Hi, I'm Marelisa Fábrega. Here you'll find tips and resources to help you increase your creativity, be more productive, and simplify your life. You may want to start by reading "A Guide to Abundance Blog for the Uninitiated". Grab a cup of coffee or tea, sit back, and enjoy!
A great way to get inspired is to read great creativity blogs. Here you’ll find a list of awesome creativity blogs you can add to your RSS feed so that you have them handy when you need a creativity boost. This is the fourth post of Creativity Extravaganza Week.
LifeDev – Share Your Ideas
LifeDev is the blog of Glen Stansberry, and the tagline says it all: “Empowering Creative People”. In “Open Sourcing Your Creativity”, Glen concurs with Seth Godin that giving away ideas is a great thing. In fact, the more you create and share ideas, the better you get at generating ideas. Glen offers examples of successful idea sharing, such as Wikipedia, Firefox, and Linux. He also argues that by embracing collaboration you get better results than if you tried to do everything on your own.
Productive Flourishing – Start Your Idea Garden
Charlie Gilkey from Productive Flourishing asks: Do You Have an Idea Garden? He argues that ideas have to be captured and tended until they’re ready to come out. Charlie adds that an idea garden is a place where ideas get the sun and water—that is, the energy—they need to grow. Head on over to Productive Flourishing and let Charlie show you how to tend your idea garden.
Get Fresh Minds – Look at Dessert in a New Way
In Get Fresh Minds (tag line: Ideas So Fresh They Could be Slapped) Katie Konrath—who has a college degree in Ancient Greek and Latin – shares her fresh ideas with the world. In “A New Way of Looking at Dessert”, she explains that Applebee’s came up with the idea of serving small, shot-glass sized versions of their regular desserts. This has a myriad of advantages: less guilt over eating dessert, since they’re small; cheaper; and everyone can get what they really want instead of having to share. Plus, as she points out, they’re cute.
43 Folders – Twyla’s Box
Merlin Mann of 43Folders fame announced recently that he would begin to discuss creativity—as well as continue writing about productivity—on his blog. In his blog post, “Twyla’s Box: It’s Where Everything Goes” he talks about Twyla Tharp’s organizational system which consists of a box in which she puts everything that goes into the making of a dance: notebooks, news clippings, CDs, videotapes of her working alone in her studio, videos of the dancers rehearsing, books and photographs and pieces of art that have inspired her, and so on.
Creative Creativity – ABC’s
Over at Creative Creativity David Wahl collects resources, inspiration and his own personal philosophy on creativity. In “The ABC’s of Staying Creative”, he argues that A-B-C stands for “Always Be Creating”. Here’s a great quote from that post:
“Multiple projects. Plans. A giant novel about a war between the ant-people and the walrus-people. The perfect cupcake recipe. An elf outfit for your bulldog. A list of believable lies about Abraham Lincoln. A list of heavy metal band names that haven’t been used yet. (That last one is harder than you think.) Designing underwear for chickens. Anything you want!”
Lateral Action – Debate on Brainstorming
Lateral Action’s tagline is very similar to the one here at Abundance Blog at Marelisa Online: Creativity + Productivity = Success (mine’s better 
). Marc McGuinness asks in a recent blog post: Is “Brainstorming a Waste of Time?” He quotes creativity professionals on both sides of the aisle:
- Richard Huntington, Director of Strategy for Saatchi & Saatchi in the UK says: “I hate brainstorms . . . They waste huge amounts of time and talent and they are no fuc**ing good at delivering decent ideas.”
- Tom Kelly, General Manager of IDEO says: “Brainstorming is practically a religion at IDEO, one we practice nearly every day.”
Wishful Thinking – Time Management for Creative People
Wishful Thinking is Marc McGuinness’ other blog. Marc, by the way, is a poet, as well as a coach and trainer for professional artists and creative companies. Download his fabulous free e-book: Time Management for Creative People. That e-book was the inspiration for my blog post: “Making Time to Create”.
Idea Sandbox – Cocktail Napkin Wisdom
One of my favorite features over at Idea Sandbox is their “Cocktail Napkin Wisdom”. Here’s some of them:
- Business Doesn’t Mean Being Busy
- Edison on Improvement
- Forgive and Forget – Or at Least One of the Two
Broadcasting Brain – Just Write
Broadcasting Brain is Mark Dykeman’s blog. In his blog post “Just Write” he advices that we forget about how awful we think the result of our writing might be, or who might read it, or how they might respond, and just write. You can always edit once you have a first draft, but until the words are down on paper nothing else can happen.
Creativity Portal – The Story as Muse
Creativity Portal is a cornucopia of creativity articles. In “The Story as Muse”, the author suggests that you be promiscuous when it comes to literature. The stories, letters, diaries and memoirs of others are fertile ground for generating creative ideas. In addition, reading great authors will undoubtedly improve your writing.
Also, make sure that your reading is varied: read the classics, contemporary poets, and even that novel that someone absentmindedly left sitting on a table at your favorite coffee house. In addition to Creativity Portal, Chris Dunmire also blogs at another fantastic creativity blog: Creative Slush.
Creative Something – Take the Creativity Quiz
Head on over to Creative Something and take their “Creativity Quiz” (I scored “Incredibly Creative”, just thought I’d share ). Whatever your score, the folks over at Creative Something assure you that everyone has the potential to improve.
Abundance Blog at Marelisa Online
Of course, I had to include Abundance Blog at Marelisa Online in the list. After all, it’s a creativity blog, and it’s awesome, if I do say so myself. I’m going to point you to the “creativity archive” so that you can have your pick of great creativity articles.
- 25+ Audacious Creativity Tools
- 20 Creative Thinking Techniques
- 75 Creativity Quotes
- 101 Creativity & Innovation Books – Your Creativity Library
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