A New Year Means New Creative Play

Posted by chriskuhn on Dec 28, 2011 in Better Writing, Blog, Creative Prose, Inspiration Corner | 0 comments

So every year, I’m committed to making a very big decision as January 1 approaches.

Resolutions? Nah, gave up on those a while ago.

But for the past two years, I’ve dedicated myself to setting up creative assignments for myself to carry out throughout the new year. Consider them Creative Resolutions, a pact with myself that no matter how busy life and work become (which can blur a bit when you work from home), I would not lose sight of my creativity. I would make a deal with myself that I’d explore new ways of being creative.

In 2010, it was a photograph a day to represent 365 days of my life through pictures. In 2011, I tackled two projects – one building a short story one paragraph a day (this ended in the fall when the story simply had to come to an end); and the other creative project, a monthly adventure – Five to Try. During this project, I would try five new things every month (maybe a recipe, restaurant, new museum, theater group, cocktail, anything!) This is a project that will wrap later this week, in fact.

But now, all of us prepare to saunter into 2012, and I’m in a pickle. What to do, what to do. Creatively, that is.

Do you have any ideas? If so, I’d love to hear them. I’ll be making my decision in a few days.

So far, here are some ideas I’ve dreamt up:

• Daily Art-spiration —  a mini-blog each day highlighting some form of art to thematically represent the day – whether it’s a song, a lyric, a poem, a sculpture, painting – anything! My hope would be that it would introduce readers to new avenues for artistic exploration,  general appreciation and enjoyment and pure creative inspiration to start their day.

• The Write Word— a word-a-day pop cultural vernacular creation courtesy of yours truly and introduced each day via both a definition and sample sentence in a mini blog. The double mission: exercise my writing muscle while simultaneously stirring up conversation about the concepts presented.

• Object of My Affection — each week, a blog focused on some randomly selected household item and the values, concepts and emotional attachments behind the item. Designed to inspire others to look around their surroundings and find inspiration and “stories” behind all of the details which normally pose more tasks than art or imagination.

So…would any of these regularly featured creative exercises inspire you to join me in getting creative and exploring your own imagination on a daily, weekly or monthly basis?

I appreciate your ideas and feedback. Thanks!

CKuhn