I am taking a break from posting my articles about writing as I have just completed programming of my new site for authors to post their articles and get website publicity. It is titled Article-Database.com and can be found at http://www.article-database.com

Thanks, Keith

P.S. More chapters/articles of my online mini book on writing will follow shortly.

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Chapter 5: Some More Exercises To Get The Creative Ideas Flowing

Maybe all that you need to come up with an idea for an article or short story is to get started with the first line of a sentence.

Here are some sentences and trigger phrases I have put together so you can build upon or get ideas from in order to create your own.

When all else fails ...

How to ....

If I had it to do over again I'd ....

How I learned about ....

Surviving the .....

I thought it was a dream, but then I discovered that ...

I don’t need to sleep anymore as I’ve found the secret to …..

The best part of waking up is ......

I just saved a ton of money ....

You can see that I was starting to have a little fun here, especially with the last two being take-offs on television commercials. Have fun with these and if you come up with any really good endings please post them in the comments.

Another exercise that you can do to stimulate creative thinking is to take two words that start with the same letter of the alphabet and link them together as a title using words such as of, and, the, etc. Or don’t even put any words with them such as the third example below.

Some examples would be as follows:

The antagonism of aardvarks.

The beligerance of buffoons.

Apathetic Accuracy.

Blundering break-dancers.

These are just a handful of some of the crazy yet creative ideas that you can come up with. In addition the process of doing this can help to increase your language skills as you may find yourself pulling out the dictionary to look up more words that start with a certain letter of the alphabet. In doing so you can check their meaning and learn new uses of the word.

Chapter Four: Letting Your Imagination Run Free

The purpose of this chapter is to present exercises and ideas for expanding your imagination and your idea creating processes.

It may not seem like the most creative writing assignment available but another way to have something to write about is to pick a topic at random and write a fact filled article about it. If you have an interest in 1960 automobiles but don’t know a lot about them this would be the perfect opportunity to do some research and write an article about it.

The research that you do in order to write such an article as described may in itself spark ideas for future articles or stories.

Here are just a few ideas to randomly choose from:

·           How to housetrain a puppy in less than two weeks

·           Where to find rare items and make a profit selling them on the Internet

·           Does cat litter pose a danger to children’s health?

·           What is the most fuel efficient car in today’s economy?

·           What I would do if I were president!!!

 For more assistance in finding random items to talk about simply make a list of words and then consider what you could write about each one of these. A sample list is as follows: 

·           Dog, cat, parrot, government, politics, food, money, camaro, cameras, pocket protectors, video, movies, popular topics, niche markets, circus, carnival ….

Sit down and make your own list and then set to work on picking one or more to do the research on and write your article, short story or whatever suites your desire.

You may also get ideas by coming up with a sentence ending to such openers as:

·           When all else fails

·           How to

·           How to make money by

·           How to feel better about

·           Escape from never, never land, the story of

·           Just when I thought it was all over

·           Just when I thought that it was safe I found

·           If this is the best that it will get, what

·           If every day was like this I would

·           I tried talking to you, however

The above are just some examples. Play around with them and come up with as many endings as you can. You will be surprised at what you can think of when you put your mind to it.

There is nothing better than to spark an idea than reading and writing about a subject. It will usually lead into other ideas, and as you research the subject you will increase ideas for what you will be able to write about.

Chapter Three: Creating Ideas Through Dream Or Desire

Everyone has dreams or desires about something, whether it be about the afterlife, about being with a certain person, about accomplishing fame or fortune, or a certain career. This chapter focuses upon using your imagination to develop ideas that can be the basis of what you write about.

Have you daydreamed about going on an ocean cruise in the Bahamas? This could both be considered a daydream and a desire.

Do you look at the sky at night and wonder if on one of those many flickering lights in the sky if there is someone there looking up at their sky wondering about life elsewhere? Here is an example of your imagination and hence dreaming working at its very best.

Are you one of those people who can imagine living in a mansion and always having your bills paid on time or even in advance of the due date? Don’t think of it as a dream, think of it as a goal. It is also something that you can write about along your journey to success. This is an example of a desire that you can use to come up with ideas to write about.

Have you ever been involved in one of those seemingly ridiculous philosophical conversations? I’m referring here to the type of conversation in which the talk seems to gravitate to whether or not the universe simply exists inside a stinky old sneaker sitting in a box within a closet somewhere.

Before I finish this chapter I must admit that it wouldn’t be fair to not mention that you can also get ideas for your storytelling or article writing from actual dreams, or even from nightmares. Dreams and nightmares, no matter how crazy or ridiculous they may seem, are great places to get ideas from. A word of advice is needed here and that is to write down what happens in your dreams or nightmares as soon after the experience as possible. The reason for this is that it is sometimes easy to forget what actually happened in the dream or nightmare.

In these examples it is shown that you have an imagination that could lead to valuable ideas for articles or stories. Daydreaming and practicing philosophy are excellent ways to come up with ideas to put into print. Just imagine what you can do when you imagine.

Chapter Two:

Gaining Insight For Creativity Through Negative Experience

If you are thinking to yourself that you could never write for a publication because you don't have any ideas that are worth publishing, then think again.  

