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

“Go with the thought. Agree with what you just wrote, and logically extend it.… Be whimsical if you like, but make sure the whimsy naturally follows what preceded it.… Based on this new thought that just appeared on the page, what might happen next?”

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.

One of the keys to making the marathon work is Ezra Pound’s rallying cry, “Make it new.” Each time you formulate a starter thought, demand that it sends you in a new direction.

Try This: Contact a friend or colleague today, and ask them if you can send them a document that contains your raw thinking on a problem that’s bothering you. When they agree, take a day or two to assemble a talking document, and fire it off.

Try This: Mark Bowden said a writer should always be working on the most ambitious thing he or she has ever done. What writing project would most stretch and excite you? Start now by using freewriting to help you.

Try This: Write for ten minutes about a situation that physically and mentally exhausts you. Don’t try to solve anything in this bout of writing; just get the details down.

If you put honest thinking into your written words, you spot situations that yawn to be changed.

Build an Inventory of Thoughts

Karl said that for the moment I should forget about the proposal. Instead, I was to write him a letter. He called it a talking letter. He asked me to write down anything that came to mind about what I wanted the book to be, and how I thought I could help sell it. My letter was supposed to be nothing formal, not an act of literature, just one friend

How then would you use concept substitution in your freewriting? Use the page to ask and answer these four questions: 1. What problem am I trying to solve? (Be general in your wording here. Nothing too specific. Examples of good general problem statements: “How do I build a fan base for something unknown?” “How do I sell a product to a market that