Writing Quote: Gore Vidal

The brain that

doesn't feed itself,

eats itself.

Gore Vidal

Sources: Quote, Picture

The 6 Best Board Games for Brainstorming

Looking for a fun way to brainstorm? Are you lost in aggravation from a bad case of the block? Play a game! But not just any game – try one (or all) of these excellent Brainstorming Games. These games are designed to tickle your mind, to tease your intellect and to tap in to your brainpower.

Scrabble

The classic word game, Scrabble challenges you to find words using a limited number of letters and spaces. Maybe you'll play a whole game, jotting down ideas as you go, or maybe you'll just have some fun shuffling the tiles around to form words and phrases. In either case, this game will help you use words you didn't even know you knew.

Boggle

Boggle is a crazy game that could be called "Scrabble in a box". Shake the letter dice and then watch them as they settle to find as many words as you can!

Apples to Apples

The great game of finding the ultimate non-sequiter is also the best party game you'll ever find. Match any one of your crazy nouns (like Britney Spears, Poker, Fuzz, Nintendo, and Lava Lamps) and choose the one that best matches a randomly selected adjective (like Classy). If you've got the best match, you win the round. (My pick would have to be Fuzz.)What Apples to Apples does best, however, is force you to find connections between seemingly disparate concepts. For the freelancer, that's an essential skill.

Balderdash

As one Amazon commenter puts it, Balderdash "combines wordsmithing and bluffing" - can you think of a better pair of skills for the freelance writer? Neither can I.

Scattergories

This may very well be the big mother of all brainstorming games. Why? Because all you do in this game is brainstorm! You're given a list of categories, you roll a mondo-alphabet-die to select a letter, and then it becomes a race against the clock to fill each category with an entry that starts with that letter.

It may just be the best game ever.

Cranium

With four categories challenging your trivia knowledge, vocabulary, artistic abilities and performing talents, Cranium is a great game to play when you're looking to stretch your creative muscles beyond the realm of the written word.

How many great ideas have YOU lost?

You never know quite when an idea will pop into your mind, do you? Surely I’m not the only one that finds inspiration in the shower, am I? (Actually, I believe the shower was a favorite of Stan Freberg.) At any given moment, whether I’m pounding out a rough draft, researching a topic or just doing a bit of “mind grazing”, I may have an idea that strikes. Maybe it’s something I read that strikes my fancy. Maybe it’s a tangent I wish I had the time to explore. Maybe it’s just a fun word that I like.

The fact is that you need a place to record these thoughts and experiences. Chances are high that you’ve lost a lot of great ideas simply for lack of scrap paper. How many times have you jotted down a name and phone number on the back of an old receipt? Just how many of those stray scraps of paper actually get used later? If you’re at all like me, the end up going through the wash the next time you do laundry, and you’re stuck with a little wad that used to be paper.

How to solve this problem? My dad always told me that if you have a weakness, use a system to compensate for it. If you have trouble remembering where you put your keys, then give them a specific place where you always put them. During the day, they’re in my left hip pocket. Once I walk in the door, they go in a small basket on the desk that’s by the door. If they’re not in the basket, they’re in my pocket. See? The system provides a simple solution.

My system for capturing important information and ideas is equally simple. If I’m away from the computer, I have my hPDA with me at all times, allowing me to jot it down then and there. I use a Mead Index Keeper, and I can quickly file away any index cards or scraps of paper I might need to save. This way, these clippings and musings have a designated place and are always accessible.

When I’m at the computer, I’m able to remove an entire step from this process by having a similar document there on the desk top. I have it labeled “Open Jotter”, because that’s exactly what it is, a running document that I can jot notes into. Cool bit of info? Jot it down. Any insights, factoids or flashes of brilliance are jotted down, in whatever order they happen to come in.

At the end of the day (if I remember, sometimes it’s the end of the week…) I go over everything and refile it as needed. Contact information goes in one place. Blog post ideas go another place. Large chunks of fitfully typed ramblings go into a folder all their own.

The two most important points are these:
1. There is a designated place for all of these stray thoughts.
2. This place is always immediately accessible.

Thus, I’m able to get stuff out of my head and recorded in some way, and I can do so with minimum hassle. This allows my mind to focus on the tasks at hand without trying to keep track of everything else all the time. Like my keys, I don’t need to remember where I set them down last, I already know that if they’re not in my pocket, they’re in the basket on my desk. Likewise, I never have to scramble to record a thought; I just whip out my handy Hipster or go straight to the Open Jotter.

How do you corral your thoughts?

Ubiquitous Thought Capture

One of the beauties of the Hipster PDA (which I've been using religiously for months now) is that it offers an extremely portable note taking system. For writers, especially those who are always on the look out for article ideas, this thought capture is essential.

Here's a wonderful video about a man who writes/designs crossword puzzles. I love everything he has to say, so just watch the clip.

Another thing I use, which I'll elaborate on later, is an "Open Jotter" document on my computer. It's an ongoing file of anything that floats into my mind. Whatever I'm doing, I can quickly jot it down, and get back to whatever I'm working on, secure in the fact that my brilliance (or lack thereof) is recorded to return to at a later time.

My Writing Articles

Writing Articles by Brian Westover

12 Surefire Brainstorming Techniques - Are you stuck in a mental rut? Battling writer's block? Perhaps you're simply looking for new ideas. When your creativity flies the coop, these 12 techniques will snag your muse, bring it home and whip it into shape! If you can reason and write a list, you can brainstorm!

10 Simple Steps - Basics of the Writing Process - Even the professional writer can use the occasional brush-up on the basics! This simple overview of the writing process will show you how to start with only an idea and nurture it into a full grown article or even book.

Before You Write - Effective writers learn quickly that the most important keys of writing are preparation and planning. Before you even take a pen to the page, lay a solid foundation by using the pre-writing process outlined here.

The 10 Question Topic Test - It's difficult to take your unsorted, unpolished ideas and decide which are saleable ideas and which aren't. It's just as hard trying to develop those ideas for a query. Here are ten questions to apply to your idea to determine what markets it fits, how well it will sell and how to flesh it out for both a query letter and a full article.