Accidental Genius

Points to Remember • Freewriting isn’t writing, per se; it’s a means of watching yourself think. • Since you’re writing for yourself, you don’t need to spit shine your raw thoughts to please others. All that matters is that you yourself understand your logic, references, word choices, and idiosyncratic ideas.

Once I had all these sentence-long summations on my pad, I’d read through them to see what still needed saying. I’d write down as a sentence in the appropriate spot anything that came to mind.

Try This: Reread one of your writing pieces, and note where a focus-changing question would have led you in a different direction. Do ten minutes of freewriting in this new direction. If you start to run dry of ideas before the ten minutes is up, use other focus-changers to revitalize your thinking.

2. Give yourself a common definition of the word. If you look back to my empowerment excerpt, you’ll see that I begin by laying bare the word for what it really is, including its most overused, lifeless connotations. I tell myself what other people “see” when they discover the word on a page or come upon it in life.

When you “open up a word,” you redefine that word (or the phrase that contains it) so it has personal meaning.

Customize business books as you read them: underline, dogear, question, argue, agree vehemently, write in the margins and on the blank end papers. You’re reading the book to get workable ideas, and the best way to find the workable ideas is to be active as you read. • Through writing, try applying the author’s ideas to your own life. Even if you di

“What’s the most important thing you know?” One guy said he thought that was the greatest pickup line he’d ever heard. I remembered that. Six months later I was at a wine tasting and used that line to meet the woman who would eventually become my wife.

If I were guaranteed success, the project I’d take on would be …

A timer, preset for ten or fifteen minutes, energizes you in your thinking campaign, because it specifically limits the amount of work you have to accomplish in a single bout of writing.