Hand Copy Your Favorites

The basics of writing are well understood and time tested.

Learn grammar until it's unconscious. Most of us have this down pat in our native language. Knowing all the "labels" might help in English courses, but if you can talk and be easily understood, you have the basics of grammar and communication. That's what you need to write and be understood!

When composing original new writing, write fast and without editing.

Edit your words ruthlessly until just the purified essence remains, clearly communicating what you want to say. Show me the pithy…

Modeling Excellent Writing

As accelerated learning pioneers and researchers have experimented and developed instilling excellence, modeling has become one of the most talked about and used techniques. There are many ways to "model" (copy in an accurate way) the behavior of someone you want to emulate. I'm going to describe the easiest one for writing and one of the most powerful writing skill improvement ways around…

A powerful way to model excellent writing is simple. You copy writing you admire, by hand.

The procedure is straight forward: Each day, for 10 minutes you hand copy your favorite author (…from the genre you are writing in). This is such a simple idea, that you might be tempted to skip it… However it is a proven Key step! Not only will it help to bust your writer's block, it will exponentially ramp up your writing ability and the quality of your writing.

Just for this purpose get a notebook, and everyday copy out — by hand — the writing of your favorite author for 10 minutes… or more. The intention you set as you start this has proven to be important… you are never plagiarizing; you are gleaning the style, the tempo, the written flow of a favorite author and intimately modeling it. This teaches your unconscious mind to integrate those elements into your own unique writing style.

The Best Technique to Get "Great Ideas" is to Have Lots of Ideas

Just write. Freely. For at least 10 minutes.

Whatever comes to mind, whatever's on your mind, whether you "are in the mood" or not, whether you're prepared or not; write.

Start every day's writing with freenoting. Just write whatever comes — without any editing — none! No stopping to add words, make sense, correct spelling, or add punctuation.

Write free of any need to edit and/or need to write to an audience.

Just like we rarely plan what words the next sentence we speak will contain, the best writing "writes itself". Ideally, writing and speaking are both mostly an unconscious process.

We've learned (or been trained) to multitask while writing. And this is the biggest block to unbridled, abundant and rampant creativity. We write, edit, rewrite and revise — all at once! Freenoting solves this!

The steady practice of this will begin to erode the tyranny of your internal editor. That editor continually makes you multitask by imposing the "write, revise and rewrite task" — all at once — a dictatorship on all your efforts.

This is a key step. One that is especially foreign to most struggling writers. This is born from training, or the need to be perfect, or the desire to produce something that other people "like".

It's meaningless what the reason is however, as the road to great writing starts with Step 1 - write! Step 2 - edit. "Ya canna do both at once!"

You get slow, even stuck when you try to edit and write at the same time. These are different actions, and they require different feedback and even different sections of your brain in order to function efficiently.

Freenoting may be focused or unfocused. There are no rules to follow. You may change direction or subjects at the direction and impulse of your unconscious mind.

Unfocused freenoting is a stream of consciousness expression of what's running through your mind at any given moment. Focused freenoting involves writing with an intent or goal, about a topic as a means of expressing what you already know about it.

There is no "correct" way to do this for every person, so try these actions…

Start with a blank document page and some countdown timing software (I use Tea Timer ) or the clock on the computer. If you prefer to handwrite, you can use a pad or notebook instead. Freenoting is all about generating words, not correcting spelling or getting the "right" word.

Set the time for ten or more minutes. It's important to note that longer times can be more productive since freenoting opens some powerful access points to your unconscious mind.

Begin to type or write about anything that appears in your mind's eye. And don't stop until the time is up. You might find it's easier if you just look at the keys while you type or do a "Stevie Wonder" and stare at the ceiling. Your outcome is to concentrate on the ideas rather than getting caught up in the editing, spelling and revising dance.

Then review what you have written at another time. Any ideas in there that might work for a project you are doing?

Focused freenoting follows the same process but begins with an intent, a topic…

At the top of a blank page, put the topic. Begin freenoting for the same 10 minutes or longer. Still follow the same procedure - write everything and anything that comes to mind, trusting that your unconscious mind will organize and bring useful written expression forward. No editing. Whatever order of ideas and digressions or grammatical and spelling creativity is fine. Write fast!

Look over what you have written at another time. Sift for ideas and phrases you can use.

