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

Who should you speak with? Dialoguing with a variety of people, in a host of far-out ways, makes for a paradigm-smashing experience:

There’s a story about Thomas Edison that relates to this. Edison would hold a handful of coins while resting in his chair, so when he lapsed into sleep, the coins would fall, hit the floor, and wake him—a cacophonous reminder to get back to work.

Try This: Set your timer for twenty minutes, and start it. Tell yourself in freewriting everything you currently think of as necessary for a superior life. Include material and non-material criteria. Make sure you take away at least one item from that list that you’ll act on in the next three hours.

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

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.

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.

reminding myself to

Focus-changers have endless numbers or forms. Here’s a partial list of some helpful ones: • How can I make this exciting? • How can I add value? • What else can I say about this subject? • Why am I stuck at this particular point? • How can I get unstuck? • What am I missing here? • What am I wrong about here? • Why? • How can I prove that? • How ca

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.