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June 23 - June 25, 2019
Every assignment merits creativity; your readers deserve it.
model of the creative process in five key phases: Preparation – immersing oneself in the field and its issues Incubation – time in which ideas churn “below the threshold of consciousness” Insight – the “aha” moment when inspiration strikes Evaluation – the process of determining whether the insight is worth pursuing Elaboration – working with the insight
In real life, inspiration occurs in the larger context of work and incubation.
You cannot hope for great ideas to alight from the sky without investing time and effort.
This task calls on a mental process called divergent thinking. (That’s how a scientist says “thinking outside the box.”)
Sometimes interruptions can help us by dismissing the Scribe so that the Muse can take over.
How can we combine this understanding of the creative process with our two writing selves? The five-step creative process is a kind of handoff between the Scribe (with focused attention) and the Muse (with open attention). Preparation – the Scribe researches and works on the subject Incubation – the Muse looks at what the Scribe has done Insight – the Muse chimes in with an idea Evaluation – the Scribe figures out whether it’s worth pursuing Elaboration – the Scribe does the work to make it happen
Individual projects may cycle through these stages many times. The important lesson is this: the Scribe is critical to creativit...
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unfinished problems can steal the mental energy we need to focus on work.
Your brain is going to busy itself with worries and unresolved issues anyway—why not direct its efforts toward your writing goals?
Struggle may be part of the process, but that doesn’t mean you have to suffer while doing it.
If you don’t expect an immediate, easy answer to your problems and realize that you’re setting the stage for incubation, then immersion doesn’t feel painful.
Allow time for incubation. Leave space in the schedule for pondering and unstructured musing, which happens most freely in a state of open attention.
Most of your nightly allotment of REM slumber happens at the end of the sleep cycle. When you cut sleep short, you cheat the brain of important processing time that feeds your creativity.
Many people answer that they cannot find the time to write. But more often, the real challenge lies in making yourself work productively, rather than doing something else, when you do have a moment to write.
In the book Willpower, Baumeister and John Tierney sum up two key points about our mental resistance: It’s a finite resource that diminishes as we use it. We draw on a single reservoir of willpower for all kinds of mental tasks, both important and trivial.
three realities of the writing life: Nearly everyone procrastinates. Waiting until the last moment degrades the quality of the work. Deadlines are an effective defense against procrastination.
Commit to a daily writing objective, whether a minimum number of words, a page count, or a certain amount of time spent in research and note-taking. This approach breaks down the work into manageable daily doses, making it easier to achieve before depleting your willpower reserves.
Pledge to work for an hour or meet a minimum daily objective before connecting to email and social networks each day.
If you have no externally imposed deadlines, make them up.
If you’re working on a long-term project, create many interim due dates to monitor your progress and remain motivated.
What distracts you from writing? Understand the enemy so you can limit its power when you want to focus.
The term mindset refers to a set of acting assumptions and attitudes that affect behavior; more broadly, a mindset is a filter through which we view the world.
people with a fixed mindset tend to consider their talents or abilities as set, inherent parts of their beings. Those with a growth mindset believe that they can develop abilities through learning and work.
A fixed mindset is particularly dangerous when writing, as it inhibits your ability to learn from constructive feedback. You bristle at corrections or suggestions; criticism feels personal. With a growth mindset, setbacks and criticism become learning opportunities—painful, perhaps, but necessary. You’re more likely to have a healthy relationship with editors, remaining open to feedback without seeing it as a sign of weakness.
The fixed mindset shuts down exploration and discovery.
Authors with a growth mindset start researching and outlining without planning everything in advance. They learn as they proceed. They take risks, and are resilient when their efforts don’t pan out. Nonfiction authors consider the act of writing as a path to learning, deepening their understanding of a subject rather than simply reporting what they already know.
When you engage with the subject before you have all the answers, you may find unsuspected connections, uncover different facets of the topic, and even change the direction or structure of the piece. Although these diversions may consume more time, the resulting work is often better, and the process of writing more fulfilling.
When I feel that the author’s understanding has deepened in the course of writing, I enjoy reading even more, no matter what the subject. Traveling the path together is more interesting for everyone.
The scarcity mindset appears in limiting beliefs about your ideas, such as: - All of the good concepts have already been written about. - Someone might steal my ideas unless I keep them under wraps. - I need to wait for the perfect time to write.
The more you write, the more you have to write.
If you wait for a perfect and original idea, you may never discover your unique contribution.
Resolve to learn. Whenever you encounter the fixed mindset, counter it with an active determination to learn. Read widely to fuel your brain’s connections.
Work with thoughtful editors and, where possible, draw broader lessons from their comments. Rather than simply fixing the issues an edit...
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Do something uncomfortable. Try working outside your usual areas of expertise and see how that affects your perception of yourself.
Growth comes through discomfort.
Share freely. When under the spell of a scarcity mindset, you may worry about people stealing your ideas.
Ideas operate by the rules of abundance and tend to improve as you collaborate with others and broaden your perspective.
Drafting is merely the midpoint in a longer journey, with untold hours of research and thought preceding it and uncertain hours of revision ahead.
The start-to-finish writing process consists of the following steps: Research. Gather the ingredients. For nonfiction works, you may delve deeply into external research. Fiction may require more introspection and exploration. Although the research phase often continues even as you are drafting, eventually you have enough material to move on. Let the ideas incubate. Leave time to activate the Muse before you start drafting. Your brain is like the yeast organisms in bread dough, breathing life into the raw materials you’ve accumulated. Give it a chance to work. Structure the piece. Read through
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Following a defined method delivers three important benefits: A recipe makes it easier to manage time so you can set and meet deadlines while juggling concurrent projects. You can plan and schedule opportunities for creativity. By breaking the work into its component steps, you can bring the right mental system (the Scribe or the Muse) to each task.
The writing process isn’t fun when you try to do it all at once. The Muse and the Scribe get in each other’s way as you struggle to find words, get stuck, or experience the dreaded writer’s block.
You cannot force insight and intuition, but you can create the conditions that make inspiration possible.
The various phases of the recipe require different mental systems. The Scribe provides the focused attention for research, outlining, and revision. The Muse brings creative, wide-ranging attention to periods of rest and incubation. During the drafting phase, ideally the Muse and the Scribe collaborate in a state of flow.
Don’t stop with the obvious, direct research; look for related themes or ideas that might present fruitful associations or interesting links. Gather more information than you plan to use; your discoveries may bring up important questions you’ll want to address.
The objective of the research phase extends beyond assembling facts to spit out later. Research primes the brain to make connections that will accelerate drafting.
An investment in time exploring and thinking during this first step streamlines the rest of the process.
Research feeds itself: once you start, you’ll see your topic everywhere.
Ideas will hit in unexpected times and places, so be prepared. Use online note-taking tools to capture and store links or concepts for research. For a low-tech but highly effective tool, keep a small, paper notebook with you to record your thoughts.
For many people, the best way to discover a topic is to start writing—not a draft, but notes or thoughts to themselves. Learn and discover by working with the topic.
