Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content

Peter Elbow calls it "freewriting." Julia Cameron refers to it as "morning pages." Mark Levy prefers the term "private writing." What they are all referring to is a timed, continuous-writing exercise, with no editing allowed. The messier the better. While Elbow and Cameron use the method as a way of improving one's personal writing and learning what one has to say, Levy applies its use to the business world. Businesspeople, too, he says, "should have fun with their subject. Give it fresh attention. View it from different angles." He makes a compelling argument for using private writing at work to get oneself to think outside the box. Too often, he says, we do things a certain way solely because that's the way they've always been done. Processes become so institutionalized that it takes "bursts of exceptional insight, or ...genius moments" to move beyond them. Levy's techniques for using private writing at work include "reality tweaking" (what if the budget were 100 times bigger or smaller?), having imaginary conversations with real people, and using "thought starters" to get the ball rolling. He also advocates the use of private writing to assess one's career and consider alternatives. Perhaps his most salient advice is, "Buy yourself a timer that doesn't make a clicking noise as it counts down." --Jane Steinberg