There are four guidelines to Freenoting:

1. Write for 10 minutes (or more, especially if you fall into a flow state and are enjoying yourself.) The key to freenoting is to not judge any thoughts while writing them.

2. Write. Write as fast as you can. Don't stop writing until the time is up. Never stop or even slow down for the "right" word. Write what you get and if more occurs to you a sentence or two later, just write it down right there! If you run out of things to say, just keep writing the last word, or your name, or "Being stuck, leads to better and better ideas" over and over again. Intend that more words will come and they will.

3. Turn off the "squelcher", that editor who tells you to go back and move that "i" or cross that "t," tells you that this or that idea is not well formed, or tells you that you've just written a run-on sentence or fragment. Mentally see the squelcher button. Reach out and turn it off!

4. When the time is up, start writing on other things. Later go back over the text and begin to edit by pulling out the surprises: identify interesting passages, ideas and phrases. Or chuck it away!

Freenoting's value is in the doing of it, and it may just take a week or up to a month until you are producing things of value most of the time. This is a training exercise and it will take your unconscious mind a little while to catch up to what you are doing. It's called learning!

Always follow what's in your mind's eye; find out what you have to say by just expressing it (on paper). Feel free to change subjects or point of view.

Trust yourself, your unconscious mind and your writing.

Freenoting is a both a information organizer and a memory stimulator. Your unconscious mind is a huge storehouse of information and it is constantly reorganizing and reordering that knowledge to meet the latest goals and intents of your conscious self.

Freenoting, especially with practice, makes available what you already know about anything and allows you to make connections you might not otherwise make. It moves you past the obvious, instant, surface responses so that you can dig deep to the insightful and valuable ideas of what you really want to say.

When you freenote you don't worry about correct punctuation, grammar or spelling. The point of this exercise is production, getting what's in your unconscious out, and written.

It take some focused discipline to never re-read what you've written until after you've finished; the value is in getting your ideas spilling out of you at a breakneck pace. If you worry about if they're written down "right" then you are not letting them flow.

I'm not "dissing" the edit function. It is a very important step to produce powerful and useful writing. I am decrying the tyranny of it when you are in the throes of creation, however. You must write and create unfettered, unshackled, and totally free.

Words are inexhaustible. Your words are plentiful. There isn't a limit on what you will produce in this lifetime… really! So being careful to only produce great or the right words just limits your output and paradoxically, limits your quality.

Every brainstorming/ creativity expert on earth will stress that the best way to get to great ideas is to get lots of ideas. And what's more creative than writing? Plus, this has been proven by hundreds of writers, including me.

Write! Blast away for 10 minutes on what's in your stream of consciousness. Let it Out! And watch your writing explode in quantity and then quality!

Outlining, shmoutlining. A pox on planning.

Freenoting will allow more of your "voice" into all your writing. It's impossible while truly freenoting to not use your own voice. That's exactly what you are expressing! This voice, this viewpoint is what is unique and valuable. Once it's edited, it's what readers are going to love and pay you the big bucks for!

It's also a fine technique to get the garbage out of your head. Once it's out on paper or screen it can be thrown in the trash, something that you are less able to do if it's still in your head!

Be courageous and step boldly into the chaos. Creativity lives there! Many writers find that their best writing comes out right next to garbage. Court it. Just let it rip, baby. The source of great writing is to simply write a lot. A source of ending writer's block is to write, a lot.

I'll talk about editing in the next article!

Freenoting's close cousin, freewriting was offered in the excellent book Writing Without Teachers (Peter Elbow, Oxford University Press, 1975). Elbow's freewriting is the same as what I've outlined here. However, the term has been hijacked and the technique turned into a light weight, warm-up technique.

Freenoting is different from the freewriting practice encouraged in most undergraduate and creative writing programs: freenoting encourages you to be aware of your thoughts throughout, and may be an end in itself — as well as a means to produce a more polished piece later.

Most writing programs will offer freewriting as a warmup tool that is abandoned once you move to "more purposeful" writing.

Freenoting is non-stop writing whose focus is to express all the "now" ideas from your unconscious mind. Freenoting is writing with your internal editor/planner disengaged, and this is it's main benefit.

ImageStreaming

• the super "swiss army knife" of creativity tools!

ImageStreaming is a described out loud visualization process. ImageStreaming taps in to the vast knowledge bank stored in your Beyond-Conscious mind and brings it to your conscious awareness. All the huge amounts of data that you store and process, that you do not normally pay any attention to, are now completely available to you.

