Brainstorming
If you already know something about your topic, you might begin collecting ideas by brainstorming, listing the things you know in no particular order. Freely associate one idea with another; let your mind take you in whatever direction it will. Try not to censor yourself or edit your brainstorming because you simply do not know what will emerge or how valuable it might be in the end. Write quickly. Do not worry about spelling or punctuation; abbreviate. Also, because all your ideas may not occur during one brainstorming session, keep your list over several days, adding new thoughts as they come to you. Here is a typical brainstorming list.
When you complete your brainstorming list, number or color-code the entries that closely relate to one another. This is sorting, the first step in thinking about possible organizational patterns and outlining.
WPTips
Brainstorming
Brainstorming on a computer stimulates your thinking because it allows you to keep up with your thoughts, especially if you are a fast typist. Moreover, because a word processor provides a different medium for capturing your thoughts, it may take you down more imaginative paths.
Try brainstorming with your screen switched off or turned down low.
Brainstorming relies on free-association (the presence of one idea suggesting another), but some people find that looking at what they have written inhibits rather than stimulates their thinking. If you try this, every so often turn on the screen momentarily to make sure nothing has gone wrong technically and that you are actually capturing your thoughts. When you are done, turn on the screen to see what you have and print it out if you wish.
Clustering
Another strategy for generating ideas and gathering information is clustering. Put your topic, or a key word or phrase about your topic, in the center of a sheet of paper and draw a circle around it. (The example on page 10 shows the topic gun control in the centre.) Draw four or five (or more) lines out from this circle, and jot down main ideas about your topic; draw circles around them. Repeat the process by drawing lines from the secondary circles and adding examples, details, and maybe questions you have. Or, you may find yourself pursuing one line of thought through many add-on circles before beginning a new cluster. Do whatever works for you. As with brainstorming, keep writing-do not stop to think about being neat or capitalizing correctly.
Clustering allows you to generate material and sort it into meaningful groupings at the same time. Again, sorting is the first step to outlining.
WPTips
Clustering
If your word-processing program has graphics capability, try clustering on screen. Use balloons, boxes, tree diagrams, and lines to diagram and group your ideas. This can be fun as well as productive.
Keeping a Journal
Many people find their best ideas come when they are not actually working on a writing assignment, so they have learned to keep a journal. They carry a little notebook to record thoughts and observations, bits of overheard conversation, ironies, insights, and interesting facts and statistics from newspaper and magazine articles.
Freewriting
Journals are also useful for doing freewriting. Freewriting is simply writing for a brief uninterrupted period of time, say five or ten minutes, on anything that comes into your mind. It is a way of getting your mind working and easing into the writing task. Start with a blank sheet of paper or computer screen and write as quickly as you can without stopping for any reason whatsoever. Don’t worry about punctuation or spelling. Write as if you were talking to your best friend. If you run dry, don’t stop; repeat the last few things you wrote or write “I have nothing to write” over and over again, and you’ll be surprised-writing with more content will begin to emerge. Once you have become comfortable with open-ended freewriting, you can move to more focused freewriting in which you write about specific aspects of your topic. By freewriting regularly, you will come to feel more natural and comfortable about writing.
Researching
You may sometimes want to supplement what you know about your topic with research. This does not necessarily mean formal library work (see UB); firsthand observations and interviews with people knowledgeable about your topic are also forms of research and usually more up-to-date. Whatever your form of research, take careful notes (see RESCH 2c), so you can accurately paraphrase an author or quote interviewees.
Rehearsing Ideas
Some writers find it helpful to rehearse what they are going to write before committing their thoughts to paper. Rehearsal involves running ideas or phrasings through your mind until they are fairly well crafted and then transferring them to paper. The image of the writer at the keyboard, staring off into space, perhaps best captures the essence of this technique. Rehearsing may suit your personality and the way you work; moreover, because it requires a lot of thought, rehearsing may help you generate ideas. Rehearsing may also be done orally. Try taking ten or fifteen minutes to talk your way through your paper with a roommate or friend.
Visualizing your Topic
Some experts believe that much of our thinking is done through images. Tapping into those images can be a productive way of developing your ideas. For example, if you wish to describe a totem pole, visualizing one you recently saw in British Columbia can make your task easier. Imagining that totem pole can also help you to visualize the lives of the traditional Haida people on the West coast.
Thinking Creatively
There are many definitions of creativity, but in one way or another, creativity involves moving beyond what is generally regarded as normal or expected. To push an idea one step further, to make a connection not recognized by others, to step to one side of your topic and see it in a new light, to ask a question no one else would, to arrive at a fresh insight, is to be creative. Creativity and inspired thinking are within the reach of most writers if they take the writing process seriously and work hard.
