I have an old, old (2001!) useless one-line post on creativity that search engines somehow love. I feel bad for the folks who keep landing on the post only to find nothing of value. Let’s see if we can stop torturing folks by listing  ideas for creative things to do. Some take a few minutes and some take hours. Some cost nothing. Some call for something you may have at home. Some may require a little shopping.

1. Write a song. You could do just the lyrics, just the music or both. Go crazy.
2. Create a paper airplane you’ve never done before. Most of us have done the basic style paper airplane. Alex’s Paper Airplanes provides how tos for all kinds of planes.
3. Make origami. Sick of airplanes? Get lots of paper folding ideas from the Origami Club.
4. Write a short story. Fiction. Nonfiction. Or fiction using a nonfiction memory. Don’t worry about perfection. Just throw it up on the screen or on paper.
5. Draw a picture. Use Crayons, paint, chalk (go draw on the sidewalk!), pencil, ballpoint pens, whatever writing instrument you have. Heck, use a graphic tablet.
6. Write a poem. Try out a new poetic form if you’re sick of haikus.  Robert Lee Brewer shares many, many poetic forms. Pick one you’ve never heard of and try it!
7. Take pictures. Walk around your neighborhood. Capture something. Go to a nearby park or intriguing place. Put those photo-taking techniques you read about to work.
8. Do ONE page in a scrapbook. Do you have scrapbooking materials that you have yet to use? I bought a package and never used it. The thought of trying to do a scrapbook overwhelms me, maybe it does for you, too. So go for ONE page. Pick three pictures and go!
9. Make up a dance. Love Dancing with the Stars or So You Think You Can Dance? You’ve seen lots of dancing, now try making up your own.
10. Build a website. You don’t have to be in a business to have a website. Create one for your favorite hobby or activity.
11. Create a Facebook page or group. Maybe your favorite nonprofit organization could use one. Love a band, hobby, activity? Before creating one, search Facebook to see if another group already exists. No sense in wasting time if an active group already covers the topic. Maybe you can narrow down the popular topic to create a niche group.
12. Rearrange your home. Change up the environment. Move or swap pictures, move furniture even to a different room, remove some clutter. A little change can give you more energy.
13. Paint a room. You can leave everything the same — just changing the color can make magic.
14. Paint pottery. Go to one of those paint pottery places and make something.
15. Make candles or soaps. I remember I had this arts and crafts book and I made a candle out of an egg shell. I was proud of myself especially since I have no eye for art. Lots and lots of resources for candlemaking help and ideas. And for soap ideas.
16. Produce a video. My daughter loves to do this for school projects. She impressed me with her creativity. If you already have a video camera, you’re golden. The web has plenty of free apps and software for editing and producing videos. What to make a video about? OK, I’ll be nice and give you one idea: “What is a hero?” OK, I stole it from one of my daughter’s video projects. Heck, you can search for “video project ideas.”
17. Learn how to knit, needlepoint, quilts or some other sewing craft. These projects can range from short to long. Take your pick. I used to do latch hook kits. Loved doing them and they’re so easy. I made a big Donald Duck picture and framed it for my dad that hangs in the office in my mom’s house (Dad passed away). @BJMuntain says, “Besides writing, I cross stitch. Great for people with patience and good attention to detail, like librarians or archaeologists.” I wish I had the ability to put together a quilt made of shirts. I had someone take all my old shirts and swetashirts and turned them into an awesome, memory-filled quilt.
18. Decorate a plain picture frame. Find a fun picture and create a fun frame to go with it.
19. Play chef. Create a new recipe. Do a twist on a favorite. Make candy, cookies, cupcakes or cakes and apply a new decorating technique. Turn on a food TV channel and you’ll be inspired that you want to make something. Or make a gingerbread house or something creative and use candy to decorate it. I just saw a roller coaster candy challenge where the winner added silver to peppermint patties and used them as rivets. Brilliant.
20. Make jewelry. I’ve done the macramé thing in scouts, lanyard thing at camp and made bracelets. Go to an art supply store and you’ll find plenty of trinkets, beads and charms to motivate you.
21. Learn a new craft technique. Try stenciling, stamping or etching.
22. Make something with florals. I loved the centerpieces at a recent event. It was a small glass vase filled with clear gelatin. Put two little lights in the gelatin and then fill the vase with three short flowers. Simple yet elegant.
23. Build a bear. Sure, it costs a pretty dollar, but it’s fun and you’ll feel like a kid again.
24. Work on a book. Novel, nonfiction, whatever you desire. Don’t pressure yourself. Just do it here and there. From @KevinFenton: “Work on a novel. Craig Ferguson, who’d been working in film, called it punk rock –– you can do what you want with cheap supplies.” Love to draw? Do a children’s book with pictures.
25. Create a photo show. Why wait until a special occasion when you’ll be too busy with the event? Create a photo show now while you have the time.
26. Create or grow your garden. Plant flowers, herbs or vegetables to add color and personality to your yard.
27. Put together a model plane, car or boat. I loved doing this as a kid. I chucked Barbie for model kits and race car tracks.
28. Do a wood project. You can buy precut wood shapes, so you don’t have to start from scratch. I’ve made little signs and painted them. I made a wood napkin holder with my parents’ initial.
29. Make pillows or blankets. Not all blankets call for knitting or quilting. A friend took two large pieces of material and tied them together into a perfect blanket for my first son. My mom had a pillow made out of my dad’s old ties.
30. Organize yourself. I love building bookshelves and other organizers from kits that you get at Ikea or the Container Store. Not only you do something with your hands, but you also clean up.
31. Play designer. Watch those shows (Yes, like Trading Spaces) where designers have a very small budget and do lots of crafts projects to change up the room’s look. It’s amazing what they come up with that even I can do.
32. Design a shirt, bag, sneakers or other clothes. One of my proudest projects ever — painting a sweatshirt. That sweatshirt is on my quilt. It’s a sweatshirt of many logos from musicals. I couldn’t believe how precise many of the logos turned out. Oh, there’s a mistake in there, but I covered it up nicely.
33. Explore other people’s works. Go to Etsy, Martha Stewart and similar sites with handmade products. You’re bound to get creative ideas you want to try yourself.
34. Solve a problem. People invent things to solve problems. What annoys you? A shoelace that keeps coming untied, but you don’t want to double-knot it? A shirt tag? Bet a couple of ideas come to your mind.
35. Create geek art. Turn an old mouse into a holiday decoration. Keyboard useless? Recycle the keys into art: earrings, cuff links, necklace, etc.
36. Recycle old items. Instead of trashing useless items, turn them into something else like geek art.

