Fire Up Your Writing Brain

One of the tasks slow thinking handles is overcoming the impulses that arise from fast thinking. Slow thinking is in charge of self-control.

“desirable difficulty.” Psychologist Robert Bjork coined this term, which suggests that making the learning process a little harder at the beginning (perhaps by requiring handwritten notes or asking people to wrestle with and explain new concepts early in the process) reaps dividends at the end, with better retention and comprehension of the materi

To solidify and validate the characteristics (affinities) you have in your writing arsenal, make a list—include even the seemingly unimportant qualities.

Janusian thinking, a form of divergent thinking that counteracts black-and-white, either/or thinking.

It’s best to marshal all your brain resources on one task at a time.

reading a novel can transport you into the body of the protagonist. “We already knew that good stories can put you in someone else’s shoes in a figurative sense,” he explained. “Now we’re seeing that something may also be happening biologically.”

The well-known critic Harold Bloom edited a series of books entitled Bloom’s BioCritiques, which features a variety of his fellow critics discussing an author’s body of work.

Whatever you choose, make it something that brings a genuine feeling of pleasure to you. Also, the reward should take place during, or immediately after, the activity. That way, rewarding your brain will link up writing with positive associations and good consequences for you, thus reinforcing new, more positive brain connections. Soon you’ll be th

but studies revealed that Googling relieves your brain of its duty to pose a hard question (which, in itself, is highly valuable) and more importantly, it frees your brain of the necessity to search deep into its database for the neuronal connections that will eventually lead to the answer.