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]