What other creative things can you do?

The winner of Ted Demopoulos: Secrets of a Successful Blogging System digital audiobook with What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting (in which Meryl appears) from Write Funny: 3 Timeless Rules of Comedy That Every Writer Should Learn entry as selected by Random.org… {eDrum roll}… comment #1!

Congratulations, Mathew Patterson!

This entry’s prize comes from marketing extraordinaire Seth Godin. He contributed his $800 DVD set. You have until June 13 to contribute a valuable 30+ word comment.

I’ve seen Joanna Young’s writing over time, but it wasn’t until Poewar’s March Madness that I became a regular at her Confident Writing blog. Since then, she has inspired me to think deeper about describing things and ideas. Her powerful writing post alone shows how we can have so many answers to one question.

How To Add Colour To A Grey Day

Although Scotland isn’t the cold, dark, rainy place a lot of people think it is, we do get a lot of dull, grey days. (Dreich is often the word for it: cool, damp, grey, drizzly rain.)

I was going through one of those grey days last week, filling my head with grey self talk: what a grey day it is, what a miserable day, there’s nothing to see but grey. Till I decided to stop myself: to go out for a walk and – camera in hand – look for the very opposite. Go hunting for the colours of the day.

I was delighted with the results: 10 glorious colours found in city gardens, along the tow path by the urban canal, hiding under park benches.

But it wasn’t just the pictures and the colours that I took away with me. What mattered more was what I learned. That you can change not just the way you feel about a day but the way you experience it. You can change your experience by:

• Making a conscious decision to look for things: like colours, or signs of life, or positive events
• Flexing your creativity muscles: by writing, taking pictures, painting, blogging
• Looking in unexpected places: the nooks and crannies of your everyday surroundings might just contain hidden gems
• Changing your mental filters: you need filters to stop your brain getting overloaded with information, but sometimes you can set them too tight and miss the good stuff
• Sharing what you find: a message I wrote on Twitter about finding colour on a grey day drew people to my photos; maybe helped some people to think differently about their world, or their day; and led to Meryl inviting me here to share these words with you.

Thinking about ways to add colour to a grey day seemed like a suitable gift to bring to Meryl’s party. It’s a frame of mind that can help us to enjoy not just one day, but the whole of a year.

Are there any other ways to find colour that you’d add to this list? What else can we do to add colour to the greyest of days?

Joanna Young is a writing coach from Edinburgh, Scotland who blogs at Confident Writing. You can also find her on Twitter (@joannayoung) and flickr (Joanna Young)

When I first started doing casual game reviews, praising or picking apart a game came easy. Now, when writing game reviews, I feel like I’ve said it all before. The top 10 game journalism cliches captures the challenges game reviewers face. Here is the list along with my comments.

1. Top ten lists: I rarely do this. When I do, the top ten list article comes out at the end of the year. Sites like Mashable often write “## best sites for [enter a topic].” I prefer “## sites for [enter a topic]” because it’s easy to miss deserving candidates.

2. The historical open: This approach gives the writer a nice way to segue into the review. But during these times of information overload, I try to open a review with what it is along with a subtle hint of whether it’s great or blah. What do you want to know when you read a review? For me, I want reviews to tell me what the game, book, or product is about and whether it’s any good.

3. Headlines with a “?” at the end: I don’t have to worry about headlines since all the places I review for just list the game title as in “Diner Dash PC Game Review.” We could argue for and against this method, but it tells you exactly what it is.

