Creativity To The Max: Brainstorming Amidst Chaos, Or Silence

MANILA: How do you like my room? You are free to associate it with anything you can think of!

I have twin monitors, a table lamp, a printer, an electric fan, an air conditioner, and hundreds of books & printouts to the left of where I sit (you can see my seat cushion below). I am based in Manila; my wife Ampy had this little room in our apartment built sometime in January 2008, the cash being part of my professional fee for writing a book for International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), which is based in India; so this much space has been a mute witness to the writing of hundreds upon hundreds of my long essays published online since then, and at least 10 books published on paper, 7 by ICRISAT, an average of 50,000 words each. Unbelievable? Thank God.

In the midst of such clutter, how can I be so prolific? That's what I want to tell you about – to encourage you to be creative yourself. Given any clutter. And given any age. Please note I'm a senior citizen. I began to blog intently only 10 years ago, when I began writing for ICRISAT, and now have come out with 2,700 essays of at least 1K words each, an accomplishment that deserves to be in the Guinness Book Of World Records. (This one you're reading is 2,222 words.) I have 2 collector blogs: A Magazine Called Love (blogspot.co.id), which has at least 2,200 of my long essays, and iWord Affairs (blogspot.co.id), which has at least 500 extended essays, all written by me. (The collector blogs, my invention, are for managing my uploads.) Also note that each essay has an appropriate Beginning, Middle and End, not simply an assortment of paragraphs strung together with breakers such as dotted lines or a series of # in-between.

Indeed, I have the out/standing 5-year old claim: "Frank H, world's most highly original, creative writer online" (I put that as the tagline of A Magazine Called Love). That is, I am myself creativity to the max that you can't find anywhere else. If you are creative, nothing can stop you. You know how to deal with mess, litter or disorder: It's not an obstacle, it's an opportunity. It's not a dead air, it's a dead mind. Today, with so much information & communication technology available to anyone who minds, it's the gray matter that matters; it's the mind that counts.

Read on!

Brainstorming, with or without clutter. The key to creative thinking leading to creative writing is brainstorming, the only way you can come up with great ideas alone or come up with great copy in a creative group. I learned that 41 years ago yet when I was a copywriter for Tony Zorilla's Pacifica Publicity Bureau based in the City of Makati 1974-1975 under Nonoy Gallardo, Creative Director. It was at that time that my good friend Orlino "Orli" Ochosa (may God bless his soul) gifted me a copy of Edward De Bono's book The Mechanism Of Mind, published in 1968, which has been an indispensable guide for me in brainstorming for my essays and books.

You think brainstorming is easy? It is, once you have mastered the process. De Bono teaches you the PO / lateral thinking technique. More on this a little later. If you don't know how to go from here to there, you or your group are going nowhere except to embarrassing silences.

Someone who should know better about brainstorming, Neil Pavitt writes in Fast Company (22 September 2016, "You're Probably Not Brainstorming Long Enough," fastcompany.com):

There are lots of problems with brainstorms, but the main one is they don’t go on for long enough. They usually stop when people have run out of ideas and you get those embarrassing silences. But those embarrassing silences are when your unconscious starts engaging on the problem and is a vital part to coming up with great ideas.

I understand the whole article from which I have quoted is an edited excerpt from Pavitt's book Brainhack: Tips and Tricks to Unleash Your Brain's Full Potential published by Capstone, 2016. That's quite a mouthful as a title, titillating too. And Pavitt is not nobody; here he is as described in THNK (thnk.org):

Neil Pavitt has spent over twenty-five years as a writer and Creative Director in advertising at big London agencies like Saatchi & Saatchi. He has worked on many global brands and has won a gold at the Cannes advertising festival and two D&AD yellow pencils.

An achiever. D&AD Professional Awards come in colors: Wood, Graphite, Yellow, White and Black for many categories, including Art Direction, Branding, Crafts for Advertising, Creativity for Good, and Writing for Design (dandad.org).

I don't quarrel with positions and awards. But I have a quarrel to pick with Pavitt when it comes to brainstorming; and when he says that the main problem with brainstorming is length of time spent, to him I say now:

Absolutely not, no Sir! I never run out of ideas, I never run into embarrassing silences. If you run out of ideas or into embarrassing silences, you're not brainstorming in the best way possible. Among other things, there should always be embarrassing suggestions, but never embarrassing silences.

Anybody can learn from Edward De Bono's PO / lateral thinking, which I learned yet in 1975. I have written many essays about it (try my other essay on that subject, "Brainstorming Edward De Bono: A Po Moment" (08 August 2016, Common Cause, blogspot.co.id), in which I discuss the power of Po, which I have found not only superb but perfect for brainstorming.

Nowadays, De Bono spells it PO (allcaps) as an acronym to Provocation Operation, that is to say, when PO is invoked during a brainstorming, whatever is said or has been said is only to incite and should excite everyone to share their thoughts some more in reaction to, in alignment with, or something different from what has been said or presented. I prefer De Bono's original Po(cap & lower case), out of which in a moment of insight I discovered that Po stood best for Power, and indeed I have come up with what I call the Po Moment (for more details, click the link above). So, when you invoke "Po" as you brainstorm alone or with company, nothing should stop the ideas from coming in from all directions and in all shapes and sizes and colors. No silences. The power of an idea expressed in a sound, Po, is awesome.

If your brainstorming stalls, it is most likely that somebody is being negative. The best brainstorming is the generation of an untold number of positions without a single opposition. The best brainstormers are Yes Men (embracing Women).