Your unconscious mind has been estimated to process in the billions of bits per second by cognitive scientists. In comparison, your conscious mind processes about 40 bits per second. Most of your knowledge, knowing and intelligence comes from your unconscious mind.

Your unconscious mind (or as I'll refer to it — Beyond-Conscious) continually, 24/7, makes associations within all the data and perceptions that you have stored. It continues to do this as you add anything new or begin to learn any other new thing.

This facility allows us to generalize learnings among whole subsets of experience… for example, once you've learned what a car is and what it's for, how to get in and out, and how to ride in it, it is quite easy to generalize that experience to riding in different cars — from small sports cars to large stretch limo's, to trucks, trains, or even airplanes.

To accelerate this normal process and bring more of those insights conscious, ImageStreaming powershifts this normal operation into overdrive.

As you describe anything in detail while continuing to examine it, you discover more and more about it. Your seemingly undirected, free-floating visualizations and descriptions are an extremely sensitive path for the insights your Beyond-Conscious mind creates and holds.

Frame what it is that you want more insight about for your writing. Close your eyes, relax and describe what you see - out loud! Imagine someone is listening to what you are describing.

Stop and write out what you are describing every minute or so. Or even better record it.

Look for points of resistance and insights on what inspires you or surprising new insights that show themselves.

Record what you say and/or do it with a partner. And — this is IMPORTANT: Do any and all editing as a separate and later step. The framework/mindset to build here is that you describe everything, in detail, with no editing! Include all your senses in describing what you experience.

Keep going until you hit a productive line of inspiration. As soon as you hit something that intrigues you, write that down and GO! Keep writing and move quickly to capture all of it.

The Tell a Friend technique.

Tell the story (or viewpoint) to a friend; real or imagined… She asks,"And then?" Answer her. And if you're just imagining, answer out loud. (Record and transcribe it later…).

Even if your answer is just "Well I could go here or I could go there…" Explore them both.

Follow the direction that opens soonest and easiest with more and more detail. Then go back and see where the other directions go as well.

Frame your friend's role as — they are there to encourage you and to listen. It's like a brainstorming session and only positive feedback is allowed.

Record the session; and you and your friend take notes (if you feel it's needed). You can return the favor on another occasion! You'll probably find that if you both take notes as well as recording the session you'll have a treasure trove of ideas, viewpoints and discussion that will start you writing in numerous other directions.

Take the notes and recording and use that as a starting place… First, let it trigger more writing.

Then edit it all later.

Or, here's input from my daughter (she who writes till the early am): Use something like LiveJournal.

You set up your own journal and then set up a community where you can give other users comment or even posting access. This is the tool she's using to both refine her writing and get feedback from people she trusts. Once she's refined her writing in the restricted access community, she posts that to her main journal, for more public viewing.

Speak your writing and record it.

Stuck? Often just talking about what it is that you have in mind, can bring a lot more ideas and developments to mind. So record what you want to communicate, then transcribe it and edit it later.

When you speak, you are spending very little conscious attention to what it is you are saying - it just comes out!

This is an easy and brilliant way to defeat your "squelcher" and get you started expressing. You can get on a roll immediately!

Use transcription software (Express Scribe, Transcriber) to make it easier to control the playback for your typing.

Or use an internet service like idictate.com, or Fantastic Transcripts, etc.

Remember, the biggest block to your writing freely is trying to rethink, revise and rewrite at the same time as you are creating. But, this is how you've been taught to write, and it has become the natural way you write. Bust that habit by speaking your ideas.

Many non-fiction authors and reporters are now taking this to another level by just talking their books and articles, having that output transcribed and then — editing to the finished product. But this method is equally valuable for any kind of writing.

You can experiment with letting the computer transcribe it on the fly by using software like Dragon Naturally Speaking or iListen. (I haven't had a lot of satisfaction from this process — YMWV.)

You can use this if you have a long journey in a car. Record your book while you drive. Your unconscious is driving anyway, let it write at the same time. It easily can… and will! Not in town in traffic - OK?

This can be a great technique to build the chapter outline and/or to describe the setting and vision for the detailed writing to come. Or even better, just riff on all the ideas that you have had bouncing around in your mind.

Creating brilliance is hampered by criticism at this first step point, so if you can let yourself just talk about all the ideas that you have and then edit and expand on them in writing later, you will find that your writing will just flow and the blocks vaporize. I know numerous people who have roughed out their entire book this way.

