Writing and the Creative Life: For a More Creative Brain, Follow These 5 Steps

In a recent blog post, James Clear cites a short 1940 guide written by James Webb Young called “A Technique for Producing Ideas”. In it Young contends that “innovative ideas happen when you develop new combinations of old elements.” To that end, he posits 5 steps to generating creative ideas:

1. Gather new material. At first, you learn. During this stage you focus on 1) learning specific material directly related to your task and 2) learning general material by becoming fascinated with a wide range of concepts.
2. Thoroughly work over the materials in your mind. During this stage, you examine what you have learned by looking at the facts from different angles and experimenting with fitting various ideas together.
3. Step away from the problem. Next, you put the problem completely out of your mind and go do something else that excites you and energizes you.
4. Let your idea return to you. At some point, but only after you have stopped thinking about it, your idea will come back to you with a flash of insight and renewed energy.
5. Shape and develop your idea based on feedback. For any idea to succeed, you must release it out into the world, submit it to criticism, and adapt it as needed.

Clear tells the story of how in the 1870s and 1880s, Frederic Eugene Ives used this precise approach to solve a problem of how to print photographic images in newspapers.

For writers, since it’s almost certain there are no new stories, we really do engage in connecting preexisting ideas and coming up with new combinations instead of generating concepts from whole cloth. No shame in that, rather we should embrace it as an essential part of the craft.

For the rest of Clear’s blog post, go here.