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!
Instead of thinking of limits as constraints or as obstacles that block your progress toward achieving your goals, start thinking of them as valuable allies.
Lots of great things have been achieved not in spite of limits, but because of them. Particularly when it comes to creativity, setting limits–or having limits set externally upon you–can set you free.
Here are three examples of how limits can expand, instead of constrict, creativity:
Write a Novel or Your Memoir in Six Words
Ernest Hemingway is said to have written the following to prove to a friend that he could write a “novel” in six words: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
Smith Magazine picked up on the concept a couple of years ago and published the book “Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure”
Here’s a few from the collection of one thousand mini-memoirs (or nano-memoirs):
- Chef Mario Batali: “Brought it to a boil, often.”
- Singer Amy Winehouse: “Couldn’t cope, so I wrote songs.”
- Graffiti artist Mare 139: “Wasn’t noticed so I painted trains.”
- Nine-year-old Hannah Davies: “Cursed with cancer. Blessed by friends”
- Graham Marsh: “I’m just happy to be here.”
- Bill Cowan: “Age crept up and mugged me.”
- Gillian Smellie: “Ditched the map, found better route.”
The book did so well that SMITH has continued publishing books around the same concept. You can head on over to their site and contribute your own six-word memoir. Who knows? It might just get published in a future book.
Here’s the trailer for “It All Changed in an Instant: More Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure”
And here’s my six-word memoir: “Life plan: love, laugh, serve, create.”
Write a Best-Seller Using Only Fifty Different Words
One of Dr. Seuss’ most popular books, “Green Eggs and Ham”
The 50 words Dr. Seuss used are the following:
a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you
Do you think you wouldn’t like green eggs and ham? As Sam-I-am says:
“Try them! Try them!
And you may.
Try them and you may, I say.”
Six Sentences – Flash Fiction
According to Wikipedia, flash fiction is “fiction of extreme brevity”. A work of flash-fiction contains the classic story elements: protagonist, conflict, obstacles or complications, and resolution. However, because of the limited word length–works of flash fiction tend to be between 300 and 1,000 words long–, sometimes these elements remain unwritten and are just hinted at in the story.
As an example of flash-fiction, the site “Six Sentences” accepts submissions of stories written in–you guessed it–six sentences. The site is doing so well, they’ve published the submissions in two volumes:
- Six Sentences
- 6S, Volume 2
- There’s going to be a volume 3, and they’re accepting submissions until Sunday, January 31st, 2010. (Source).
Conclusion
I actually had a fourth example to share with you, but I decided to limit myself to three. 
The next time you’re sitting in front of a blank sheet of paper and you can’t think of a thing to write, start by setting limits for yourself and go on from there.
If you came up with a six-word memoir, please share it in the comments section.
Image above courtesy of Roopesh.
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- The Key to Success: Resourcefulness
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- 119 Prompts for Your Journal Jar
- Creativity Primer
I Recommend:
My ebook “How to Be More Creative – A Handbook for Alchemists” explains that creativity is not the sole domain of the arts but is important in any field. Whatever you do, creativity helps you do it better. Discover practical advice on how to be more creative in every life endeavor by reading my ebook.
Juicy Journaling with SARK inspires daily creative writing as you nourish your curious, colorfull, inspired writer self. Find your unique writing voice in Juicy Journaling with SARK!
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