Business in Rhyme – Page 9 – Business in Rhyme

Lighthouse

January 11, 2017 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, My personal rhyme - from time to time

Is made of tears,
No bricks, no wals
you spin, haunting
your own fear

and recklessly try to climb
But day retreats, cowardly, in guilt,
Quilted with shy stars and mourning moon.

And I say, restore and watch
How streets glitter instead
Like fireflies caught in the rain.

Distant, but intense,
Those closer are warmer.
Snow rolls in between breasts
Of this curvy city,
Snow dry and crumpling like fine
wheat flour.

Feel the moment with your palm
As enters your nostrils, pinches and itches
Rub it with your index finger.

I am a slug and I leave trails
For those lost among vowels
Sincerely meant but never fulfilled.

It’s not a broken promise, just
A miss, mismatch of right colors and
Puzzled shapes.

You’ll grow your own tale
When night falls
A tale you’ll trim with each coming dawn
And sew yourself in the mouth of the world.

Maja S. Todorovic

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Albatross

January 9, 2017 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme

Grey marble dissipates in the sky,
With stoned shadows, astoundingly monolithic
Stack of matches pretends to be a bridge
One that will burn itself, in time, in song.

My neck is giraffic periscope thriving to the sky
In a minute an eyeball, in a second a curled hedgehog
Leaning like a head on the door.

So close to me, you are so close to me.

Whisper you can’t catch, it only comes to the privileged.
Soft, yearning and albatross of wind stuck in my hair
Thinner than paper cut but red and burning just as
Blood skirting of its edges.

My name searches for meaning among other women
Who knew of their existence
Probability was lost in the variety of choices,
Misled by a reckless afternoon.

As I drink this butterfly offered to me so many times
I won’t choke. A siren of lust is not forgotten, just postponed
For better….something. In stillness, question becomes
always northerly oriented moss

With wet dreams and I sneeze and sneeze
Like a puppy accidentally inhaling ground pepper.

Sometimes I pray for numbness, the numbness of darkness.
With soft whisper, today maybe blue, cobalt blue like
eggplant sky above me.

Blue is cold, but promising just as this winter,
Where leaves become ice drones and roots
beg for new cracks in soil.

In the mouth of tomorrow shaky and sweet like pudding
while swimming in acidic uncertainty
I’ll play with distance and squeeze the nearness so inviting.
Until it drops – drop by drop in a rainy puddle:
Until I bleed again.

Maja S. Todorovic

4 creativity lessons we can learn from David Bowie’s rich artistic career

January 8, 2017January 8, 2017 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme

Today we celebrate David Bowie’s 70th birthday and mark a year of his passing. Let us remember how great artist he was:

Ever since I was a little kid, as a great fan of gothic and mythological stories, my first recollection of David Bowie has to do with his role in the movie Hunger. Along with that came an interest in his music and artistic work, which later translated in true admiration.

With his passing about a month ago I also felt propelled like many before me, to say few words about his inevitable influence, not only in the world of music, but also in my personal view on the creative process in general.

These are 4 creativity lessons we can learn from his rich and long career:

Be brave to question and challenge what is already there

One thing that accompany of all Bowie’s creative endeavors is challenging the ‘status quo’ of every artistic expression and just experimenting in his constant search for fresh and new ideas. Flirting with fantasy and experiential performance lead Bowie to pretty much shake up the established view of rock n roll in the sixties and early seventies and made him one of the biggest icons of glam rock movement.

Embrace all facets of your personality

As a multi-talented artist, Bowie never shied from collaborating with musicians, dancers, fashion designers, movie makers – which only accentuated his innate creativity on so many different levels. I’m not going to list all of his movies, performances and albums he recorded but his almost 5 decade long career has proved so many times that when you are an artist, you are artist with all of your mind and body; you use everything you’ve got and that’s when creative miracles happen.

Be humble.

On many occasions, artists that collaborated with Bowie, being that long-term associates or single-project cooperation, rarely would negatively comment about his approach to work. Brian Eno, Eggy Pop, Brian Molko.. describe him as a patient colleague, open-minded to other’s people opinions, which always delivered productive, creative outlet.

Always try to reinvent yourself

Bowie is very well known for unexpected career maneuver when at the top of popularity, he just ‘retired’ Ziggy Stardust, (his alter ego as it is referred to) and many speculated if Bowie is going to play live again. But what really happened is that Bowie managed to detach from that momentary success and allow himself to dive into something new, risky – simply to reinvent himself. That type of approach to work gave him the opportunity to enjoy his creative process in all its strength, managing to subside identity crisis into which many stars inevitably fall. As he did assume many fictional personalities he was very comfortable in ‘his own skin’, letting his true self to just explore and enjoy creative journey.