If you have it setup in your head already, this can be a quick way to produce. Even if you have no idea on where to go, this can be a turbocharger for your productivity. Just talk it out.

Also many more people have taken their teleseminar or live seminar transcripts and edited those into the meat of a book. If you are more able to talk over the phone there are numerous recording systems that will both record the call and transcribe it for you. See above or search for telephone transcription.

Keep talking and writing!

Step one - Write. Step two - Edit.

It's like marching left, right, left, right, hup, two, three, four…

Write first, edit second; write first, edit second.

This is a great mantra! Recite it to yourself often.

Editing on the fly — always — messes with your getting to inspired, original creation.

Step one - Write fast to overwhelm your internal editor. It's key to be clear and firm about writing first, editing later. Your unconscious will catch on quickly and bring torrents of inspired writing to your awareness!

Step two - Edit it all later or on another day, during a separate session.

All good authors follow this law. You allow your unconscious mind the space to express — as fast and as much as possible, without any rules to follow (other than more and fast is better!) and then clean, arrange and spruce it up later.

Many authors speak of how they were just channels for the book; or how the characters wrote the book; or even how it landed — plomp! — in their head and they just had to copy it down!

I am encouraging you to allow this to happen within a structure that allows your unconscious opportunities to express. Then later, let your conscious mind fine tune the writing output. Of course there are techniques to get the edit function to a more unconscious action as well!

Your unconscious mind is just better at most complex undertakings. The more you allow it to "do it's thing" the faster and better your writing will get, and no blocks!

Okay… you might want to know why this works and works so well.

Your first instinct when you sit down to write is to become guarded and cautious. (Whether that's because of the modality of written communication or because that is how we've been taught to approach writing is fuel for another fire, on another day…)

We don't do this at all when we talk — except for interviews or when the consequences of what we say next are large. But we clearly do this with writing and for many of you, it becomes a major block to your writing.

Author and writing teacher Peter Elbow contends that the problem stems from trying to do to much, at once. It is fairly hard to produce new, original scribbling, and you add to the difficulty exponentially by adding in the requirements to edit, rewrite, rethink and revise. All at once!

You are trying to put down the "right" words at the same time as you are attempting to let the raw, fragmented and shaky legged thoughts escape onto paper. It's too much and to damn hard!

No wonder you get blocked!

By splitting the two functions of creation and editing into separate steps, you free yourself to let more original thoughts out. The key to getting to great thoughts is to express lots of thoughts!

Describing the Obvious and Everyday in Detail

Describe something, out loud into a recording device or in writing. Something nearby in your environment. For example, you can describe the floor, the desk, stuff on the desk or floor; anything mundane that you have not even noticed for days or months.

Important: Describe it in excruciating, increasing and precise detail.

Start with the obvious and then go deeper and deeeeper with the description.

Describe as though your describing to a blind person, or an alien. Go into the context, reason for it being, the texture, the odor, the way the light plays on it, the shadows follow it, the feelings it evokes in you, the usefulness of it, the problems with it, the good, the bad, and the ugly, etc. Describe any and all details that you can immediately sense - see, hear, feel, taste and smell… and any and all extensions as to purpose, creation, manufacture, asthetic, reason, etc. Describe using just one or two of your senses and then all of them together.

Look at what's there and what's hinted at. What does that shadow reveal… look for what's different, what's deeper, what's surprising, what's funny…

Here's the focus that turns this from silly exercise into a doorway to original writing: Be alert for any insights or flashes, especially if they are in surprising directions and follow them like Sherlock Holmes. Write the flashes down and let them lead you into writing still more.

Once you are writing just keep describing all hunches and nudges. Let your unconscious mind bring fresh insights and relativity by combining what you want to be working on with the mundane description. Your unconscious mind is a master at creating context from totally unrelated things.

This describing exercise is training in paying attention to those new contexts and resulting insights. For more in depth training in this go to: End Writer's Block Forever!

POV and Writing Creativity

Spatial Mental Flexibility and Relations

Change your point of view - go Meta!

See yourself writing; while you are writing. Float up above yourself and watch yourself writing - this will separate you from all the "not good enough" feelings that just night be involved in what's blocking you from your creativity.

