Image by sirwiseowl via Flickr

In my series on collecting and organizing ideas, I discussed mind-mapping as a brainstorming tool. Mind-mapping is a kind of free-association method in which ideas are generated by association with a central idea, and then each of the generated ideas in turn becomes a source of inspiration for further brainstorming. Mind-mapping is an interesting blend of right-brain creative exploration and left-brain order-making – although the graphic format and unboundedness of mind-mapping allows for unfettered ideation, the linking of ideas creates a self-organized final product. In fact, most mind-mapping software includes an option to export the seemingly unstructured “blob” of thought that appears on the screen into a neatly-formatted traditional outline, complete with Roman numerals and sub-headings.

Chuck Frey emailed me in response to my mention of mind-mapping to tell me about a post he’d just written on the future of mind-mapping software. His blog is “The MindMapping Software Blog, so we can probably assume that Chuck has spent more than a few minutes thinking about the subject.

According to Frey, mind-mapping software is still barely out of its infancy, and we can expect to see some interesting developments ahead as programmers develop software that allows us not only to visualize the connections between ideas in our heads, but the connections between those ideas and the vast wealth of data on the Web. “The mind map needs to become more of a ‘knowledge hub’,” he writes, “where information can be gathered, manipulated and analyzed.”

Returning to the present, one of the premier mind-mapping applications out there today is iMindMap, the only mind-mapping software officially endorsed by Tony Buzan, the main figure responsible for developing and popularizing mind-mapping. The developers of iMindMap have taken great pains to make the experience of creating mind-maps on the computer as close as possible to the experience of drawing them with pencil and paper. In addition to brainstorming, iMindMap supports a wide range of planning activities, and integrates well with both MS Office and OpenOffice.

iMindMap’s Ultimate version retails for $295 USD, putting it well out of the reach for many writers (including yours truly). But Emily Van Keogh of Buzan Online has offered to give away one free copy of the Ultimate edition to one of my readers.

Which means I get to have a contest!

Now, I could make it easy on you and ask you to send me an email and pick one at random, or something like that, but I want to get into the spirit of the thing. So to enter, I’m going to ask you to answer that oldest of questions posed to writers:

Where do you get your ideas?

You can enter in one of two ways. First, you can leave a comment on this post with your answer. The other way is to write a post of your own, in any public forum you have access too – your own website, LiveJournal, even Twitter if you’re that concise – and put a link to your post in the comments on this post. Just make sure that anyone can read your answer, wherever you decide to post it. (I’d appreciate a link back to the contest, too, but it’s not a requirement.)

Enter by the end of October – that’s the 31st of October for the calendrically-challenged – and I’ll randomly select one entry as a winner. Buzan Online will supply a download link and registration code. Make sure you include your email address in your comment so I can contact you if you’re the winner!

I’m looking forward to seeing your answers to this totally clichéd question. Let’s try to be creative and informative – maybe we can come up with the perfect answer and then nobody will have to ask it any more! And feel free to spread the word – the more the merrier!

Image via Wikipedia

While coming up with ideas might be easy, coming up with good ones is a bit harder. You increase your odds, of course, by coming up with lots and lots of ideas — out of a hundred or so, surely there ought to be one or two you can do something with!

Brainstorming is an effective way of coming up with tons of ideas. The idea is simple: just sit down, clear your head, and start writing down anything that comes to mind. Let your mind wander, and your pencil follow.

Of course, you don’t need fancy technology to brainstorm effectively — a pen or pencil and a piece of paper will do — but if you work at the computer a lot, it might be suitable to brainstorm in the same medium you write in. For simple brainstorming, an open word processor document will do.

Brainstorming, though, is rarely so simple. Many people find that a bit of structure is helpful — limitations often spark the greatest creativity, after all. Here are a few kinds of brainstorming exercises, some that can benefit from technological tools and some that can’t, that might be useful.

Forced Association

Jurgen Wolff told me about this on Lifehack Live. The idea is, write down a list of random words or phrases — maybe the first word on the first 10 pages of a book, or random words found flipping through a dictionary, or ten things on your desk, or whatever. Then force yourself to come up with one idea for each of them. Say you’re a fantasy writer, and somehow you’ve come up with “orange, computer, pen…” (for illustration purposes, I’ll just use three words).

• Orange: Yurok the Viking is surprised to discover an orange amid the frozen wastelands of the North.
• Computer: What would a computer look like in a fantasy setting? What would it do? Phineas the Magician sets out to create a magical machine to track the stars.
• Pen: A magical pen that, when used, creates the reality that’s written.

Are those great ideas? Maybe not — but they’re ideas. As you come up with more and more, you start to surprise yourself — your brain loosens up and starts really speculating. Which is great if you’re a speculative fiction writer, right?

Mind-mapping

Mind-mapping is a visual brainstorming technique in which a central theme is written in the middle of a page and random associations are “branched” off in connected circles. Check out Tony Buzan’s mind-mapping page for examples of how you can work with mind-maps and what you can do with them. Because mind-mapping is spatial instead of linear, they are supposed to allow your brain’s more creative side more free rein.