4. 7/10 reviews: This would be 4/5 for some of us where ratings use the five point scale instead of 10, but 7/10 appears frequently in working with one client. The local newspaper started adding comments next to the rating such as “two out of five stars (good).” So, two to five stars are positive while one and zero (never happens) stars is negative. That’s no bell curve. It’s as if the newspaper is trying to be gentle and prevent readers from automatically thinking “two stars… don’t go there!” Reviews should be about serving the reader and potential customer, not making nice with the business. Kids today often get a trophy every time they play a sport regardless how their team played. Getting a trophy should make us proud because we earned it not because we signed up and played. How are we going to motivate ourselves to improve?

5. Realistic graphics: No comments on this one.

6. Quirky: Is it good or bad? Exactly the problem.

7. Fans of X will enjoy it: Guilty. I use this line when I don’t have a clever way to end the review.

8. Only time will tell: Pointless. Just give the details now.

9. Reviews broken up into standardized sections: This refers to “graphics,” “sound,” “gameplay,” etc. None of the places I review for use this. They provide a rating. One uses “pros” and “cons,” which gives you a snapshot of what’s good and bad about the game. I think that’s beneficial. Web writing rules apply here — if the review is long, use bold headers every few paragraphs. I rarely do this, though — it just doesn’t work as well for reviews.

10. “Fun.” I try to avoid this like the plague. Considering its synonyms (enjoy, amusing, cool, entertaining, pleasurable) often don’t work well, reviewers sometimes can’t help but use “fun.”

My biggest problem is describing different things such as the graphics and sound. You can only say the same thing so many ways. One thing about reviewing… it offers writers a wonderful way to put their creativity to work. [Link: Gamewire]

Ever read a book or see a movie with a great beginning and a disappointing ending? What about vice versa? If a book starts off too slow or lousy, will you keep reading it? In the past, I did. But not anymore unless it’s for a gig.

Sometimes I luck out in coming up with a wonderful analogy for an article. When you write all the time, you don’t have the luxury of brainstorming creative approaches. It takes time to brainstorm, try different tricks like mindmapping, or flip through books related to getting ideas … time that you don’t have.

One easy trick does work that doesn’t take much time. You can do this after writing the article, in the middle… whenever. Come up with an analogy or theme that relates to the article topic. Unfortunately, that didn’t work well in this entry. So it’s not a perfect trick.

In this best advice response column about someone struggling to break through the glass ceiling, I used Superman to add color. Dorothy and her Oz friends appeared in When Good Newsletters Go Bad. A story on crisis management incorporates science fiction. The Wireless City 2.0 weaves in city planning through the years.

OK, so some ideas work better than others. Sure, I’d like to have every article grab the reader. I practice by writing often and digging for creative approaches while I work through the writing. Sometimes it pays and sometimes it doesn’t. What matters is the practicing and doing it often.

Doing this while blogging is hardest. I can’t spend too much time blogging. Occasionally, I come up with a post I’m proud of, but not enough. The good thing about blogging — whether it’s a good or lousy post — is that it’s writing practice.

This ending is nothing like Citizen Kane, The Crying Game, or The Sixth Sense. But they all have surprises near the end.

It’s easy to overwhelm yourself with so many things and ideas that nothing materializes. For example, a writer might think about article ideas for different magazines, project ideas, and Web site / networking pages content ideas. Thinking about all of these will likely produce nothing except one overwhelmed freelancer.

This became a problem when I drafted two posts (one being the 70+ PowerPoint presentation post) and I kept running into articles from experts who implement many ideas. This inspired me to think about something I could create. Then I realized I was brainstorming about too many things at once. The result: Stifled energy and creativity. Nothing got done.

Freelancers typically have current assignments plus projects or tasks they want to do or try. Sometimes thinking about both can lead to getting little to nothing done. Instead try these steps:

1. Keep a “to do” list for currently assigned projects and clients.

This list contains things you must do. Identify these as required tasks. Instead of looking at the long list of things to do and inviting overwhelm back into the picture — pick two or three to do for the day.

2. Add “want to do” projects to the “to do” list.

Label these differently than the required to do items for clients and projects. On a day when you can do shorter tasks from your client/project task list — make this your task for the day. Don’t let your mind wander and seek out other ideas and projects. Do only this activity.

You could set a schedule for allowing yourself to work on these want projects. Once a week. Once every two weeks.

3. Stop mind wandering by adding new ideas to the “want to do” list

Instead of getting trapped thinking about more things you’d like to do or try, add it to the list and let go. This puts your idea in concrete terms so you can let it go. Return to whatever you’re doing or work on the next to do item.

• But they did not give up lists successful people who were told they would not succeed. [Thanks, Lifehack]
• Designing Sidekicks for Fashion Target Breast Cancer. A little wild for my taste, but a great idea and cause.
• 6 Lies about Creative Writing.
• 5 tips for giving feedback on creative work
• 101 reasons freelancers do it better. [Thanks, Freelance Folder]