Rather than empty instructions to "remove your ego or blah, blah blah…" — here's exactly how to do that — as you are sitting there writing, move your conscious focus point outside your body. Imagine looking at yourself, as you're sitting there.

What do you imagine you look like… look from in front (like looking in a mirror), from the side or from behind yourself… Move to wherever works best to get some distance from the pressure that you put on yourself. That might be floating up and back behind your head a bit, or watching yourself from the side… etc. Experiment!

Just imagine watching yourself in a video — at the same time as you are looking through your eyes at the world.

If you have trouble with this, jump to the article on ImageStreaming… practicing that will ramp up your ability to visualize — fast! With some practice you will find that you can instantly change your point of view and detach yourself from your writing and let your unconscious just take over, doing the writing for 'you'.

Are you asking, If I do this, am I still doing it?

MmmHmm. You bet, because it is your unconscious mind, isn't it? You are more than just your conscious mind and intellect!

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.

These below strategies were and are used by creative geniuses in science, art and invention.

One - Visual thought experiments.

Albert Einstein used visual thought experiments. He developed thought experiments in as many different ways as he could, including extensively using diagrams.

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…), Schrodinger's cat (quantum theory does not scale to large objects), Einstein's riding on a light beam (relativity), Galileo's leaning tower of Pisa thought experiment (he didn't really do it…) 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 heavier falls faster.

Two - Think in opposites.

Einstein imagined light as simultaneously a wave 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 believed that 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… how do these proverbs apply to what you are writing about? Stretch to make connections!

• 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.

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 (of the cause of a 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 done and what's next?" not "Why have I failed?".

One of the people to have more patents than Edison is Dr. Yoshiro Nakamatsu (including Floppy disk, CD player, and digital watch). He generates his ideas by swimming underwater. What a Great Idea

Dr Win Wenger prescribes held breath, underwater swimming as an intelligence booster. Underwater Swimming Ideas pop in, by chance, in a few familiar places… can you capture and use them?

I recommend getting a digital recorder to capture those chance flashes of inspiration during…  A bath or shower, rriving, just waking up or just before sleep, meditating, on the toilet

Four - Make your inspiration evolve 

University of California psychologist and expert on genius Dean Keith Simonton, Ph.D., 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. 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.

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.

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 different ways. His experience was that the first way he looked at a problem, prejudiced the solution. da Vinci thought graphically and visually, filling papers with unending observations, visualized thoughts, brainstormed alternatives, theories, and debates concerning almost everything about the visible world.

By reconstructing the problem, the true core of the problem and even better solutions, become obvious.

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: Search out and create metaphors to use in your writing.

• 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!

Simonton studied 2,036 scientists throughout history and found that the most respected scientists produced not only great works, but also many "bad" ones… failures even. 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

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. (He didn't invent the light bulb, he improved patents that he bought from other inventors)

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. "To get to a great idea, you must produce a lot of ideas" Linus Pauling, Nobel Prize for Chemistry

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 modern genetics is based. He combined mathematics and biology as he studied the inheritance of traits in pea plants to create a new, breakthrough science.

Relax and Let it Out…

Listen, I know you like to work hard at things. It's what our parents/teachers/mentors told us — over and over — "Work hard and you'll be successful."

You love (or hate) racking your brain, searching your mind, struggling to come up with the perfect idea, concept or turn of phrase… and it just seems to be just out of reach, on the tip of your mind. Very frustrating.

You might even have started talking to yourself. (I do and I highly recommend it for keeping unsavory characters away from you…)

If you try too hard, you will just stay in our own way. In fact if you try at all, you're just in your own way.

If someone says, "OK, I'll try and come over on Saturday night", you know they are not coming! So stop trying.

Just do it.

All creativity comes from your unconscious mind, so let it produce.

Relax first… then write. Here's some options:

1. Do a relaxation or meditation session.

2. Do some conscious breathing — just breathe in for a count of five and out for five. Do it over and over for ten minutes or so.

3. Take a long hot shower, until the water runs cold.

4. Sit in front of the fireplace, stare at the fire and de-stress. Then go straight to the keyboard (or paper) and fly at it. Let your unconscious mind just express.

Relaxation and releasing stress will aid you in whole brain thinking. That will allow the inspiration to begin to work it's way out onto the paper.

A famous story of relaxation then realization, is of the chemist Friedrich Kekule. While gazing into his fireplace, he saw snakes, biting their own tails which revealed the structure of the benzene ring molecule.