Editor's Note : We're delighted that creativity expert and best-selling author Michael Michalko has submitted this guest article on finding unexpected gems in creative pursuits. Whenever we attempt to do something and fail, we end up doing something else. As simplistic as this statement may seem, it is the first principle of creative accident. We may ask ourselves why we have failed to do what we intended, and this is the reasonable, expected thing to do.

The response to the Twitter writing contest has been phenomenal. It's looks like we've got well over 300 story submissions at exactly140 characters with just about 24 hours to go. Beyond the submissions, we've also gotten a great response from people offering additional prizes. In fact, the top prize is actually much better than originally offered. Here's how things break down for the three craftiest 140-character stories.

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." ~Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943 "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." ~Ken Olson, president and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977 "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" ~H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927 "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." ~Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles,

Can you tell a story in exactly 140 characters? That's the idea behind Copyblogger's first ever Twitter writing contest. It should be a great exercise and a lot of fun. Being constrained to exactly 140 characters will spark your creative juices and force your to focus stringently on word choice, sentence structure, and even punctuation. Here's an example that I tweeted over the weekend : Three flies are bugging me on the deck. I kill two, and spare the third.

It's a good problem to have, right? Well, not always. Last week I pointed you all to Mike Stelzner's video about making money with white papers . White papers are educational documents that contain "under the radar" persuasive elements that lead people to buy stuff, and Mike is a master at them. There's a lot of money in white papers' both for freelance writers and for small business owners.

Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it. ~Alfred North Whitehead A great quotation is gold to a perceptive writer. You can instantly boost reader engagement with the right bit of wisdom or wit. And when writing to persuade, you can bolster your arguments by pointing to the words of the well regarded. In other words, author Anatole France nailed it with this: When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.

Absolutely. In fact, I know a freelance writer who makes over $300,000 a year from writing white papers alone. And I can tell you from personal experience that I launched an entire real estate brokerage firm with a white paper that revealed the inner workings of the MLS. I've seen countless other small businesses go from struggling to successful with educational marketing content that not only goes viral' it persuades people to buy.

The massive pool of blood in my head was pressing precariously against my brain. The doctors marveled that I was alive, much less walking and talking. They looked and shook their heads in wonder at the MRI results. I politely reminded them I was indeed alive, awake, and actually in the room. It was three years ago today that they wheeled me in for emergency surgery, and I said goodbye to my wife, not quite three-year-old daughter, and newborn son.

What's the secret to effective affiliate marketing? It all boils down to engagement. If you have a page with an affiliate offer that ranks well for searchers in buying mode, that's pretty high engagement. You need a trusted, authoritative site to pull that off, which means strong content and plenty of links. But don't forget that the very same content creates engagement with regular readers first. If you're building authority sites that attract subscribers,

Affiliate marketing isn't that tough' if you've got attention and trust. You can gain attention and trust through your relationship with people who agree to receive content from you. And you can gain attention from people via search engines because Google trusts your content. Ideally, you want both. Of course, there are ways to make money with affiliate marketing that don't involve content at all. You can use search marketing to send traffic to pre-sell landing pages,

"A gossip is one who talks to you about others; a bore is one who talks to you about himself; and a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to you about yourself." ~Lisa Kirk Any questions?

Publishing online content is great' if you have something to sell. Many people who publish online are still seeking that almighty advertising dollar, but the results for most are dismal. And there's evidence that things will actually get worse, not better. Why? Well, maybe it's because current online advertising is fundamentally flawed. Online, you can't make people look at what they don't want to see.

I wanted to be an editor or a journalist' but I soon found I had to become an entrepreneur in order to keep my magazine going. ~Richard Branson You're not a writer. You're not a content producer. You're not a blogger. You're an entrepreneur.

I finally got around to creating a landing page for all the great articles and case studies that Roberta Rosenberg has done on landing pages in the last year. It's a pretty hefty resource, and I haven't seen this much landing page advice in one place outside of a paid product. Also, I realize there are some who are still fuzzy on the whole concept of what a landing page is.

When I first started Copyblogger, I was a huge RSS evangelist . As a long-time email marketing guy, I was sick to death of overzealous filters, deliverability issues and the low-level of trust people had for online publishers thanks to the spammers. Over two years later, email is still very much alive. That fact is most evident with my other projects, but even here at Copyblogger over 6,000 people subscribe by email and they tend to be the most responsive.

Hey everyone, I'm back in town and working on a new post as we speak. But in the meantime, just wanted to share a pretty powerful free tool that Aaron Wall recently released. Even though we've corresponded for the last couple years, I finally got to meet Aaron in person at Elite Retreat, and he's both smart and laid back. His new Rank Checker tool for FireFox is really useful for checking your search engine rankings across Google, Yahoo and MSN' and doing it privately.

So, the word is out. I'll be one of five hosts at this year's Elite Retreat in San Francisco on April 3rd and 4th. Here's who else will be providing unfiltered advice to a small group of entrepreneurs looking to take their businesses to the next level: Jeremy Schoemaker - Shoemoney Aaron Wall - SEO Book Neil Patel - Pronet Advertising Andy Lui - Buddy TV Plus' a keynote from Guy Kawasaki . Sounds pretty cool, huh?

Social media and the blogosphere are fascinating because of the conversational nature of it all. Ideas are generated, evaluated, criticized, praised and recycled. Often, we're happy participants in the conversation. Whether adding to the current Techmeme pile-on, or chiming in on an ongoing cross-blog discussion within our industry or niche, conversations make blogging tick in a way that static media does not. But this series is about innovative content,

Do you know what happens down at the crossroads? Legend has it that Robert Johnson"the most famous of the Delta blues musicians from the 1930s"took his second-hand guitar and went down to the crossroads in the middle of the night. When the young plantation worker returned home, his guitar skills had taken a quantum leap. The overnight improvement in Johnson's playing wasn't just significant; it was supernatural . Something strange happened down at that crossroads.

I'm off to San Francisco to present at Elite Retreat ' so it may be tougher than usual to get me by email this week. But we've got great content already lined up, so never fear. Wait, you didn't think I was leaving for good, did you? I promise if that ever happens, I'll give you more than a Queen video as explanation. Don't you just love the beginning of April? :-( Also, because people keep asking and I'm way behind on email )as usual(,