Once you have the answers to these, then you go away, decide how valid the problems are … and fix them yourself. The people you have asked will probably suggest their solutions too. Ignore these completely.

don’t ask yourself who is right. Ask which idea is better.

creative people are much better at tolerating the vague sense of worry that we all get when we leave something unresolved.

creative people are much better at tolerating the vague sense of worry that we all get when we leave something unresolved.

Now you’re in a logical, critical period. After a time there, however, when you’ve assessed everything, you will get a bit bored. That’s a sign that now is the moment to go back into your creative thinking mode again. And so you go backwards and forwards between the creative mode of thinking and the analytical mode of thinking until, finally, you

That’s the great thing about working in comedy. If the audience doesn’t laugh, you know you’ve got it wrong.

When you’re being creative there is no such thing as a mistake.

Making an imaginative leap

So you just sit there and, eventually, as the mind quietens, odd ideas and notions relevant to your puzzle start popping in your mind. But they are … odd! And the reason they seem odd is that they’re not what our usual logical, critical, analytical mind is used to. They don’t arrive in the form of words, in neatly typed little sentences. Because