As a final thought, I would emphasize here that we all have that creative force within us; in order to let it flourish we need to allow ourselves to be more open-minded and willing to step-back from the outcome – what ever it might be. Once we accept that, creativity becomes simply a way of life.

The Man Who Sold The World

We passed upon the stair,
We spoke of was and when,
Although I wasn’t there,
He said I was his friend,
Which came as some surprise.
I spoke into his eyes,
“I thought you died alone
A long long time ago.”

“Oh no, not me,
I never lost control
You’re face to face
With the man who sold the world.”

I laughed and shook his hand
And made my way back home,
I searched for form and land,
For years and years I roamed.
I gazed a gazley stare
At all the millions here:
“We must have died alone,
A long long time ago.”

“Who knows? Not me,
We never lost control.
You’re face to face
With the man who sold the world.”

“Who knows? Not me,
We never lost control.
You’re face to face
With the man who sold the world.

David Bowie

Is there a recipe for leading a creative life?

January 7, 2017 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, Read, write, lead!, Write, create, innovate!

If we consider creativity as a purely mental process, its simplest definition would be coming up with new, applicable and valuable ideas. But does that make us creative persons? Or it requires more than that, like maintaining fertile conditions where these ideas can naturally flourish and are easily implemented? Now things are getting a bit complex and interesting.

How does it look like when we apply the aforementioned principle in our daily lives? What constitutes a creative life? Is there a recipe or formula we can follow in order to live more creatively?

If you ask an artist or scientist how their creativity looks like and what do they except, probably we will get different answers. An artist might wish for painting more attractive or expressive pieces and scientist would like to recognize new ways of finding solutions to a problem. As their approaches and work differ a lot, there is one common denominator: going beyond yourself, exploring your own boundaries and capabilities.

In our everyday lives that would mean giving our best in almost any activity we do, in any situation, but also being open to trying new things, experimenting – detached from desired outcome.

In other words, taking risks – being that in crucial moments or in simple decisions we make every day. Being able to take risks develops our ability to deal with uncertainty, ambiguous situations we find ourselves in and learn from them.

Of course, by taking risks I don’t mean being reckless in our decision making, but being open to different approaches, solutions and not being afraid of change – as change in one way or another governs life.

So how you can bring more creativity to your every day life?

Experiment. Try new things – being that food, hobby or just your hairstyle. Move your body – as you move, everything else is moving in you and you are stirring up those creative juices. You are learning about yourself and there is so much more for you to discover. In this post I suggest how being proactively creative you are training your creativity – which is your goal: to easier and faster come up with valuable ideas.

I’m very loud prominent of reading and writing poetry for fostering creativity, as through that process you are getting accustomed to new perspectives, previously unknown connections or unfamiliar realities.

So my recipe for today’s creativity? I’ll just grab a poem for lunch. 🙂

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense

Rumi

Poetic inspiration: Forever slaved by a good book

January 6, 2017January 6, 2017 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, Poetic inspiration

I never manage to escape a good book,

as I’m often lost in the labyrinth of its

captivating pages.

Maja S. Todorovic

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To The New Year

January 1, 2017December 30, 2016 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, Read, write, lead!

Poetic inspiration: Simply enjoy…

December 29, 2016 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, Poetic inspiration

As a writer, enjoy your

creative process and

you will be amazed with

the end result.

Maja S. Todorovic

10 ways to break through writer’s block instantly

December 26, 2016December 26, 2016 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, Write, create, innovate!, Writer's creative bites

Writer’s block: a detrimental feeling that many of us encounter at least once in our writing life when you simply can’t pull yourself together and produce some satisfying work – at least in your own eyes. You feel lack of inspiration, like you have nothing to say and your imagination simply doesn’t exist.

But let’s think about it for a second – who is actually ‘blocking’ us in writing? Is there a concrete block standing on your keyboard, preventing you to type? Who is making us feel that our ideas are not worthy, that we are not creative? We are. We are the only ones standing as an obstacle to our creating.

And though this term is very popular, a modern notion coined in 1947 by Dr Edmund Bergler, a famous Austrian psychiatrist, I don’t truly believe in writer’s block.

I believe that we often fall in monotony, where we are caught by inertia – just like in a river stream. We might find ourselves in yellow, muddy waters and if we long for fresh, clear flow of ideas – we need to swim, move, get out of or change the conditions that clog our thinking.

One thing that years of writing taught me is that you can’t force it. It’s like pedaling upstream – you soon get tired, out of breath and strength, but you haven’t actually made any progress.

Better way than forcing your writing is provoking your writing. This is where your power and control lies. There are many ways you can stir up your imagination and here I will share some of the practices I use to find my way to writing:

1.When you struggle with writing, do something completely the opposite.

I have noticed when I’m not completely in my ‘writing mode’, leaving that aside and doing other activities that are on my TO DO list can be enough to jumpstart my inspiration. This maybe due to subconscious feeling of worry are we going to do everything planed for that day: simply giving us time again for writing when you have the feeling you’ve accomplished your objectives for the day, can be enough for a productive writing session.

