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

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.

To open up a word, write down four things: a word for study, the generally agreed-upon definition of that word, your thoughts on the accuracy of the definition, and a personal definition that suits your eccentric tastes.

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: 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.

“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?”

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.

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: 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.

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

If you make an honest effort to alter your audience as an experiment, you can’t help writing yourself into some unexplored perspectives.