Although many mind-mappers find the physicality of pen or pencil on paper inspiring, others are just as comfortable working on a keyboard. What you may give up in physical intimacy with your medium is, for many, more than compensated for by the ability to easily save, search, and share their mind-maps. There are dozens of tools, some desktop-based and some accessed via the web, to make creating and storing digital mind-maps a breeze. Some free programs and services include:

• FreeMind: FreeMind is a free, open-source program for your Mac, Linux, or Windows PC (you do need Java installed, however). Its powerful mind-mapping engine is quite simple to work with, and while the mind-maps you create with FreeMind won’t necessarily be the most beautiful in the world, they are functional.
• bubbl.us: bubbl.us is a free service that allows you to create very slick, attractive mind-maps online. You can work by yourself, or easily collaborate with others using the simple sharing features. The whole system is very visual — ideas can be color-coded, bubbles can be dragged around the screen, and emerging connections between ideas can be drawn in.
• Mindomo: Like bubbl.us, Mindomo is a web-based service, but geared somewhat more towards a professional audience — its mind-maps are less artsy and “chunky” than bubbl.us’. They are also much more flexible, with an interface that looks very much like Word 2007’s Ribbon Bar allowing you the ability to fine-tune shapes, fonts, colors, and much else.

Writing prompts

A writing prompt is an assignment, something you’re given to write about. “Write a 200-word essay on ‘What I did this summer’.” Some writers use these as warm-up exercises, to get into the rhythm of writing; others try to create original works around prompts.

There are several sources of free writing prompts online — some are just lists of topics, some post a new one every week, some will let you sign up to have one delivered by email at regular intervals (daily, weekly, etc.). Here’s a few:

• Language is a virus: Random prompt generator. Sample:Write as you think, as close as you can come to this, that is, put pen to paper and don’t stop. Experiment writing fast and writing slow.
• Prompt Generator: Another random prompt generator. Sample: “A home in the community has burned. Tell how you would help the family recover from the loss.”
• Creative Writing Prompts: Over three hundred prompts; mouse over them to see the prompt pop up. Sample: Write about a good thing gone bad.
• Writer’s Digest: A new prompt is on their homepage every week. This is the archive of past prompts. Sample:Babies typically talk in babbles that adults can’t understand. But one day, while at the park, you’re sitting on a bench next to two babies. They start their babbling, when all of a sudden you realize you can understand them. Even more, they are plotting a nefarious plan. Write this scene.
• Can Teach: A long list of questions to answer. Sample: What is a good neighbor?

Don’t be put off by the fact that some of these are intended for schoolchildren. The idea is to get some random thought to spark your imagination. And they can be equally as profound as the ones for professional writers — after all, Robert Frost wrote a not-too-shabby poem on the topic of “What is a good neighbor?”

Oblique Strategies

Created by artsy musician Brian Eno, Oblique Strategies is a set of cards. When you’re stuck, you pick one and do whatever it says.

Several online versions of Oblique Strategies exist, such as David Ray’s Oblique Strategies webpage. Click “Random Card” and something random comes up, like “Mechanicalize something idiosyncratic”. What does it mean? I don’t know — maybe your trusty hero has a machine that allows his mother’s voice to whisper in his ear? Maybe there’s a mechanic that fixes broken hearts — or breaks healed ones? It’s oblique, that’s the point!

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“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,” poet Robert Herrick advised his readers — for all too soon, you’ll be old and rosebud-gathering will be just one of many things you are no longer capable of.

That’s the normal reading of the poem, but it occurs to me that it is in the very nature of rosebuds themselves to disappear — you have but a brief instant to pick them before they open into flowers, the rosebud gone forever.

For the writer, ideas are rosebuds — brief, fleeting thoughts that flit across our minds and then, if not captured in just that instant, disappear forever. Since those ideas are the stock in trade of a writer, catching them in that quick instant is essential. Unlike the flower-picker, though, writers’ rosebuds are not found only in the garden — they can be spotted at any time, requiring us to remain always alert and ready to pounce with our metaphorical shears.

There are a number of tools a writer can use to make sure s/he records as many ideas as s/he can — and great tools, also, for keeping track of them and calling them up when we need them. These tools range from decidedly low-tech pen-and-paper solutions to advanced freeform databases. In this series, I’ll offer a set of tools you can use in various contexts to capture ideas as they occur, and another set of tools to manage and reclaim them.

First, though, we need to think a little bit about process. Tying all these parts together requires work — not a lot of work, and not hard work, but work nonetheless. Ideally, it becomes part of your routine, a set of habits that occur automatically when triggered by a new idea.

There are four phases to idea collecting:

1. Generate: We don’t have to wait until ideas come to us — in fact, doing so can doom us as writers! Give yourself time to let your mind do what it’s best at: come up with new ideas.
2. Capture: Get ideas down wherever they occur to you..
3. Process: Transfer ideas into a central “repository” to keep them safe and available.
4. Organize and Evaluate: Review your system to pull out ideas worth pursuing right now.

As you look at the tools in the next few posts, think about how you can use them as part of an overall system. Each “phase” (except “Process”) will have its own post, with tools and tips for generating, capturing, and organizing ideas. Processing isn’t done with a tool, it’s done with time — sitting down and copying everything into your central system. Ideally, you’ll do this once a week or so — the point isn’t to figure out what’s good or bad, but just to handle the basic “bookkeeping” of transferring words from one medium to another.