Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content

How were fan bases built for ideas and initiatives in other fields, such as politics, music, philosophy, medicine, manufacturing, engineering,

Try This: Right now, take an hour to comb through your writing and start making your own thought chunk documents around the themes you most commonly write about.

As you start to write for the public, your mind will change. You’ll start seeing the world as stories and material. You’ll pay more attention to what’s happening around you.

What solutions can I borrow from past problems that can be applied to this current one? • What does this remind me of? • What’s the best-case scenario? • What’s the worst-case scenario? • What am I doing right? • What am I doing brilliantly? • How can I jump the track? • Which strengths of mine (or my company’s) can I apply? • Which weaknesses need

Try This: Over the next two days, use your freewriting to come up with a hundred possible solutions for one of your dearest problems. That’s right, 100. Some of the solutions can be mundane, others can be outrageous, and still others can be silly.

If you’re interested in learning more writing marathon-like ideas, see “The Loop Writing Process” in Peter Elbow’s “Writing With Power.” He has wonderful thoughts on how to further disorient one’s thinking so that it turns productive.

These chunks, by the way, aren’t mere fragments. They’re complete thoughts. That’s what makes this method work. If I read a chunk even a decade from now, it would make sense to me.

Try This: Set aside part of a morning, and do two to three hours on an idea you’d really like to explore. During your sessions, take no phone calls and answer no e-mail.

When you freewrite, the page is alive. The ideas that appear on it will change radically, if you let them. You must be open to the truth of the material as it shows up. When something good materializes, jump on it, whether it fits what you’ve been writing or not. Don’t be afraid to turn your back on what got you there.