Max Marmer

As I said earlier, it’s a bit overwhelming approaching this blog as blank slate. It feels similar to what it must be like standing at the base Mount Everest, confronting an almost insurmountable challenge.

Internally my mind is like a well-developed spider web consisting of many intertwined, interdependent thoughts. How do I begin to approach such a thorny, convoluted structure when the end product must be clear, pithy posts? I realized the serial approach wouldn’t work. I can’t just pick one topic after another and bang through them one by one. It’s too hard to stay focused. Too many thoughts depend on other thoughts, which lead to tangents and thus an unfocused post. But letting the voice in your head filter for only relevant thoughts is not the answer. But this is what most people do. Most people sit there and wait for the next sentence to come while there mind runs through a tree of combinations, making a countless number of false starts before they finally stumble on something that kind of fits. This leads to writer’s block and overall stifles the creative process. Instead, separate the writer and the editor. They are two distinctly different functions of the mind, and for productivity’s sake, are mutually exclusive.

But it’s important to focus first on the ideas. Whenever you write you will invariably have to generate ideas and then edit them to get a finished product.

I don’t know why most of us developed the bad habit of alternating between idea generation and editing after every single sentence. I don’t know exactly how I broke out of it either, but I am sure glad I did. The central problem with this approach is it continually prevents your mind from getting in a state of flow, where ideas pour out in bunches. Flow states require sustained concentration in a particular frame of mind. Think of it like climbing an icy mountain where reaching the peak symbolizes reaching flow. When you’re switching from writer to editor every few seconds you’re constantly beginning to climb the mountain and sliding back down, never reaching peak creativity.

What I do now is just think of good writing as good thinking. And then I just let my mind run wild and free associate. I empty my mind of any ideas I have on a topic. The beginning of this process usually starts out slow but once I give my mind time to warm up I start making connections with breadth and depth I’m proud of. You know that feeling when you know you have a great idea but you just don’t have access to it? It’s like it is covered by a thinly veiled sheet that lets you roughly discern the shape of the idea, but it is so incredibly strong that the idea can’t break through and reveal itself. The solution is often just to let your mind climb a little bit higher up the icy mountain.

I hit writer’s block trying to write the second post of this blog. I want my posts to minimize tangents yet every time I went to write I was overwhelmed by the volume of different thoughts that came to mind. My mind in attempt to stay focused was constantly trying to edit these miscellaneous thoughts, but it stopped my creative mind dead in its tracks. The paradox was that by preventing my mind from thinking about ideas not pertinent to my topic, I wasn’t able to write anything down at all. There was this large cloud looming over my head every time I thought about the blog, because I couldn’t see how to untangle my large, haphazard web of thoughts through short focused snapshots. Fortunately, I realized what I was doing wrong. So yesterday for about two hours I just went on a massive brainstorm and wrote out initial ideas for 35 blog posts. Sometimes I wrote a few paragraphs sometimes I wrote just a sentence. It didn’t matter; I just let my mind wander from topic to topic. You may not see many posts from me for a while because I am brainstorming and gathering thoughts for a wide array of posts. Eventually I’ll reach a point where I have enough material and momentum on a particular topic and it will be easy to flesh out the idea in a concentrated way.

My brainstorms are almost always longer than the finished product. It’s easier much easier to achieve quality by paring down an idea than by expanding on it.

In conclusion, both have a central role in creating a finished product. Write all your thoughts down then edit them. And for creativity’s sake please file a restraining order.