how do ideas grow

"The ideas will follow me. When they’re off-guard, and ready to be born, I’ll turn around and grab them." - Ray Bradbury

Mozart wrote over 200 hours of recorded music and never edited his work once (Don Giovanni’s overture was written the night before it was to be performed, he handed it to the copyists while hungover before 7am). Sometimes the less you edit the better. Trust your instincts.… Show more

Increasingly, the work that stand out will be more raw and incomplete (because — by definition — new ideas haven’t been optimized because…they are new).

Eno explains:

"[On one end, you have] auto-tune that perfectly puts music into tune…which is sort of flawless and faultless. [In contrast, the other side] is clumsy, awkward, crude and unfinished thi... See more

ideas do not like to be treated as if they were lifeless, inanimate objects (would you?) and therefore they gravitate towards minds that treat them with the respect and dignity they deserve.

Why then does an idea enter one mind and not another? Ideas act as all organisms do—they seek habitats (i.e. minds) that can provide them with the space and resources (i.e. mental runtime, ideas eat the energy that enables action potentials) needed to survive and reproduce (i.e. create new idea-children). Just as some ecosystems are more diverse, a... See more

ideas are not things you get. People tend to think that ideas are things like diamonds. And then you go out and you get them and you grab them and you bring them back. But that's not what ideas are. Ideas are things that grow.

Mo Willems: And so the way to make a book or a story is to have the tiniest inkling of an idea and then to plant it and you

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