Tag Archives: creativity

Do You Have The Creativity To Blog?

May 23, 2016 Mitch Mitchell 24 Comments

After 8 months of working out of town, my wife finally showed up Friday night, driving over 3 days from Arkansas back to New York. I helped her bring lots of stuff into the house, as she has no concept of light packing.

One of the things she brought home from the road was a 32″ flat screen HD TV, which I convinced her to let me set up in the living room with the caveat that I’d donate the Sony blu-ray DVD player I bought while I was on the road. She’d agreed, so we set out to put it into our entertainment center, which was more of a project than you can imagine.
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Blogging

Blogging And Creativity

November 26, 2012 Mitch Mitchell 43 Comments

How neat; I did a Google Hangout on this very topic yesterday. Okay, I knew I was going to do that video, which is below, but I’m going to add something to the topic here that’s in the video, but the links aren’t on the video.

Mixed Media Painting by Dean Russo / Dumbo Arts Center: Art Under the Bridge Festival 2009 / 20090926.10D.54890.P1.L1.CC / SML

See-ming Lee via Compfight

This isn’t the first time I’ve talked about the subject of blogging and creativity. If you want to reach you can look at last week’s post talking about writing in general and think of it in the context of blogging. You can look at a kind of rant post I wrote titled When Blogging Advice Is A Waste Of Your Time or another post I wrote on the topic of getting backlinks, both of which lamented the same lame advice you get from a lot of other people who don’t take time to create anything new, or say something old in a new way. And there’s two much older articles I wrote on the topic, one titled No, Reading And Creativity Are Obsolete and Your Creativity Is Inside You.

You know what creativity does? It makes people want to revisit your blog or website to see what you have to say next. That’s why I like people like Marcus Sheridan of The Sales Lion and Holly Jahangiri of It’s All A Matter Of Perspective and Marie Forleo, someone I’ve just discovered along with Social Triggers by Derek Halpern. They’re all fascinating reads that get me to visit often.

Creativity allows you to talk about one subject, or multiple subjects, in lots of different ways. For instance, over the last two years I’ve talked about blogging with posts like 5 Ways Your Blog Might Be Irritating People, 5 Things Bloggers Can Learn From Poker, and 5 Blogging Lessons Learned From The Harry Potter Series, along with a long 2-part series on Better Blogging. I talked about writing with a post titled The Art Of Storytelling and gave quick tips with 10 Writing Tips In 2 Minutes. I talked about social media when I asked if You Are An Online Troll. And I’ve run two series here, one which was known as the Sunday Question, the other called Black Web Friday.

During the same two year period, I wrote what I consider as some interesting posts on my business blog, where I mainly talk about leadership and health care. Some of my more creative posts over there have included How Bad Of A Leader Was Charlie Brown, We Are Not The Borg, Are You As Good A Leader As Kermit The Frog, Would You Talk To A Mouse, and 10 Reasons Harry Potter Is A Great Leader. That last one, by the way, is about to be included in a magazine geared towards children in Malaysia; how’s that for publicity and creativity?

The point is that being just a little bit creative gives people a reason to want to read what you have to say. You don’t have to be overly prolific; just have a point of view, keep your eyes open and your mind clear so that you’ll see relationships in things that support your view, write about them and give people different perspectives on what they may encounter on a daily basis. As you’ll hear in the video, there’s agreement amongst my cohorts, as well as the voicing of a concern that doesn’t bother me, but might be something you think of from time to time. I hope the video gives a bit more perspective than I’ve given here. If nothing else, I’ve shared some posts with you that I hope you find intriguing.

Blogging

5 Ways Blogging Is Like A Toaster Oven

March 28, 2012 Mitch Mitchell 33 Comments

I know what you’re thinking: Mitch has gone nuts! lol Well, not quite. I’ve talked about the process of trying to come up with things to write about on one’s blog, no matter what the industry is. I hear from so many people who say they don’t know what to say, or can’t come up with something different to highlight their points, and thus they stop writing.

I say that if you pay attention to your surroundings, or what’s going on in the news or life in general, that there’s always something to write about. Thus, as I was toasting a piece of bread in my toaster oven, it hit me that there really are 5 ways blogging and toaster ovens are related. Want to see? Here we go:

1. Each is multi-functional. Take a look at the item to the right. It toasts; it bakes; it warms things up, and it’s sizable enough where you can fit a lot of different things inside it.

Take a look at blogs. When you write, you educate, entertain or inform. You advertise yourself via an About page. You can have ads on it to help you make money. You can link it to other websites for whatever reason.

2. Each can be dangerous. One thing I’ve always worried about is getting burned on the metal thing that my toast or english muffin sits on, and it’s happened here and there. My wife worries about there being a short or it overheating because sometimes she forgets that using the oven portion, the sucker doesn’t shut itself off.

Sometimes what people write on their blog will set off the wrong person or convey the wrong message. Someone might read your post, go back to their blog and totally trash you (yeah, okay, I do that from time to time lol). You might have affiliate links on your site and have someone burn you by stealing them, changing them up, and taking your money from you.

