A Frustrated Take on Mind-Mapping Part I.

This post ties in with Kate’s previous post on mind-mapping since she initiated a challenge!

I remember in high school English the incessant need for teachers to assign mind-maps, especially in association with group projects and presentations. I remember rolling my eyes then and wondering why I needed to waste time better spent on the relevant parts of the project. Now, having completed my Fae in Fairy Tales mind-map (because Kate made me), illustriously titled “Mind Map of the Linear Soul,” I have learned, re-learned, and realized a few things:

I am far more linear than I thought. I pride myself on learning and thinking in multiple ways, my flexibility is one of my greatest assets, but thinking and learning visually like this is one of my weaknesses.
I get very irritable when I don’t know more about a topic than I thought. This is something I have re-learned. I am one of those people who likes to know a little bit of everything, I hate being in the dark.
I don’t like mind-mapping now any more than I did four years ago. Arg.
There is a serious lack of fae in today’s pop culture! What’s with all the Fairy Tales and no fairies?
I may have to take Kate up on her offer of mind-mapping therapy. Maybe. We’ll see how my patience holds up.
I am not a quitter, so I’ll do another mind-map, but I’m going to pout the whole time. So there.

In a nutshell, I sat here wondering why I wasted my time on this mind-map disaster I created when I should have quit after struggling to remember Cinderella had a fairy godmother. I could have been writing! I’m definitely sitting here thinking: “Wow, Kate. Really? This was horrible.” Look:

 

I was completely unable to connect my own story ideas at this stage. But, like I said, I’ll try again. And below are a few reasons why.

I am 100% in agreement about incubation! I refer to it as percolating (thank you, Two and a Half Men), but that’s merely semantics. The main thing to focus on is that your subconscious is a million times better at recognizing patterns and figuring out puzzles than your conscious is –at least that’s my experience.

When I get stuck or feel as though I have an idea but it’s not quite there, I lay out my ideas in paragraph or point form (put the grounds in the coffee machine) and hit my brains the ON switch and let it get to work. Eventually, ideas and connections trickle out and I’m left with a sweet carafe of potential story. If you don’t work well like this though, mind-mapping is the way to go.

I find mind-maps distracting and confusing because I like to see everything clearly –hence my love of neat paragraphs or points for my story ideas. Tables work really well for me too because they’re clean and I can locate ideas I want without having to comb through a bunch of lines and words. I do use arrows and margins if I want to branch off ideas, but again, it’s all about easy locating for me.

Mind-maps are also overly time-consuming for me because I like my visual items to be pretty and I can’t stand it when they aren’t. It’s an OCD thing. If I do it fast, it’s ugly (yes, my first mind map is atrocious), and I won’t want to look at it when I’m done. But, if I take the time to make it beautiful, I’m not letting my brain focus on the important details.

Do you see my dilemma?!

Still, I am not a quitter and I will persevere! I am going to attempt a second mind-map, except this time, instead of focusing on the innocuous “Fae in Fairy Tales,” I’m going to centre my story idea and see how that goes. And I will be following Kate’s How To’s and Tips and Tricks because I think they’re pretty great. I’m just going to let the creative juices flow –wish me luck…