Do you ever watch Jeopardy? My wife and I watch this show each weeknight, and we’ve developed a little game of our own to go with it. At the end of the show, there’s “Final Jeopardy.” The show reveals the topic and then goes to…

As I was considering what my creativity exercise would be for this week, I realized that I’ve been meaning to waste time creatively! What the what?! How could I have forgotten? And then, I found myself feeling guilty. Guilty that I’d not wasted time RIGHT.…

Do you feel pressured to fill every moment of time with a useful activity? Me too. In fact, as I started thinking about how wasting time could be beneficial to my creative process, I made the bed in our guest room. The clean sheets had…

How about a little image play? I found this painting at the Rijksmuseum site and couldn’t resist the frolicking skaters! Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters, Hendrick Avercamp, c. 1608 Delve into this scene and you begin to see the frozen moments in village life. People…

Our creative obstacles often seem as big as the supervillains in the James Bond films. They sit in their evil electric chairs, pet their evil white Octopussy, and plot the end of the world for no more reason than “HAHAHA! I am EVIL!” And James…

In the past week, Christmas cards have begun to arrive which means the influx of the inevitable “Holiday Newsletter.” You know what I’m talking about. Sheets of brightly colored paper filled with a single-spaced, double-sided missive detailing all of the events and accomplishments of the…

In the book, Madeleine L’Engle: Herself, Ms. L’Engle talks about writing fantasy with this recommendation: “Before you take your flights of fantasy, before you explain what a tesseract is, you have to make the reader comfortable in something homely, as the English use the word…

Stephen Sondheim, that giant of musical theatre, wrote song after song remembered as classics. With lyrics and music that revealed ourselves to us, these works transformed the way we look at the stage. If you take a moment to delve into his archive, you’ll find…

Many people are traveling again, and even if you aren’t sitting in busy airports, I’m betting that you are finding yourself surrounded by unfamiliar people at some point in your day. So, let’s have a little character study. While in a busy environment, select a…

Over the past weekend, I picked up Roy Blount, Jr.’s book, “Save Room for Pie.” Amongst the giggle-worthy essays, little poems and songs were scattered. They inspired this creativity exercise. Specifically, this one short ditty: “The neighborhood stores are all out of broccoli Loccoli.” So,…