I love being able to pick up a prompt like a child would with a ball and just run with it, whipping up exciting and enjoyable things to do with it on the fly. I’ve written awesome stories, performed silly characters and played frantic jazz solos after taking a single idea and expanding upon it.

There’s a particular exercise that I’ve practiced in writing and acting classes that recently came to mind as one of my favorite things to do: You’re given an aspect of a story (characters, setting and dialogue, to name a few) and you are charged to fill in the blanks.

Perhaps it could be owed to laziness in terms of brainstorming, but I find these kinds of exercises to be really enjoyable. Granted, there’s something to be said of crafting something from absolute scratch, but to take an already existing idea and make it your own in a meaningful, artistic and non-plagiaristic way is fun to me.

Here’s a recent example: I was at Monty B’s a few weeks ago with some friends. One of my close friends decided to engage me in a verbal jazz scat battle, vocalizing the jazz music playing being performed by the ensemble behind us.

Forgoing the fact that the two of us had a few drinks beforehand, we proceeded to vocally joust with each other over “bebops,” “scooby doobies” and “POWS!” to great delight.

It was then that I looked up and gave more notice to the graffiti that filled the walls around the back of Monty B’s. Looking further and closely, I gave close attention to the particular syllables in all of the words scribbled on the wall and decided they would make for great artillery in this scat battle.

My eyes flittered all over the wall, snatching up syllable after syllable and spouting them out rapid-fire to form a stream of nonsense that I made completely my own.

Often times, this is what many of us find ourselves doing – trying to grab hold of the seemingly nonsensical stream that life feeds us and making it our own.

Our own reservations, worries and prejudices seem to hold us back from even suggesting an idea aloud, much less work with it to turn it into a unique and creative thing. Some people seem to stay enclosed in their own experiences and ideas when creating something rather than opening themselves up to new thoughts and encounters that could give them new ways of thinking creatively.

You can never know what creative potential you have unless you keep yourself open to all of life’s possibilities.