And what is the proof that I am right in what I'm saying? I already told you: I should be in Guinness by now. My 2,700 essays written in the last decade are equal to at least 3 million words, equivalent to 60 books of 50,000 words each, 200 pages plus. Not to forget to mention that I just turned 76 last Saturday, 17 September. That means I began writing those 3 million words when I was already 66 years old. So? Age doesn't matter; gray matter does. Nothing succeeds like success; you can't put a good mind down. May you have more Po Moments to come yourself!

In brainstorming, the whole exercise must be free-wheeling, with no encumbrances, no restrictions, no boundaries, no limits, no rules. So: No contributions are objectionable, even if they are! You consider the possibilities, not the limitations. You bounce it, and see where it goes.

And exactly how do you deal with clutter, with so many ideas and pieces of information calling attention to themselves? That's why you need to brainstorm looking for ideas, not looking for trouble!

I say now that when you brainstorm, feel free to look for associations. Any kind. The associations themselves must be free, no encumbrances, no restrictions, no boundaries, no limits, no rules.

Brainstorming must become a habit so that you can brainstorm anywhere automatically without telling yourself to do it. I find it easy to do it with ballpen and paper anywhere, including the john. You must cultivate the habit of free associations in order to be continuously creative. You must jot down your random thoughts.

Free Associations Habit:

Free: not affected or restricted by a given condition or circumstance; not bound by convention or the rules of form; without restraint (American Heritage Dictionary).

Some synonyms of free: no ifs or buts, unlimited, unqualified, unconditional (Thesaurus.com).

Association: a mental connection or relation between thoughts, feelings, ideas, or sensations; a remembered or imagined feeling, emotion, idea, or sensation linked to a person, object, or idea; causal connection (American Heritage Dictionary).

Some synonyms of association: combination, coalition, tie-in, partnership, union (Thesaurus.com).

Habit: a recurrent, often unconscious pattern of behavior that is acquired through frequent repetition; an established disposition of the mind or character; customary manner or practice (American Heritage Dictionary).

Some synonyms of habit: custom, second nature, frame of mind, inclination (Thesaurus.com).

Note that my entire prescription for creative thinking comprises only 3 words and has a plural noun: Free Associations Habit. When you're brainstorming for a new or improved idea, you don't stop at only 1 association; they can be as many as 100 or any untold number of combinations or links, crazy or not.

I say anyassociation, which will suggest any otherassociation. Remember what the creative people say: "You don't have to be crazy, but it helps!"

The Free Associations Habit is my reinvention of Edward De Bono's PO / lateral thinking.

The Free Associations Habit is unlike Tony Buzan's mind-mapping – Buzan's is logical, restricted lateral thinking. Mapping is so much critical thinking, not so much creative thinking.

The Free Associations Habit is unlike Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path To Higher Creativity (juliacameronlive.com). That is the complete title of her book published in 1992, which became a bestseller. A book review says of it (amazon.com):

The Artist's Way is the seminal book on the subject of creativity. An international bestseller, millions of readers have found it to be an invaluable guide to living the artist's life. 

I must disagree. Not Cameron's, but the seminal or ground-breaking book on creativity was Edward De Bono's The Mechanism Of Mind where he introduced and explained the use of the device Po for brainstorming without restrictions and lateral thinkingfor searching for more new or improved ideas. De Bono's is higher creativity.

Also, Cameron's formula requires that you must discipline yourself to do "morning pages" as Carrie Battan puts it (04 May 2016, "'The Artist's Way' In An Age Of Self-Promotion," The New Yorker, newyorker.com):

The book is a program designed to help readers reject the devils of self-doubt on their shoulders and pursue creative activity not as a profession but as a form of therapy. At the core of the process is a ritual called "morning pages," based on the belief that writing out three pages of free-form writing, in longhand, each morning, will unclog one's mental and emotional channels of all the muck that gets in the way of being happy, productive and creative. The other essential ritual involves taking oneself on an "artist's date" each week – planning an outing to a museum or some other side of inspiration, free from the weight of obligation or work.

Not good enough for me. I hate rituals. If indeed Cameron's book has sold 4 million copies, and the book was published in 1992, so after 24 years I'd like to hear from hundreds of thousands of those book buyers.

An author I admire, Ray Bradbury, came up with his word-association technique for brainstorming before writing. He describes the process thus, as quoted by Jill Jepson (06 September 2013, Jill Jepson for writers, jilljepson.com):

... In my early twenties I floundered into a word-association process in which I simply got out of bed each morning, walked to my desk, and put down any word or series of words that happened along in my head. I would then take arms against the word, or for it, and bring on an assortment of characters to weigh the word and show me its meaning in my own life. An hour or two hours later, to my amazement, a new story would be finished and done.

Bradbury's word association is good, but it also requires morning pages like Cameron's The Artist's Way. And like I said, I abhor rituals. I insist: Creativity should always be a spur of the moment, not a ceremony. A snap of the finger, snap of the mind.

In cultivating your own Free Associations Habit, you don't need a certain time of day to be creative. There are no morning pages, only creative moments, including just before you fall asleep. I wish you now your own creative Po Moments!

I can teach free associations one on one, or via online mentoring. Meantime, if this essay is inadequate, I am offering a free half-day demo for 50 people, where I will do on-the-spot creative writing, your place, not mine, with an LCD/LED projector at hand. Email me at frankahilario@gmail. @

29 September 2016. Essay word count, excluding this line: 2222