Divergent thinking opens multiple possible responses instead of moving immediately towards one answer.
It is useful when the first acceptable idea has become the only idea you’re allowing yourself to have.
Let the odd version exist for a minute.
Before deciding it is too impractical, expensive, strange or unlike you, what does it suggest? Perhaps the whole idea won’t work. A part of it may open a direction the sensible version never revealed.
Generating possibilities isn’t the same as promising to build them all. That distinction can make experimentation much less threatening.
The Creative Hero’s Journey makes room for trying, imagining and choosing around your own project. An early idea doesn’t have to defend its entire future before it is allowed onto the page.
Convergent thinking brings judgement back when it is time to select. Play explores what becomes discoverable before every attempt has to be useful or impressive.
Noba’s Creativity introduces different processes involved in creativity. Read it for the relationship between generating alternatives and developing a result, rather than treating quantity of ideas as the whole achievement.