Writing Creativity Articles

• Nine Genius Thinking Strategies

Genius creativity thinking applied to writing

Use the same strategies as Aristotle, da Vinci, Edison, Tesla and Einstein, etc. to release the power of your creative mind. Break your blocks and free your writing.

The strategies are gathered here, for a quick review. These strategies were and are used by creative geniuses in science, art and invention.

One - Visual thought experiments.

Albert Einstein extensively used visual thought experiments. He developed thought experiments in as many different ways as he could, including using diagrams. Thought experiments lead him to discoveries and to ways to simply convey the meaning of his discoveries to his students.

Nikola Tesla (inventor of AC generators, motors, and electrical power distribution) spoke often of his internal mind laboratory. He visualized whole experiments, setting them up and then letting them run, beginning to end. He often would be surprised at the conclusion! He would give his engineers measurements to 10 thousandths of an inch and the majority of his designs worked on the first build.

A few of the well-known thought experiments of importance in science: Newton's cannonball (gravity is universal...), Schrödinger's cat (quantum theory does not scale to large objects), Einstein's riding on a light beam (relativity), Galileo’s leaning tower of Pisa (objects of differing masses fall at the same rate... Galileo showed that all bodies fall at the same speed with a brilliant thought experiment that destroyed the then accepted Aristotelian logic that the heavier object falls faster.)

Make up visual thought experiments to boost your writing. Where's the sticking point? Make up n experiment and then - let it run without expectations! Be surprised by the possible results and you'll have raw creation at it's best.

Two - Think in opposites.

Einstein imagined light as simultaneously a wave -- like a wave in the water, and a particle (photons) which led to his being awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 for his theory of the photoelectric effect.

Picasso stated, “Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.”

Neils Bohr, physicist - believed that in order to hold opposites together, you suspend judgement, and then your mind goes to a new level. By postponing the obvious logical answer, you allow your mind to explore something new.

Run situations and characters in your writing through these thinking pattern sets:
• What would happen if you did?
• What would happen if you didn’t?
• What wouldn’t happen if you did?
• What wouldn’t happen if you didn’t?
• How can we profit from this problem/ who profits from this problem?
• What would they never do?

Add some proverbial opposites to your thinking and filtering...

• The pen is mightier than the sword.
Actions speak louder than words.
• Wise men think alike.
Fools seldom differ.
• The best things in life are free.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
• All good things come to those who wait.
Time and tide wait for no man.
• Look before you leap.
Strike while the iron is hot.
• Better safe than sorry.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
• Birds of a feather flock together.
Opposites attract.
• Great starts make great finishes.
It ain’t over ’till it’s over.
• Practice makes perfect.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
• You’re never too old to learn.
You can’t teach an old dog new tricks
• What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
One man’s meat is another man’s poison.
• Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Out of sight, out of mind.
• Too many cooks spoil the broth.
Many hands make light work.

Once you hold these as both true... at the same time... your brain and unconscious must search for a new, higher order answer!

Three - Creative coincidence; courting chance.

Whenever you attempt to do something and fail, you end up doing something unpredicted. This is the principle of creative coincidence.

Alexander Fleming noticed the mold forming on an exposed culture. Fleming thought it was "interesting" and that exploration (what was the cause of this ruined experiment?) led to penicillin which has saved millions.

Failure can be productive only if you focus on it as a stepping stone to your desired result. Ask the question "What have I written and what’s my next step?" not “Why have I failed?".

Intuitive flashes are a famously capricious source of inspiration... however, there are some places where they seem to happen more often.

• Bath or shower
• Driving
• Just waking up or just before sleep
• Meditating
• On the toilet
• Dreams

One of the few people to have more patents than Edison is Dr. Yoshiro Nakamatsu (including Floppy disk, CD player, and digital watch) and he generates his ideas by swimming underwater.
http://www.whatagreatidea.com/nakamatsu.htm

Dr. Win Wenger prescribes held breath, underwater swimming as an intelligence booster.
http://www.winwenger.com/ebooks/guaran3.htm

Ideas pop in, by chance, in a few familiar places... how can you prepare to grab them and use them? I recommend getting a digital recorder to capture those chance flashes of inspiration. Let characters tell their story to you as you drive. Dig deep in all the arguments for your thesis as you do your ablutions. Record what you are thinking and write and edit from there!


