James Somers • More People Should Write

When I have a piece of writing in mind, what I have, in fact, is a mental bucket: an attractor for and generator of thought. It’s like a thematic gravity well, a magnet for what would otherwise be a mess of iron filings. I’ll read books differently and listen differently in conversations. In particular, I’ll remember everything better; everything w

By using some of these collected phenomena bubbling in your head, you will have a book that has your stamp on it and is unlike any other. When I’m working with clients, I tell them to temporarily put aside considerations of others and of worldly success, and I ask that they make a list. What kind of list? It’s an inventory of everything that fascin

The more existing ideas you have in your head, the more varied and richer will be your novel combinations of them, the greater your store of reference points and analogies.