Creative block: You sit down in front of the computer and you’ve decided that you are going to write. Or maybe you need to write. That assignment, that report, that screenplay, that short story needs to get written. It needs to happen  and there is not much time left and you need to do it now. You had an idea, which seemed brilliant this morning when it first graced your grey cells, but now that it has been around for a few hours and you have had a chance to compare it with other ideas, you are no longer sure it is worth pursuing. In fact, you are quite sure that it will be a fruitless waste of time and a mediocre piece of work at best.

And you just sit there, staring at the flashing cursor on the screen.

This will be a situation familiar to virtually everybody who has ever tried to write for long periods: You feel like you just can’t come up with anything to write about. And the harder you try, the worse it gets. And it doesn’t have to be writing. It can happen the same with music or magic or comedy or inventing or anything that involves creativity (even blogging!). You just can’t come up with anything. Sure, you get tired and frustrated thinking about it, but you just cannot seem to conquer the blank page.

Idea evaluation is a technique that I have begun using which has allowed me to produce the content I have been required to produce at the time I have been required to produce it. And in this article, I’m going to share with you how I do it. Read the rest of this entry »