LOTS OF CREATIVITY FROM LOTS OF IDEAS

           Copyright 1994 Marcia Yudkin.  You may reproduce this
           entire electronic disk and pass it on as shareware.  All
           other rights reserved.  Excerpted from THE CREATIVE GLOW: 
           HOW TO BE MORE ORIGINAL, INSPIRED & PRODUCTIVE IN YOUR
           WORK, Volume I, #3.

               In Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg has written
           eloquently about the power of "first thoughts" -- quiet,
           crude sentences liable to be squelched despite the truths
           they harbor.  Write them down and honor them, she advises,
           for they offer a conduit to your real mind, the authentic
           you.  If your purpose is self-awareness, I agree:  First
           thoughts often reveal more than polished, chosen ones.  But
           not so when you aim at creativity that communicates with
           others or overcomes a problem in our shared world.  There
           first ideas can hold you back if you treat them as sacred.

               Thomas Edison bequeathed to us electric lighting, for
           example, because he put his initial hunch on what might
           work as a filament to the test and then tried thousands
           more substances.  T.S. Eliot left behind immortal poetry by
           refusing to settle for first phrases like "at dawn" and
           exploring possibilities like "the first faint light" and
           "the antelucan dark" before deciding that "waning dusk"
           worked best in context.  

               Music lovers have Rossini's laziness to thank for a
           similar result:  One winter morning while he composed in
           his warm bed, his papers fell to the floor.  Unwilling to
           brave the cold to fetch the papers, he started afresh and
           wrote the overture again, much more enchantingly than in
           his first attempt.

               Studies of creativity show that people who fall in love
           with the specifics of their original inspiration are less
           likely to be known as inventors, pioneers or problem
           solvers than those who persistently generate many
           possibilities and then sift through them.  Comedy writer
           Gene Perret corroborates this with his revelation that a
           top performer who delivers 20 funny lines on camera has
           usually culled these from 3000.  

               Similarly, one of the cardinal rules of brainstorming,
           "supply as many ideas as you can," has lasted since the
           1930s because it works. According to the makers of
           IdeaFisher creativity software, fresh visions and solutions
           tend to appear among the final 50 percent produced, while
           the most stale, commonplace ideas typically come up
           earliest.  Consider those plastic disks that soar and skip
           on college campuses.  Originally marketed as "Salad
           Plates," "Bucket Tops" and "Pluto Platters,"  it was as
           "Frisbees" that they finally caught on.

               When your projects lack pizzazz, you may have latched
           onto certain features too soon.  To maximize the odds of an
           unexpectedly but perfectly spiced stew, consider many, many
           ingredients.  Here are some maneuvers that will help your
           list of candidates keep growing when the well of
           inspiration runs dry:

               REVERSAL.  Turn the approaches you've already thought
           of on their heads.  Instead of pondering how you can make
           more money, think about how you can spend less.  Rather
           than seek a fresh rhyme for "blue," keep "you" and change
           the rest of the jingle.  In lieu of a daring new way to
           trap mice, ask what would attract them and keep them around
           -- outside.

               FORCED ASSOCIATIONS.  Drag out a dictionary or
           catalogue, open to a random page and point.  If what that
           word or item sparks seems impertinent, modify it.  Your
           finger targets "fishhook," for example, and you're looking
           for a way to market skiing during a winter of bad weather. 
           How about offering gourmet seafood meals at your ski
           lodges?  Another way to trigger associations:  Take a walk
           and every twenty-fifth step notice whatever is in front of
           you.

               COMBINATIONS.  Think back through the possibilities
           already listed or used and mix, mingle, merge or synthesize
           them.  Tired of changing from one pair of glasses to
           another, for instance, Benjamin Franklin invented the first
           pair of bifocals.  Fax machines, I presume, originated when
           someone crossed a copier with a telephone.

               ROLE-PLAYING.  Pretend you're someone else and
           contemplate your situation from their point of view.  How
           would Jules Verne download a file from a computer without
           any traditional source of electricity?  What title would
           Madonna or Sinatra give your painting?  How would Lily
           Tomlin materialize the $800 you need for rent?  Let your
           imagination go wild.  Right behind the wackiest scheme may
           be a refinement that meets every test of excellence.