So my goal to post daily just hasn’t been happening (busted!) There are 101 “reasons” why this has’nt been the case. Here are 3:

• my hairdrier has been broken (I don’t use one)
• there haven’t been mangos at the grocery store
• I think there has been a raccoon rifling through the garbage at night

Ok. For real now. I have had a lot going on in different realms of my life lately, home-wise, emotionally, physically, plus some new adventures in the business realm. While in the midst of an unrelated activity I think, “oh! I need to post today!” but then nothing will be in my mind so that thought is quickly followed by, “not now!” Which, after two days of no posting, leads me to think that I have nothing else to write about. The cycle spiral downwards from there.

Enter an interesting book by James Adams called The Care and Feeding of Ideas: A Guide to Encouraging Creativity. Published in 1986/7, it is based on understanding the mechanics of the creative process so that you can work with that understanding. [Love it!]

The first chapter provided a jewel of great magnitude for me. He writes, “List-making works by forcing the mind to dwell upon the alternatives to a greater extent than it normally would.” Whoa, back up there, girl. Let me preface with 2 items. 1. This sentence was prefaced by another several paragraphs earlier, “If you are a follower of the type of creativity techniques that are oriented toward producing alternate concepts (ideas), you probably have noticed that many of them call for the expenditure of mental effort.” and 2. I immediately replaced “list-making” with “writing” for my understanding, therefore, “Writing works by forcing the mind to dwell upon the alternatives to a greater extent than it normally would.”

KA-CHUNG! Several huge mental gears just clicked into alignment.

This explains why I like to write. This explains why writing was such a pivotal factor in my development in college. Got it!

What it also explains is the importance of sitting down to write. Project Simplify’s own “tech guy” Lance Brown is a writer in his own right. During a conversation in which I was most likely lamenting my lack of writing time, he mentioned that one of the most effective ways to break through writer’s block is to just Write!

By sitting down to write and focusing on the task at hand, all my other “distractions” are pushed to the periphery. And as James Adams writes, I am “forcing alternative thinking”. I know from my own experience that following an idea in my head, say about a potential post, goes as far as, maybe, two sentences in my head. Yet writing, well, you’ve seen what is on this website + speeches + business development materials etc.

Writing often feels like fun and exploratory meandering through the mental terrain for me. It is a creative process and this brain likes new adventures.