Snippets {explanation & guidelines}

"It is impossible that you have no creative gift...the only way to make it live and increase is to use it...." says the inspirational Brenda Ueland (1891-1985).

I had the idea rolling around in my brain for a while. Pages in my journal filled with little snippets - a few words strung together, a sentence or two. They dropped in from the clear blue and stood solidly alone, but they held the capacity for a great big story.

And then I thought --

I wonder what stories they'd spark in someone else?

And Snippets was born - a new segment of collaborative art I hope to make a weekly tradition here on Boy Crazy - Finding Clarity in the Chaos. Here's the idea - each week I'll wrap things up with a Snippet for you. Imagine a great big quilt hovering out there in our collective imagination. I'm just showing you a patch. Maybe even just a thread.

Here's where you come in. Drop by on Fridays, read the Snippet and let your creative winds whirl. Come back anytime before the next Thursday at 7:00pm and in the comments (I'll start a McLinky if I get enough people playing along), leave a link to your blog, your flickr page, your etsy shop, whatever you have (if it's a verbal response, you can even leave it right there in the comment box) - and send us over to your interpretation. You can take a photo, paint a picture, design a room, write a poem, a story, a dialogue. Be literal or metaphorical.

There is no right way to do this.

Won't you come play along? Click on the Snippets tag at the end of this post for a few examples. Each Friday, I'll link to everyone who contributed, maybe feature my favorite interpretation, and I'll introduce the new Snippet for the upcoming week.

Are there guidelines, you ask?

1. If you are participating through another website (as opposed to just leaving your actual entry in the comments), please link back to my post.

2. If you use any actual phrases or sentences from the Snippet, please link and attribute my words. (Feel free to paste the actual Snippet right into your post if you like.)

3. I encourage you to pop back on Fridays to check out the responses of the other participants. That's sort of the point of collaboration, right? And you many even find some inspiration for future projects or Snippets responses.

I'd love to see what you come up with! Thanks for playing along.

written 3/11, but I changed the date to get the explanation and guidelines inserted into my blogstream.