcik (Palladium Games, Phage Press) puts it in his Amber Diceless rulebook, "Trust yourself."

It comes and goes. I've been cranking out song parodies lately, and it often stems from someone saying something that evokes a lyric. I've gone to sleep a few times with a single line in my head, then wake up to write the full parody.
Joyce Donahue
I sing... and like to arrange seasonal displays using my pottery collection. It's as creatve as I get. Can't wait to get back to doing that. Still hoping to recover enough to go home in the not-too-distant future.
Richard
The circus in my mind never sleeps.

I'm not a brilliant person though so most of what comes out isn't novel, an improvement on, or a different interpretation of existing art.

I gave up Tolkien-inspired semicolons 20 years ago (a significant part of my writing style and poetry) because they went out of fashion and I was criticized by people I held (possibly misplaced) respect for.

I'm slowly and tentatively bringing back the semi-colon; the critics can suck eggses, yes they can my precious.

Occasionally a Guitar God will posses my fingers for a few bars and I'll play something that actually might be considered good. I mostly play guitar these days to distract myself from the fascist revolution. So eh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Today was a company meeting. The CEO opened with "it's a nice day today in Toronto..." I was this close to unmuting and asking in front of the whole company "Will you sponsor me and my kid as immigrants?"
Muse
@stefani banerian Sometimes the most creative thing we do is convince ourselves to get up and face the day. And that's okay!
Take care and do what you can to add a little fun and joy into your life! You deserve it. Mwah! ❤
@stefani banerian
Muse
@Jodi "sending a rubber ducky to your congresscritter"
ZOMG!!! Genius!
@Jodi
Lisa Stranger
I would reflexively say I'm not "creative"—but I can improve on existing things, or find unconventional ways to fix broken things, or make things suitable for unintended tasks.
Tolkien-inspired semicolons
oh that's where Mr. Stranger picked up that habit
deanc
I'm quite happy with or without semicolons, and with various comma strategies. I will adapt to editorial requirements without complaint. I once had a hated (feeling: mutual) cow orker who was gifted in many ways: multi-lingual, C++ coder, alienating people. But she pronounced "semicolon" in her French accent as "semicolumn". Heh. That reminds me, I used to work on a spreadsheet program where the original programmer didn't know how to spell "column", so there were various variable names involving "COLUME". He was a good sport about it when we constantly referred to a column variable by pronouncing it "colum-ee".
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