Turn a Creative Spark into a Bonfire: Part 1

What do you do when you have a new idea, want to share it, but hate that “Really? Another idea that you’ll never follow through on? Not again!” response from people you’ve shared ideas with before? This is the first of a three part series on turning your creative spark into a bonfire. After following this first step, you will know exactly how to nourish your fledgling ideas so they will grow into a brilliant solution, product, or blog post instead of allowing them to be sent to an early grave where they’ll come back to haunt you as regret or guilt for not acting on them.

The Scenario

Let’s imagine that you have just read a book, heard a lecture, or seen a billboard that sparked a new way of thinking. Now you have a new idea that you are all enthusiastic about. What now?

Should you talk about it to some of your closest friends and family and share your enthusiasm?

Or should you keep it to yourself for a while, mull it over, develop it into maturity before you discuss it with anyone?

Yes.

The truth is that both reflection and sharing are important to helping your idea blossom, and your preferences will influence which comes most naturally to you. If your personality type is outgoing and flexible,you will probably have lots of ideas and share them with most everyone you know. That’s great when you have a friend who is similar to you (like a retriever or another otter), but when you encounter the people who are reserved and structured (and there are a LOT of them) your new creative spark can be quickly smothered by their wet blanket reception or squashed by their heavy expectations.

When you are building a real fire, you start with a match and some newspaper to get a flame going. Your match is your burning desire to create that killer blog post, be known at work for developing brilliant solutions, or develop the product that changes people’s lives. Your newspaper is a daily feed of fresh ideas.

Here are the three steps to subscribing to your own “Muse News”:

1) Capture the Ideas

If you don’t catch the ideas your muse sends to you and put them somewhere for safekeeping, she will quit tossing them to you and start throwing them to someone else. Find a way to record your thoughts so you can come back to them later.

I use either yellow sticky notes or Dragon Dictation on my iPhone or iPad, depending on where I am. LaVonne Ellis at completeflake.com suggests some more great tools to help you do this. If you are a blogger, you can also save a draft post with the main points of your thought (Don’t forget to draft the main points you will make, because you can easily compile a list of draft themes and later have no idea what you intended to say about any of the themes. Not that I have much experience with this problem.[blush]).

You don’t have to write a complete post, and sometimes it helps to not even use a computer. Your thoughts might come more easily if you make a quick mind map on a blank sheet of paper to get yourself started. This series of posts was created that way.

The important thing is to capture those ideas so you can go back to them later. Once you’ve done that, you can get on with your day (or your shower, or your drive, or whatever you were doing when the idea came to you).

2) Give yourself permission to entertain the idea and get wildly excited, but put it down at any time

Once you have it, nurture that little flame. See if there are any other ideas you’ve captured in the past that link to this one. How do they relate? Together, do they start to make a process? If so, where do they lead?

If not, how might this idea apply to a problem that someone has? Could it be part of a solution for someone? If so, who and what else would they need to solve the problem?

Is this something you can follow through on now? Can you use it to make a product in a weekend, create a website in three days, or help your work team become brilliant? If so, take action on it!

What other thoughts are related to this one? If you can’t think of any more good ideas to bring into the mix, challenge yourself to come up with 10 bad ideas. I bet one of them will end up helping. (And you are recording those bad ideas too as part of step one, right?)

If your idea starts to wither away and your enthusiasm wanes, give yourself permission to drop it. The joy of having lots of fresh ideas and capturing them for future reference is that you can abandon any that don’t cry out for action right now. Later on, you might find that another idea down the road relates to it and you’ll be happy to recorded it.

3) Share it with your kindling friends

If you take the flame you’ve created and wave it around to all your friends and neighbors, the harsh winds of criticism will snuff it out almost instantly and you’ll be left holding nothing but ash. Instead, use the friends and family who are similar to you as idea “kindling” and save the sharing with the structured folks for after you have a hearty fire going.

Who are your kindling friends? Those who encourage you to talk more about your idea and join in your enthusiasm. Those who ask questions that help you expand your thoughts. Those who contribute their own ideas to help yours grow healthy and strong. These are the people you want to go to first.

This doesn’t mean you ignore your more robust “log” type of friends. You will need them later on to help your small fire grow into a raging inferno. We will cover that in step three of this series. For now, though, nurturing your flame means sharing it with a limited audience.

Today’s Strength Building Challenge

If you liked these ideas, here are your action steps to start engaging your strengths:

• Choose one system for capturing ideas. Commit to one week of carrying a digital voice recorder around, writing ideas on little yellow stickies, or making mind maps. If this week’s solution doesn’t work out very well, choose another one next week (and don’t forget to transfer this week’s ideas to the new system!).
• Connect the dots. When you get a new idea to add to the collection, see if it can buddy up with an idea that you’ve captured earlier. If so, see if having the two parts together can form a new process, product or solution that you can share to solve a problem.
• Identify your kindling friends. Which of your friends leaves you feeling happy and energetic whenever you go to them with a new idea? Or, identify them with these 5 steps to guessing a personality type. Make a list of these friends and stick it on your bathroom mirror, your car’s dashboard, or your computer monitor. Those are your “go to” people to share your fledgling ideas with this week.

The next post in this series will help grow your ideas from new flames to crackling, energetic fires to fuel your passionate life.