The 70 Most Beautiful Words in English

To mark its 70th anniversary, the British Council asked more than 40,000 people in 102 countries to come up with the most beautiful words in the English language. See the 70 most popular words from that survey.

My guess is many of these words were chosen based on how fun they are to SAY, not necessarily for what they mean.

While there, check out the winners of the contest to compose a story of 150 words, using as many of the words from the list as possible. Maybe you'll submit a story?

Enjoy!

Digital Hangman (the game)

Here's a blast from the past – especially from those school days in Spring – when Summer vacation just couldn't come fast enough – and you passed the time with a buddy, playing Hangman.

This time it's digital, and you can choose which topics interest you – and you can say you're exercising your right brain, because you are.

Enjoy!

Brainstorming - How Ideas Are Formed

A portion of what I teach in my Goosing Your Muse creativity workshops is "How Ideas Are Formed."

If you slow down the process of how ideas are formed, and look at each step, it helps to establish some vocabulary useful to creative people who collaborate on projects. This makes it easier to identify more clearly which phase you're working in at which time.

Example: one of you might still be coming up with ideas, (First Insight) while your partner already has made a big leap to the Verification (Will It Work) phase. This could be very annoying as one of you says repeatedly, "What if?" or "We could do..." and the other says, repeatedly, "Nah, that won't work, that won't work."

Another example is when one of you is in the Incubation phase, sleeping on an idea overnight, or taking a walk, or simply staring off into space. Others in your project group might see you as not working at all. Frustrating for everyone.

And naturally, it is totally possible that one person can have several ideas cooking at once, each one in a different phase of development.

Here's a simplified version of the classic 5-step model for How Ideas Are Formed:

1 - First Insight: Identifying the problem/goal at hand
2 - Saturation: Pooling all the research that you can about the subject
3 - Incubation: Pausing to let the ideas take shape
4 - Illumiation (Aha!): When the idea or solution arrives
5 - Verification: Will it work

The article by Paul E. Plsek, Working Paper: Models for the Creative Process explores other models which are used successfully in brainstorming.

Remember, these are guides for a useful vocabulary, not recipes!

Enjoy!

10 Ways to Get the Creative Juices Flowing

Here's a quick checklist of things you can do to stir up your Creative Juices, from An Artsy Fartsy blog by Scott Thigpen ... some of which made me chuckle.

Many thanks to Douglas E. Welch for letting us know about this.