Blogging: Ideas for Ideas V

The Space Between Idea and Essay

I grew up dominated by my left brain.  I'm organized, analytical, structured...  This thwarted my writing, as in strutting into Fort Knox and picking up a couple of gold bars.  I needed to get into my right brain, delve into some creativity and emotion.  I knew it was there.  I just had to find it.

My writer friend who taught me how to capture ideas, turned me on to a writer who in turn, introduced me to my right brain.  Gabriele Lusser Rico , author of Writing the Natural Way.  I don't know Gabriele personally, but her book is most awesome.

Gabriele teaches many different techniques.  But the one that has helped me the most is called clustering.  I am going to tell you what works for me.  I might not be following the letter of the clustering law, so it's best to pick up the book and experiment for yourself.

Take the idea that you have filed away or saved, place it in the middle of a sheet of paper and circle it.  Now, write down whatever comes to your mind.  Circle that and draw a line to the center circled idea.  Anything goes from here.  The faster you can get thoughts down and circled the better.  Connect them with lines to other circled items.  Think of this method as a way of pouring out your thoughts - as opposed to trying to think something up and extracting it with a pair of tweezers.  Keep writing stuff down until the pitcher is emptied.

At this point I set the cluster aside.  Many folks recommend that you go and take a walk or do something physical.  The intent is to let your subconscious digest the cluster's content.  This does work for me, when I have the time.  Most often however, I let it bake in the subconscious, go do whatever and come back later. 

Next:  Starting your essay.

 

Comments

[EM Sky]

I can't tell you how much I appreciate this post right now. If this were a football game, I'd be dumping Gatorade over your head and carrying you around the field. Some moments are just beyond mere words.

I happened to read this post several days ago - ok, that's not true. I glanced at it briefly several days ago and moved on to other things. But the subconscious mind is truly an amazing resource. I've been working on a formal book outline for weeks - literally weeks - and have gotten stuck over and over again, trying to get everything I want to say down in a orderly fashion and failing miserably. Then tonight at about 11:00 PM I suddenly remembered this post. I thought "what the heck," closed MS Word, pulled out an old-fashioned pad of paper, and started writing one circled thing after another. Two and a half hours later I had filled sixteen pages that had just spilled out of my subconscious mind in natural "chapter" clusters. Ten chapters, one complete book outline. Checking the clusters against my scattered notes, I discovered that I had included every single topic on my list without even trying.

The funniest thing about it is that my subconscious mind has been nagging me about this ever since I read the post. I've been telling people over the past few days, "I feel like I need to get away from this linear format somehow. I need to get more visual somehow, linking these ideas in a visual way." Then tonight it finally hit me, and I remembered this post!

So anyway, thank you so much. When the book's done, I'll be sending you a copy!

Gratefully,
EM

[Dave]

EM! The visual of me being carried around a football field, wet from a Gatorade dunking, is too much to take. I am relatively sure Jeff Foxworthy and the Blue Collar Tour would ask if you'd like to write material for them. That is positively hilarious. LOL!!

On the important note however, what you accomplished! Awesome is a weak word.

Ok, let's try this: If this were a football game and I was on your team and you just scored a touchdown, I'd grab every spare ball laying around on the sideline and spike em' myself in celebration!