2.Free write for 10 minutes to get rid of monotony

Just write without thinking. How you progress, new and exciting ideas will start to appear. Give yourself a chance to play with words and enjoy – you will much more appreciate your writing and the creative process. Here on the blog are many creative exercises you use can as a prompts and inspiration pointers to instantly break any writing barrier.

3.Research

This might be more applicable to non-fiction writing, but anytime I’m not focused or I have maybe to many ideas, I perform a research on the similar subject. I find this to be very beneficial in terms that similar work I encounter can serve as a guidance on which topic to write or not – or give my own opinion on something that is stereotyped and could use a new input. Getting insight on what other people are doing on similar topic is always helpful.

4.Indulge in some art

Listen to some music or visit art exhibition – I have found this to be one of the most helpful ways for me. By listening to my favorite bands or just looking at some of the De Chirico paintings as an instant recentering for me. On Pinterest I have even a board ‘Surrealism’ which I often use as my favorite muse.

5.Limit yourself

Set some rules: Start with what if clause or focus on using specific words. It has been shown that limited creative freedom can have a positive impact on generating new ideas as it provokes you to think differently.

6.Leave unfinished sentence

This is fun and clever thing to do. You just leave out there a word to linger and next time you have to deal with it – it will hang on the tip of your tongue, tickle until you figure out what to write!

7.Return to your favorite authors, phrases, quotes that you like

Lately I have been writing, by hand in separate notebook poems and quotes that I like. It helps me with that feeling of insecurity sometimes I have about my writing. A simple encouragement that you can give yourself and easily destroys doubts is reading and believing in words of your favorite authors.

8.Go on a date with yourself

As said in the beginning, we are the only ones blocking ourselves in doing what we love. And why does it happen? Maybe it’s a message, a sign that we need rest, that we need more attention and time to be kind towards ourselves, destress and restore creative energy. So make room in your schedule to spend time with yourself, doing what makes you feel good -pamper yourself. Your creativity will come rushing back to your arms, making you eager to write again.

9.Do some squats or go for a walk

Physical exercise makes your heart beat faster, supplying your brain with oxygen. It helps with brain fog we sometimes experiences and your thinking becomes clearer. Going for a walk helps with your senses where change of scenery offers insights to new possibilities and opportunities.

10.If nothing else works – eat some chocolate!

But not any chocolate – with at least of 75% of cocoa, as some researches have found that consumption of cocoa flavanols results in an acute improvement in visual and cognitive function, giving your brain more power to deal with difficult tasks. So eat your way through writer’s block 😉

Poetic inspiration: Instead of loneliness choose poetry

December 22, 2016 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, Poetic inspiration

I’ve never met real loneliness.

I have a friend that never leaves me.

It’s always there for me.

A friend I call

Poetry.

Maja S. Todorovic

6 questions for creative reflection

December 18, 2016 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, Write, create, innovate!

New Year is often a time when we want to close one chapter of our lives and start fresh – with new ideas, with new energy and determination to fulfill our goals.

What usually happens, we do set new goals but as the months progress, so does our goals whittle along with autumn yellow leaves – until they become forgotten, unfulfilled and replaced by random events called life.

Instead of making a New Year’s resolution list, I have a different proposition for you. Why ‘hit your head against the wall’, and think of what and how you can accomplish when you are looking for the answers in the wrong place?

Here are 6 questions for your creative reflection exercise that can help you evaluate what you have accomplished in the previous period/year and maybe start from there? You might have a project that you could finish or idea that didn’t have enough time and space to mature – maybe now it’s the moment to give it a try?

6 questions for creative reflection:

1.What creative/writing projects did you accomplish in the previous year?

2.What you have learned from that?

3.Are there any projects you didn’t start and why?

4.What would you like to do the most in the next year – is there any room for unfinished projects?

5.What is the obstacle, what is holding you back?

6.Describe your most creative moments in the previous year and think of ways how you can integrate more of that in your current life situation?

Use this as a starting point for designing more creative life in the next year. It is important for us to make an objective estimate and work from there: building a realistic foundation for inviting more creativity into our lives. Instead of setting, sometimes lofty goals that quickly escape our reach like deflating balloon – making little changes and adjustments in our current schedule can seem less daunting and scary – and more likely achievable.

To get in more depth in planning your projects consult these additional 9 questions that can help you clearing any doubts about your creative ideas, offerings, opportunities..

Do you have any exciting writing or creative ideas for the next year? Do you have a firm plan how to achieve it? Please, share with us in the comments below.

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,

lists of vegetables, partial poems.

Orange swirling flame of days,

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,

only the things I didn’t do

crackle after the blazing dies.

Naomi Shihab Nye