Later on in my career, I worked at a company that prided itself on its easy to read reports. While this was true (to some degree), one of directors loved to throw in a difficult word in every report he wrote to make marketing manager reach for his dictionary. He thought this was really clever and that his clients would be in awe of his knowledge. I’m guessing his clients thought he was a tosser (interestingly, I met an ex-client years later who told me that when their company received one of his reports they would quickly scan it to find unusual word and then erupt into hysterical laughter).

Articles that are written to impress your audience about how clever you are, do nothing more than distance them. No matter how learned your market is, they still prefer to read information that is easy to digest.

A great way to test whether your writing is easy to comprehend is to read it out loud. If someone spoke to you, using those words, could you instantly understand what they were getting at or would you have to really concentrate?

Scripts for marketing videos are no different. In fact, they need to be extremely simple in order to quickly grab attention of people walking past at a trade show, for example.

Writing that is heavy on technical terms and jargon can be a real turn off. The beauty of a marketing video is that it uses both pictures and words. The saying “A picture tells a thousand words” is a powerful concept with corporate movies. It means you can actually get away with saying less, but easily get your message across, because pictures do all of talking.

Surprisingly, clear writing can be quite a difficult writing style to master, but effort is well rewarded. And look at bright side, at least people won’t burst into fits of laughter when they read your masterpiece.

Try writing down your hopes, dreams, goals, visions. Play around with them. You may find as you journal about them, a strategy for making them come true suddenly presents itself, right there in pages of your notebook.

3. Helps you build a bridge to your muse. This one really only kicks in after you've sufficiently done number one (at least, this is way it works for me). It seems only after I've gotten most of junk out of my head that muse sometimes slips out to play a bit.

How do you know muse came to visit you? When that brilliant idea flashes in your head. It may not happen while you're journaling, but instead while you're showering, walking, driving or something else. This is muse talking to you.

It's important to remember muses have quiet voices. They can easily be drowned out by incessant bickering of other noisy chatter going on in your head. Once you can get those other voices to shut up, you can start to listen for muse.

Don't worry if this doesn't happen right away. There have been weeks and even months when I write nothing but junk down. But then, one day, that great idea appears on paper or in my head as I'm walking my dogs.

And when that happens, I know all time I spent journaling about nothing has paid off. Creativity Exercises -- Journal more ideas

I would love it if you made a pact with yourself to journal regularly for a month. If that's too much of a commitment for you, try it as a creativity exercise.

Write down your challenge at top of a piece of paper. Maybe it's ways to increase business or promote your products more or a new PR campaign. Now just start writing about it.

Don't think, just write. Fill a few pages of musing about that particular challenge. Don't type it either -- write longhand. If you wander away from it, try nudging yourself back.

Write for at least 20 minutes. If no answer presents itself in that time, don't get too hung up about it. Try it again next day or a few days in a row. Sometimes it just takes awhile to jar things loose. And remember, great ideas have a tendency to pop up in most unexpected places, not just when you're doing something "creative."