REVIEW: "Custom genius" - wake up your "sleeping writer"

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The book, which will be discussed today in the constant heading of Lifehacker, is devoted to one of the most difficult and exciting tasks for those who, by chance or by work necessity, are engaged in the creation of texts and the search for ideas. We're going to talk about one of the new summer 2013 releases: Mark Levy's desktop freewriting guide, Custom Genius.

It happens with you: you urgently need to prepare a large article on an important and discussed issue - and you are not able to write a single line? Or the head of the department demands to make a list of ideas for promoting a new product within an hour - and your head is empty and quiet, like on the kitchen table after a general cleaning? And even worse - if your own project requires your attention and your new proposals, and you are already exhausted in search of something new and think that you are completely stuck "at a dead end." And what to do ?!

Freewriting - free writing - the author considers not as an ordinary stream of consciousness, but as a new way to generate ideas and organize thoughts in his own head.

What does it look like? Take a pen, paper - or open a laptop, if you have developed a persistent rejection of paper from school - and write. Write whatever comes to mind. "It's that simple ?!" - you ask incredulously. Yes, that's it. But it's not at all simple: freewriting has its own rules and nuances; in addition, mastering the freewriting technique teaches us something, which I propose to talk about separately.

Lessons from the Book of Mark Levy

1. Freewriting - as already mentioned - is a way to generate ideas. It differs from standard brainstorming in that here you are in the role of both the generator and the commentator of ideas.

2. Don't overdo it- and the results will start to appear one by one. Think of freewriting as a reverse sporting event.

3. Freewriting, in addition to the flow of words, transferred to paper or screen, is a way of associative search for your inspiration … To isolate and capture valuable ideas in this stream, you will have to generate a lot of "verbal junk". If your mind acts intuitively, often not keeping up with the speed of writing, you will - oddly enough - get more results than if you think about each phrase and carefully print each letter.

4. Freewriting is akin to running sprints.; and therefore needs a timer, clear timing (from 10 to 20 minutes, in some cases - a couple of hours). Time control will give you a definite goal to which you must "finish". In this case, it is best to take a silent timer: the ticking of the clock should not rush you.

5. Don't think of freewriting as pure writing.… This is not really creativity, but a way of restructuring thought processes and creating the basis for the search for new ideas. So do not decorate the resulting text: use kitchen slang, abbreviations and torn sentences. The main thing is that it is convenient for you to express your thoughts.

6. Developing a thought on paper, try not to stay within the framework of a certain chosen scenario.(conditional or real situation, which is spoken in the text you are creating), but just keep the logic. A lot of final options that you end up with if you do not hold on to the script (after all, you are not writing a story, but just a stream of your thoughts) - so, a lot of these final options can more than reward you for the time spent on freewriting.

7. Use questions to yourself as a generator of ideas.… They are effective switches for your attention. Every time your attention shifts to such a question, you start looking for a new answer to an old question.

8. Another valuable component of freewriting is guiding our thinking.… This technique is familiar to all of us since school: remember the essays on the topic, which began with the headlines "If I could change one thing in the world, I would …", "If I got a state", "How I see myself in 10 years", "What is happiness?" and other similar open topics for literature, social studies or history lessons. This technique works great in adult life, outside of school and university classrooms; but for some reason we rarely use it.

In fact, there is much more advice and lessons in Mark Levy's book. And if you follow them, then you can become such a genius almost on a round-the-clock basis: the only question is - won't you get tired of writing everything down?:)

Whom I advise you to read

Copywriters are the first to be directly affected by this book … When in the “Vacancies” section of a company or on a recruiting site I see the line “A copywriter with imagination is required” - I understand that, in fact, every adult without mental abnormalities has imagination; it's just that copywriters write over time and begin to think that they no longer have any new ideas, although this is far from the case.

Marketers and sales managers in large companies and projects are next in line to read. “Take everyone into the meeting room and will make the assault” - is it familiar? Now, for an effective assault in a meeting room, you can only take yourself, paper, a pen and half an hour of time (if, of course, you use tips and hints from Mark Levy). I think your superiors will appreciate the growth of your personal efficiency in the search for new ideas and suggestions.

Students and youth working in civic associations and non-profit organizations- the third group of people to whom I would recommend reading "Genius to order". It is believed that there is no need to “reinvent the wheel”, and therefore it is better, even within the framework of charitable, social or organizational activities, to use well-established scenarios and proven topics. How about creating another (to be honest, no one needs) organization for the protection of animals, creating … an organization for greening the city, developing cycling infrastructure or organizing active games in nature (from petanque to towns and rounders)? How many ideas and small but important problems lie under your nose and require not so much effort and attention to solve them? If you are still in doubt, try writing down your ideas and observations following Mark Levy's book. What if you can change the life of your city, district or university in a radical way?

“Genius to order. An easy way to find non-standard solutions and ideas , Mark Levy

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