You brainstorm to get ideas when you have none. Ideally, you do so in a group. So you can feed off each other. So you can legitimize sitting around drinking coffee. So you can get others to do all the hard thinking for you. In all those respects, group brainstorming is a good thing. But what do you do when you’re writing in isolation? Continue Reading
What is creativity? I’m sure you’ve heard the cliche that gets kicked around, about the value of thinking “outside the box.” But in my experience, that’s the opposite of true… Continue Reading
You hear a lot about something called “writer’s block.” Then there’s that thing we all used to get when most writing was done with a pencil, called “writer’s cramp.” This, not to be confused with “writer’s camp,” when a gaggle… Continue Reading
Alex Osborn, a founder of a super-successful New York ad Agency and of the Creative Education Foundation, came up with a list of brainstorming “rules” in 1963: No judgment in early stages: Collect as many ideas as possible without imposing… Continue Reading
Seriously, I don’t much believe in writer’s block. Oh, there have been times I don’t know what to write. And even times I’ve felt a little desperate about that. But I’ve never been afraid or unaware of how to plow right through it. Why? Because I don’t think blocked writing is where the problem originates… Continue Reading