Do you have a negative experience that you have learned a valuable lesson from? If so the experience and the valuable lesson learned are definitely the stuff that makes good material for writing either an article or a short story.

Relating these experiences to people might help someone else to learn a lesson without them personally having to go through the negative experience. Describe the events leading to the experience and the aftermath of the events. Did you learn to avoid a certain situation?

·           Did you stay up to late to many nights in a row your first month in college and on one of your trips back home fall asleep while driving and wreck your first care. That wouldn’t be a very pleasant experience but there could be several things to learn from it if you just took a moment to write them down.

·           If someone got very drunk and ended up in the morning in a very uncompromising situation this would definitely be a story to tell once the embarrassment of the situation was dealt with.

·           You were bullied in school and feel that you have insight into keeping children and teens from being bullied in the way that you were.

Did you learn to approach a situation from a different viewpoint or a better way to deal with a problem? If so such experiences can be written about in many ways.

If you feel more comfortable making the idea into a short story do so. If you can describe the lesson learned more easily in the format of an article then definitely present it that way. The ideas are as limitless as your experiences and your thoughts in dealing with them.

Chapter One:

Gaining Insight For Creativity Through Positive Experience

When you listen to or read a story or an article you may do so with or without intending to gain some valuable insights that can be applied to your personal or business life. The person who has written that article or story possibly had some event, experience, opinion or imaginative idea that they felt would interest someone. Therefore, they sat down either at a computer and typed out their thoughts using the keyboard or they sat down with a pad of paper and a pen and wrote out what they were thinking.

Did you experiment with a new way to market something on the Internet and got excellent or better than expected results?

Did you go out to eat at a new restaurant last night and find the experience enjoyable?

Did you discover a hidden talent that you didn't know that you possessed?

Did you just find a way to save money on your long distance bill, one that is unique and does not involve switching providers or not making the long distance calls?

Did you try a new recipe last night and found out that you really liked it? Could you make improvements on its taste and shorten the time and effort that it takes to prepare it?

Motivational seminars are an interesting place to discover ideas that you may not have previously considered. Possibly if you’ve intended one you may find that you indeed have more positive experiences to offer than you previously thought possible. You could write these down and possibly write a story similar to those in the popular book Chicken Soup For The Soul.

Did you simply have an enjoyable and restful day yesterday? If so, what did you learn from it. This can be the basis of an article, a story or even an entire book.

These positive experiences, as with negative experiences, provide lessons that deserve to be shared in writing.

My name is Keith P. Stieneke and I’d like to welcome you to the first book of the Writer Within Series, Discovering and Improving The Writer Within You. I have been writing for many years and have several articles published online concerning business, as well as a few other topics. If you want to discover if I am being truthful about this simply go to the Google search engine and do a search using Keith Stieneke as the search term. When you do this you will come up with many links to websites where my articles are published. For best reading I would suggest printing out this manual so that you may enjoy and learn from it at your leisure.

The type of material that you will find in this manual is as follows:

·           You may think that you don’t have it within you to become a writer. You will discover that everyone of average intelligence has within them the possibility of becoming a writer and what it is that makes this possible.

·           If you have trouble with ideas this manual will help you to become a creative thinker. You will discover several ideas and methods to come up with ideas for articles, essays and even short stories or novels. You will find out how to gain insight for creativity through your positive experiences, how to gain insight for creativity through negative experiences, how to create ideas from dream or desire, and how to just let your imagination run free. These are just a few of the creative ideas and exercises that will be presented in this book.

·           Do you think that your grammar and spelling are substandard and need improvement? You will be shown how to improve your grammar and spelling and get directed to websites that have information on improving your writing abilities. Find all the resources to improve your writing abilities online and you’ll be off to a great start.

Here’s to putting words to work for you.

(This is an ebook I was working on. I have decided for the time being to put the contents on this blog instead).

I just went blog surfing through Blog Estates and noticed that I am not the only one that hasn't posted in awhile. Well, here in the United States most of us are still focused on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the upheaval it has caused for not only New Orleans and other parts of the southern U.S. That has made it difficult to focus on business issues especially when we are unsure of what the future holds in relation to the economy and other issues.

Prayer and contemplation are needed now but we must continue with our daily lives and if that includes blogging then we must continue to blog. It is a time to continue writing and a time to continue on the path of self improvement. I have just recently created a new blog which is for the time being housed at http://your-personal-best.blogspot.com.

I have also created a blog to deal with current events and my thoughts about them at http://keith-stieneke.blogspot.com

Keep reading as I am going to post information as related to writing at least twice a week at this blog. Take care and may God bless you and yours each and every day.

No matter what your blogging efforts are about you've got to have a heart for the victims of the recent Hurricane Katrina. If you can donate anything whether it be money,time,food,clothing, etc. I would suggest that you do what you can.

At my new blogger blog http://keith-stieneke.blogpsot.com I have listed places that you can donate to as well as get American Red Cross banners for your website. The exact link for this post is http://keith-stieneke.blogspot.com/2005/09/donate-to-help-victims-of-hurricane.html

Each of us together can be a part of something bigger.