You know the feeling: You’re
at an impasse with a character or plot point. You’re frustrated. It’s going
nowhere, but you’re on a deadline. You’ve run out of ways to spur your muse.
Consider this: Don’t work so hard. The less you push,
the better your chances of getting what you need. Your brain needs some space
to do its best work. In other words, relax and trust it.
Isaac Asimov realized this.
Whenever he experienced writer’s block, he knew it was useless to force the
issue. So, he’d go to a movie. He’d let his subconscious process the material
in its own way. Once he returned, he invariably had new ideas. (I did this
once, and got ideas before I even sat down to watch.)
Many writers, inventors,
scientists, artists, and mathematicians have discovered the same thing. When
they’re focused on something else, or on nothing, the idea they need arrives –
aha! –seemingly from nowhere.
But these insights seem so random. We think those
people just got lucky.
According to recent neuroscience
discoveries, that’s not true. Insights arrive with preparation.
Any of us
can harness our resources to produce flashes of genius that will move our
writing along. With a little work, we can prime our brain for “aha! moments.”
Better yet, we can get them on a regular
basis.
I call them
“snaps,” because the aha! that really counts is insight plus momentum – it snaps
us toward action. It makes us drop everything and run to our desk. It might
even get us out of bed in the middle of the night. Sound exciting? It is!
I learned a
lot about this experience from a 19th century mathematician, who
described it to a group of psychiatrists. After reaching an impasse on a series
of problems, Henri Poincaré went to the seaside to relax. When he went for a
walk one morning, the idea he needed for resolving his impasse struck him at
once. It was “immediately certain.” Upon returning, he got back to work, but
there was one part that remained stubbornly mysterious. He worked on it day
after day, to no avail. Again, he went on a trip, and while walking along the
street, the solution hit him.
Comparing
unconscious ideas to atoms, Poincaré said, “During a period of apparent rest
and unconscious work, certain of them come unhooked from the wall and put in
motion. They flash in every direction through the space where they are
enclosed…. Then their mutual
impacts may produce new combinations.”
Conscious work
was necessary, he said, but it could go only so far. “We think we have done no
good because we have moved these elements in a thousand different ways in
seeking to assemble them,” he stated, “and have found no satisfactory
aggregate. But after this shaking up imposed on them by our will, these atoms
do not return to their primitive rest. They freely continue their dance.”
In a more modern frame, neuropsychiatrist
Nancy Andreason suggests that the brain is a self-organizing system of feedback
loops that constantly generates new thoughts, sometimes spontaneously. Using PET
scans, she found activity in the association cortex, where information from
diverse parts of the brain gets integrated.
The association cortex makes
it possible to gather a lot of information in one place. Thus, it creates the conditions for novel
associations. It makes sense, then, that when sudden insight occurs, the
idea seems to arrive fully formed. It is! We don’t realize it because we don’t
“feel” the brain working the way we do when we focus and concentrate, but it
does.
While we’re not looking, our brains have the chance to
mix and match all the ideas we’ve absorbed.
Here’s the
formula: Scan, sift, and solve. First, you work: you do your research. Be
diverse. Gather lots of different types of data. Immerse in your field of
expertise, but also read something new to you. This “idea stew” forms your
knowledge base. This is the scan
stage.
Now, for the
fun! Read through the material on which you’re blocked and then go do something
else. Relaxing your left brain releases your eager right brain to sift through and reshape the data into
new patterns. There is a lot of good
research to support how this works.
Then, let your
brain solve your problem. Stop
clenching. Give your brain room to play. Then, when you least expect it, an
idea will pop.
Consider these
other examples:
·
Jonas Salk was working on a cure for polio in a
dark basement in Pittsburgh. He failed time and again, so he traveled to Italy
to wander in a monastery. There, he experienced a rush of ideas, including the
one that resulted in the polio vaccine.
·
Martin Cooper was watching Star Trek when he first envisioned the cell phone.
·
Math professor Darren Crowdy let his mind wander
while listening to a lecture and he suddenly “saw” the solution to a
long-unsolved math puzzle.
·
J. K. Rowling was on a stalled train pondering
the plot of an adult novel when she snapped on a child wizard. “I simply sat
and thought, for four (delayed) hours,” she said, “and all the details bubbled
up in my brain.”
Start now to
learn your rhythms. After working, walk, take a shower, throw a stick for your
dog: do something that relaxes the cognitive load. This gives your brain the
energy it needs to merge data you’ve supplied and switch on your inner green light.
Once you’ve learned what works, set up the conditions for doing it on a regular
basis. You’ll be amazed by how often your brain will surprise you.
Katherine
Ramsland is a writer and professor of forensic psychology and criminal justice.
Among her 58 books are The Murder Game,
The Mind of a Murderer, and Snap!
Seizing Your Aha! Moments. She has published over 1,000 articles, is a #1
Wall Street Journal bestseller, and blogs for Psychology Today.
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