Four - Make your inspiration evolve

University of California psychologist and genius expert Dean Keith Simonton, Ph.D., author of Origins of Genius: Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity argues that creative ideas evolve similarly to the way species do. After repeatedly selecting better ideas and rejecting inferior ones, the creative genius creates and collects his truly wondrous ideas.

Make your writing better through survival of the fittest idea. Allow them to compete after you generate them. Stay awake to all the ways you can make each writing project more relevant and better developed.

Seek to be courageous enough to tear it apart and rebuild to improve it. (This is not about perfectionism -- balancing quality against quantity is a key understanding in improving your writing.)

Remember, more production trumps endless editing!


Five - Conceptual blending; make connections between dissimilar subjects.

How do the properties and aspects of different subjects relate and interact?

Creative geniuses by conscious choice, constantly mix and match ideas, images, and thoughts into different combinations. They search for new connections and unique insights. You naturally do this in your unconscious mind. Now you will benefit from applying it more consciously.

For instance, Leonardo imagined a relationship between the waves created by a stone hitting water and the sound of a bell. This led him to realize that sound travels in waves.

Einstein by combining energy, mass, and the speed of light in a new way, was able to discover a unique interpretation that explained relativity: E=mc2.

Samuel Morse after seeing relay stations for the Pony Express, solved the telegraph signal strength problem by inventing relay stations for
telegraphic signals.

For a couple weeks, combine seemingly unrelated ideas as an ongoing idea play. Once you do, your unconscious will bring forward many examples for you to choose from.


Six - See a problem from all sides, and discover new viewpoints.

Tear problems to pieces and then restate them in many new ways. Geniuses look to see and restate situations from many perspectives. In this way they generate bold solutions and can identify new solutions for other problems.

Leonardo da Vinci restructured problems, looking at them in many different ways. His experience was that the first way he looked at a problem, prejudiced the solution.

da Vinci thought graphically, filling papers with unending observations, visualized thoughts, brainstormed alternatives, theories, and debates concerning almost everything about the visible world. His notebooks are jammed with his unique interpretations of a vast amount of the world around him.

By reconstructing the problem, the true core of the problem and even better solutions, become obvious. Examine issues from all sides and sense for surprising insights and views.


Seven - Think metaphorically; and antimetaphorically.

Create new understanding and context by using figures of speech and metaphors.

Metaphor opens a subject up to options, once one word or phrase that normally describes one thing, is used to describe another. Aristotle considered metaphor a sign of genius.

Einstein strived to understand and explain many of his abstract principles by searching for analogies with everyday occurrences such as rowing a boat or standing on a platform while a train passed by.

Here’s some metaphor examples:

“All the world's a stage”

“Laundered Money”

“Shut your trap!”

“That throws some light on the question.”

Or Antimetaphors..:

“The couch is the freeway of the living room.”

“Your cell phone is the gooey center goodness of your life.”

“Be the media.”

Search for the extra story and analogy or metaphor to deepen your (and your readers) understanding and generate new ideas.


Eight - Produce!

Dean Keith Simonton, Ph.D., studied 2,036 scientists throughout history and found that the most respected scientists produced not only great works, but also many "bad" ones.

They failed and produced mundane results in order to eventually arrive at excellence.

“It is better to answer one question eight different ways than eight different questions one way.” - Plato. Plato is often credited with authoring about 36 dialogues including The Republic.

Shakespeare wrote 38 plays and 154 sonnets.

Dr. Nakamatsu holds over 3000 patents, including some flat out wacky ones.

Thomas Edison held 1,093 patents. He forced productivity by giving himself and his assistants idea quotas. His goal was a small invention every 10 days and a major one every 6 months.

Johann Sebastian Bach wrote a cantata every week. He composed over 1000 works.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in his short life produced more than 600 pieces of music.

Albert Einstein is famous for his theory of relativity, yet he published 248 other papers and won the Nobel prize for the photoelectric effect.


Nine - Collect ideas and make illogical combinations.

Combine, and recombine ideas, images, and thoughts into unlimited and different combinations no matter how incongruent or unusual.

For instance, Grego Mendel, the Austrian monk who is the father of genetics found the laws of inheritance on which genetics is based. He combined mathematics and biology as he studied the inheritance of traits in pea plants to create a new breakthrough science.

Find ways to play with your writing - do a mash up of different ideas to generate surprises!