3. Each looks nice and shiny at the beginning, but needs cleaning or changing up to stay fresh looking. If you haven’t cleaned your toaster oven in at least a year go take a look at what’s inside it. You’ll have all sorts of gunk sitting at the bottom of it, some of it a charred mess. The rack your toast and stuff sits on is probably caked with some black gunk as well. It just doesn’t look all that shiny and pretty anymore.

The same happens with some blogs. The writer stops trying as hard and the words are boring to read. The ads never change and you start to ignore what you’re seeing. The size and style of the posts never vary; there’s no variety. There’s too many spam comments and it seems like the owner just doesn’t care.

4. They’re both easy to change in some fashion. The best thing about toaster ovens is that you can put them anywhere in the kitchen; heck, you don’t even have to put them in the kitchen. I remember some folks having one of these in their college dorm room; that goes way back. Also, they come in multiple colors and styles; never boring at all.

Blogs are the same way. If you don’t like the theme, you can change it. If what you’re writing about is starting to feel like a grind, change it. If you want to write in a different style, you can. If you want to add something new, do it; no rules.

5. Both can bring great joy over and over again. Look at that toaster oven again. That bad boy can toast bread or an english muffin multiple times, multiple days, possibly over multiple years. You can always throw something in there to heat up or cook, and you’ll eat that, love that, and come back for more.

The same with blogging, whether you’re the writer or the reader. This will be my 305th post on the topic of blogging, and I hope that each post can stand on its own and not be a duplicate of another post. Yet every time I write about blogging or any of the other items I feel a great joy, like I’m eating a great piece of chocolate cake (love good chocolate cake), and when that’s done, I know that I can come back and write another one tomorrow, or the next day, or whenever. And it may not be on blogging but on something else; how wonderful is that for me, and hopefully for the readers, who know that they’re not going to get the same exact thing from me here on this blog, or see something that someone else has written elsewhere. At least I hope not; people do steal sometimes. 🙂

There; I bet you thought I couldn’t do it. Agree, disagree, mouth agape because I pulled it off? Let me know. 😉

Writing

Where Do You Come Up With This Stuff? – Guest Post

December 3, 2011 Mitch Mitchell 26 Comments

Most of you know that Mitchell Allen of Morpho Designs and I are pretty good friends. We play email chess together and work on encouraging each other to do great things. He’s also one of the most creative writers I know. I’ll admit that I may not always understand it, but it challenges me, which doesn’t happen all that often. I asked him to write this guest post on his thinking process and, well, how he comes up with his stuff; this is his response.

Mitchell Allen

I often get asked this question when I post a piece of fiction. I love answering the question because, over the years, I can see how my answers evolve. I take more credit for the process than I used to. Yet, I’m quick to acknowledge that elusive spark when I’m at a loss to explain where that stuff came from.
Continue reading Where Do You Come Up With This Stuff? – Guest Post →

Writing

Your Creativity Is There Inside You

February 12, 2010 Mitch Mitchell 22 Comments

I’ve written enough times on how it seems I’ll visit a blog because a topic got my mind going, only to see that it’s something I’ve not only read before, but almost word for word at the same time. A question I addressed in my blog writing series was how to think about what to write about.

Here’s a great example of how I find things to write about. Someone I met on Twitter named Rachel Lavern writes a wonderful blog that used to be called “Fearfully ‘n Wonderfully Made, but is now called… actually, I’m not quite sure what it’s called. If you follow the link below, you’ll see what I mean. Anyway, it’s a great blog with lots of content made to make people feel good and to think about things, but it’s one of those Intense Debate blogs, kind of like Disqus, which you know I don’t like, so I won’t comment there. Instead, I will comment through this blog which she’ll see on a trackback.

Anyway, her post is entitled What Will You Create, and in this case she has a short video on creation, then 10 ways to stem creativity by a guy named Jeffrey Baumgartner, whom I thought I knew but I don’t. Anyway, his 10 ways to stem creativity aren’t bad, but no one says you have to do it his way. As a matter of fact, though I’m not going to go through the 10, as I want you to check out Rachel’s blog, I will counter one of them.

He recommends that you don’t watch TV. I’m not going to suggest that, but what I am going to suggest is that you think about what you’re watching and see if there’s any concepts in any of those shows that you think are something worth commenting on. I mean, could I have written a top 10 TV shows if I’d never watched TV? You know, the most mindless drivel is entertaining to someone, and maybe if that person wrote about it, others would see it in a different light; or not. lol

I once wrote that I thought creativity was obsolete, but I really don’t think that’s the case. What I believe is that there are some of us who don’t want to challenge ourselves to be different, to make a statement, to give something that no one else has given before. That’s the safe route; what fun is being safe all the time? Well, unless you’re thinking about doing something really stupid like this (this is going to take you to a video that’s kind of an adrenaline rush; no embed, otherwise I’d put it up here). Then again, watch that video and tell me this guy wasn’t creative.

Probably one of the most creative blogs out there is Marelisa’s Abundance Online. Man, talk about wonderful words to read each time I’m ready for it. She really puts a lot into each post, like her latest one called The Paint By Number Approach To Accomplishing Your Goals. She writes beautifully, gives a lot of information, often gives a lot of leads, and I’m telling you, if you ever needed to find ideas on what to write about, her blog will give them to you.

How will you show the creative side of yourself in your next few blog posts?

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