10 Ways to Practice Creative Fluency

 This will make sense when you read #8 below

Good Monday and Happy Autumn to you all.  Before I get into the meat of this post, I'd like to thank all of you who gave me (and my piece) a vote during Emily Suess's Writer's Week.  Your efforts paid off!  I came in second place!  I could not have done it without your help, so thank you!

Now, today I had planned to bring you a plethora of links and exercises designed to increase and augment your Creative Fluency.  Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be an awful lot of websites out there that aren't related to elementary education or geared towards teachers.  What about adults?  What about the lifelong autonomous learners out there looking for good resources?

For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of Creative Fluency, this concept falls under the larger umbrella of Creative Thinking.  Generally, Creative Fluency is defined as an individual's capacity to generate many ideas without a lot of hiccups in the process.  

To visualize Fluency, think about how you brainstorm or make a list when coming up with, say, Halloween costume ideas.  You might write down the obvious answers first (e.g. ghost, witch, black cat, or this year's top pop icon).  However, the more you list, the stranger (and more creative) the list is likely to become.  For instance, you may think of costumes that center around plays on words (e.g. Laurie Skelton becomes Laurie Skeleton), concepts (girls dressed up as boys), odd-ball video game characters (e.g. Tetris blocks).  The examples given, by the way, are all costumes I saw last year.  Two of my best friends dressed up as "boys," which meant they went as a Rooster and a Stag.  Clever, huh?

Like anything else, if you want to improve upon your own Creative Fluency, then practice makes perfect.  You just have to get out there and do it!  The website, Minds in Bloom, has a few examples of exercises to increase Fluency in children that could be adapted for adults.  I've done my best to adapt and make additions to their excellent suggestions below.  It helps if you keep a notebook in which to make lists, draw pictures, or create thought webs as you work to increase your Creative Fluency.  Now, on to the good stuff:

1. Think of many uses for common, household items
2. Generate synonyms for overused phrases or words (e.g. awesome, cool, lame)
3. List unusual Halloween costume ideas (see above)
4. Come up with different ways to arrange the furniture in your bedroom, dorm room, or living room
5. Generate solutions to problems you encounter on a regular basis (e.g. the dishes pile up in the sink)
6. List (or draw!) things common food items could become (e.g. a banana peel becomes an octopus)
7. Come up with clever themes for a family dinner party 
8. Think of many ways one could incorporate an unusual ingredient (e.g. prunes, chestnuts, persimmons) into dinner (e.g. prune-stuffed chicken, chestnuts with cabbage, chilled persimmons and cinnamon)
9. Generate unusual (and fun!) ways to get your daily dose of exercise (e.g. play tug-o-war with your dog, take a walk and gather colorful Fall leaves, dance while you wash dishes)
10. List (or draw) many unusual ways to carve a pumpkin for Halloween!

Can you tell that I'm a fan of October?  This list is decidedly Fall/Halloween-oriented.  However, you could certainly adapt some of my suggestions for other times of the year.  Number 10, for instance, could be applied to this concept demonstrated with particular brilliance over at Momdot.com--many ways to paint a hand!

Well, what are you waiting for?  Grab a notebook and get to work!  You'll be surprised at what you come up with.

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Note: #8 is a list I had to come up with after I brought home loads of persimmons and chestnuts from my grandmother's farm this past weekend.  Prunes?  I just happen to have a box.