Brainstorming

Maybe you think you’re not creative or smart, but the fact is, your brain is full of great ideas. So you may be glad to know that, as with every other facet of life, you can follow a process that will enhance your creative powers.

	The Writer's Block Process (most writers follow this, but don't you! avoid it at all costs!)
	You get an idea. Your eyes start to light up. You realize the idea is imperfect. You toss the idea into your mental garbage can. You go looking for another good idea--hopefully one that's perfect from conception.

Fact is, you’ve probably tossed a lot of good ideas because you didn’t take the time to consider them thoroughly before discarding them. So how can you avoid this self-defeating process?

All you need to do is quit doing two jobs at once—the first and the last steps in the writing process.

You’ve been painting your house before putting up the dry wall.

You’ve been frosting the cake before preheating the oven

You’ve been looking for your goodnight kiss before you ask for a date

Leave the last step for later. For now, your only job is to produce ideas, not to judge and edit them. So any idea that comes, consider it. Write it down. Give it time to develop a little. Don’t even begin to judge it. Maybe you’ll discard it eventually, maybe you won’t use it till later. That doesn’t matter. Just make sure you don’t loose any good ideas to the writer’s block process.

And don’t take short cuts here-write down your ideas. Writing allows you to turn off the part of your brain that wants to prejudge the ideas flowing in. It lets your production area work in peace.

Here are a few good brainstorming methods. Each has different strengths and each comes highly recommended. Each may be used at any stage of the writing process.

Brainstorm

This is an easy one. It’s especially good for producing a large quantity of ideas to get yourself started at any task. Simply write down your ideas as they come. Some people like to write each one on a separate piece of paper (particularly if done in a group to that each idea may later be considered separately).

It may help to have a specific question in mind. A few questions you might use if you’re searching for a topic could be:

What do I care about? What am I interested in?
What do I know about that I could teach others about?
What are my pet peeves (ones that have solutions, of course)?
What are some important issues in today’s society?

Be sure to leave room to consider topics that don’t sound like "college paper" topics. In other words, just because you’ve mostly seen examples of papers written on large social issues doesn’t mean that a paper on a local issue, or one that only applies to a small audience, won’t work as well or even better.

Cluster

Clustering helps to ensure that you consider all major segments of your topic (or whatever it is you’re working on). Papers that skip important aspects usually show a failure to cluster.

Clustering involves taking your main topic (or whatever) and drawing a circle around it. From this main circle, lines go out to connect aspects having to do with the main subject. This continues outward in any direction until you feel you’ve satisfactorily developed your ideas.

Here’s what a cluster might look like:

Freewrite

Freewriting’s a good way to generate ideas or to just get your ideas moving. The main idea is to start writing and to just keep going. Again, no judgment until later. Many people who freewrite don’t even look back at what they wrote. Here are a few methods you might try:

use a pen or pencil (whichever you’re most comfortable with) and set a time limit during which you won’t stop writing. This may mean you have a lot of sentences that sound like "I don’t have anything to say, I wonder how much time I have left, look at that spot on the wall that I have to wash before apartment inspections…." Don’t worry about that. Once you’ve finished, you might find a few ideas mixed in with all the time-filler. A common experience is that freewriters never quite finish their freewriting—the freewrite becomes the first draft.
If you prefer to keyboard instead of writing, try turning off your monitor or dimming it so you have no way to look back at what you’ve written and judge it. Some people use this method just to sort out their thoughts, to sort of think out loud, even if they immediately delete anything they’ve written.

Remember, brainstorming is not uniquely linear. You can use it at any stage of your writing and revising.

If you have taken the time to brainstorm before (or soon after) starting writing your paper, click here.