Author: Kalyani Suresh
Agatha Christie’s habit of planning a book while doing the dishes, Hemingway’s belief in writing 500 words per day, Thomas Wolfe’s habit of writing standing up… these are some interesting anecdotes on how famous authors kept their creative juices flowing.
Thoughts of the moment that come unsought for are usually the most valuable. Creativity is natural – and some people are more naturally creative than others, But for today’s bandwagon of freelance writers, coming up with a continuous flow of creative article ideas (what I call ‘eureka!’ moments) is no more a challenge. You no longer need to shower with your pen, in case any ideas drip out of the nib! All you need do is connect to the fascinating world of the Internet and dive into a creativity enhancing tool-pool.
What we find changes who we become…exploring the wide range of practical tools and techniques available online to kick-start our creative writing would definitely see writers morph from a novice, struggling to get a toe-dip into the creative pool of ideas, to a seasoned swimmer diving into the deep end with ease!
Discovering roads less traveled
Sometimes, when we as writers want to explore a new territory in the tangible world of words by coming up with something creative or inspirational, or on a more mundane level, are under pressure to meet a deadline (!) there is nothing worse than having to realize that we have no idea how we want to word a sentence, or in what direction we want to take the article. We become yet another ‘unfortunate’ victim of the infamous “writers’ block”.
So then how do we stimulate our imagination and keep our creative spark alive? We can look to different tools online to draw random thoughts to kick start our flow of ideas. Here are a few creative aids available online to keep our mind sharp and ready to write on a whim about anything:
# Mind mapping
Mind maps are visual representations and a form of brainstorming of ideas. http://www.biggerplate.com/viewMapImage.asp?ID=741 shows us an example of a mind map by Catherine Franz that you can use as a visual thinking library to generate 40 creative ideas from life experiences.
The Mind mapping concept has been taken on board by search engine designers. ‘Cluster style’ search engines give different results than the big “G” (Google) in a non linear format. Clusty, Mooter, Kartoo, and Grokker are some creative search engine examples that throw up associated topics or search terms we wouldn’t have thought of.
# Mind mapping with De Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats
Many of us will be aware of de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats as a tool for brainstorming and problem solving. But the Thinking Hats can help add profundity to your article writing by encouraging ‘out of the box’ thinking.
Want to create a mind map of your own creative thoughts online? Just click http://think.ajsands.com/
The website helps you generate an interactive mind map. Suppose you need to come up with some article ideas about getting over the ‘writers block’, you enter the ‘thought’ – the subject of the idea – i.e. how writers get stumped with a creative ‘block’ – into a central ‘node’/branch. This node can be connected to other many such nodes, focusing on thoughts or words that I think of when I think of writers’ block. By this point my brain should be connecting words into ideas that can be turned into articles. The icing on the cake is that this programme is easy to use, quick and (yes!) free.
# Creative Prompt Generators
How would you like to turn on a tornado of prompts for creative ideas with the click of a mouse?
http://www.creativewritingprompts.com/ from the Writers’ Digest Magazine lets you point your cursor to any number from its list, read the prompt and then helps you come up with creative content for your blog/article.
http://www.writingfix.com/Classroom_Tools/dailypromptgenerator.htm features more than 500 choice inspired writing prompts that provide interesting leads.
Random word generator helps flex your creative muscles
One of the exercises is to take a random word and come up with new ideas…for e.g. make your writing more creative. If, say, you randomly drew the word ‘fizziest’… hmm… fodder for thought, isn’t it? How can you use the word to come up with ideas to promote the creativity of your written word? How about a parody on a person with the fizziest nature you’ve seen?
The site http://watchout4snakes.com/creativitytools/RandomWord/RandomWordPlus.aspx gives you the option of generating words from a combination of word types (nouns, adjectives etc) and word complexity levels (common, obscure etc).
SEO Tools to make your creative word “visible” online
Want your writing to generate interest online? Well, for that you need to know the dynamics of making your article more ‘visible’ online. Generally high visibility is achieved through high rankings of your article by Search Engines that recognize good ‘tags’ or important keywords contained within your article.. You don’t have to be a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) master or a tag/keywords expert. All you need is to click https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?__u=1000000000&__c=1000000000&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS#search
This is a link to Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool. It shows search volume numbers from the Google tool for a particular word/phrase. For example if I looked up keywords for ‘online writing tools’, the Keyword Generator throws up a list of 100 keywords based on a history of the latest global as well as local volume searches. The keywords “prompt writing’ have been searched by 201,000 people globally and locally. Voila! I have the keywords/tags that I should I include in my article to attract online readers.
http://www.rustybrick.com/keyword-phrase-tool.php is a link to The Dynamic Keyword Phrase Generator that enables you to develop a robust list of keywords based on GoogleAdWords and SEO pages.
A new tool called BulkWords (http://bulkwords.com) combines a keyword suggestion tool and a keyword list generator into one interface that’s easy to use.
There are three parts that make up Bulk Words:
- Keyword suggestions from Google. It shows search volume numbers from the Google tool
- List builder. Where one can build keyword lists
- Keyword lists. One can compile the keywords generated into lists that can be exported for use on Google, Bing, or Yahoo.
Visual Prompts
Are you inspired more by visuals than words? No sweat…http://freelance-writing.lovetoknow.com/Slideshow:Free_Writing_Prompts can be a useful tool to give you a subtle push in the right direction. This website has a slideshow featuring several visual prompts to help inspire you.
http://www.languageisavirus.com/ is a wonderful repository of creative writing games, exercises, character name generator, tips, how-to guides, Q&A, visual prompts and even a creative writing software called Instant Article Wizard (though for a price!)! You can even post your creative work on this website.
Life is kind to a writer. If you are a budding writer and you hear yourself saying …“The Devil does not wear Prada. The Devil wears Frustration. And he shows up inside my head every time I want to drum out those free flowing ideas”…. Congratulations! You don’t have to sell your soul to the devil called Writer’s Block. Salvation is just a click away!
About the author
Advertising Professional, Teacher, Bookworm, Writer, Networking Enthusiast, Researcher, Georgette Heyer Fan, Social Media Addict, Online Course Content Creator, Blogger And now, Kalyani@Chillibreeze
Please Note: Chillibreeze does not endorse techniques or views mentioned in the articles here. The articles listed here are provided as reference material for writers as a support service.
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Comments:
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks Kalyani. It is a great post. Did not know there were such tools.
Another good random word generator can be found at http://creativitygames.net/generator
It is useful as you can select multiple words at a time and also includes various creative thinking games you can play based around the words
Checked out all the links and I must say they are really useful.
Hi,
This is an eye-opener for me.
The article and it’s content , I hope, when utilised properly, can open a Pandora’s Box for any writer.
His ideas are redirected to the proper channel.
I wish only that these links will open their door to us without any hick up.
Thanks for such guiding materials.
Rajkumar/Chillibreeze .com