Have you ever had one of those light bulb moments where an idea comes in out of the blue?

It’s the sort of idea that you feel compelled to act on and it can make you drop everything or keep you awake in the early hours. Perhaps you had a vision for a new invention that will make you rich, an idea for a novel or even something to save or change the world.

These types of inspirations are wonderful.  They seem to come in at random when you are least expecting them and they happen to all of us. They also seem to come in fully formed in less than a second.

Isaac Newton apocryphally had one when an apple fell on his head leading to his Laws of Motion and Theory of Gravity. What actually happens in these cases is that you are thinking of something other than the task at hand.

To understand where these types of inspiration come from, it’s worth looking at times when they don’t happen. Say you are suffering from road rage or you’ve had an email that’s upset you, I think you’ll agree it’s hard to be creative. On the other hand, if your inner critic or internal dialogue is running, it has the effect of damping inspiration and the flow of ideas.

Mind maps are a really useful tool to use to get you into a creative way of thinking.  The left brain tells the right brain, “Leave the maps to me, I’m good at structure and navigation.”  While the logical left hemisphere is busy, the right brain is left free to sneak under its radar and get into full creative flow.

To get into a dissociated mode where you are “not thinking” about an issue, here’s a simple mind mapping exercise. Note that you don’t need any special software, pen and paper is just fine.

In the middle of a piece of paper, draw a picture that represents the opportunity or issue on which you would like some inspiration.

Now get any book and pick four pages at random and count down to the 7th line on each page. When you get to the 7^th line, find the first noun in that line for each page.

If there isn’t a noun, use the first adjective and if there aren’t 7 lines choose another page at random.

Now draw four branches off your central image with each of the words on them. Then, without thinking if possible, draw sub-branches with words that come to mind from each of these seed words. Like word association, just write down the first words that come into your head.  Feel free to make more associations from the new words.

You should end up with a picture something like the one above. You will find you have been taken down several new routes in your thinking and you may even have had a blinding flash of inspiration … and a great idea for a new book.

Many people have experienced what they might call a light bulb moment where you get a whole idea in less than a second – perhaps for a new product or an idea for a best selling book.

You may not be aware that there is not only an art but also a science to having such eureka moments.

Somewhat ironically Edison apocryphally tried 10,000 or so materials before he came across the ideal filament for light bulbs. He could have saved himself loads of time had he had a real light bulb moment and just think of what else he could have invented.

Imagine then how your business could benefit from you having that amazing light bulb moment to carry you through recession and how instilling a culture of creativity and inspiration would boost staff morale.

Now I’ve been fortunate to have had light bulb moments all my life and recently have been researching where such inspirations comes from and how to have them virtually on demand.

What I have found is that light bulb moments, and the commensurate increase in creativity, come from getting into one of two modes known as Whole Brain and Whole Mind Thinking. The latter being more powerful and needing a little more practice and discipline than the first.

Whole Brain Thinking is where the two hemispheres of the brain work in harmony. Often the left logical hemisphere suppresses creativity by saying things like, “You don’t have time” or “Don’t be stupid, people will laugh at your idea”. It is just acting to protect you as it would from a predator.

The easiest and best way to synchronise the hemispheres is to practice regular meditation. From a personal perspective, the benefits are immense to your mind and body and there are even iPod-like meditation machines available now if you want to experience deep meditative states.

In a business context however this could be frowned upon so there are more acceptable techniques. By far the best way is to use mind maps. The map seems to give the logical left brain something to keep it happy. It likes structure and you can imagine it saying, “A map, now that’s something I can work with.”

While the left brain is busy, the right can get to work and do its creative stuff. Remember that the “brain” of a business might comprise of more than one person and be a collective. So, for example, the left brained technical team can busy themselves on the map and structure while right brained marketeers unleash the ideas trapped inside them.

Whole Mind Thinking is a mode where the synchronised left and right frontal lobes of the conscious mind fuse with the unconscious mind and then can access what is known as the collective consciousness. It is postulated that the collective consciousness is where all ideas past, present and future reside.

To access this mode, you first need to address any embedded fears or patterns that might be holding you back that are residing in the unconscious mind.  These can manifest in many ways such as in creating writers’ block or self-destructive patterns of procrastination or fear.

Once the conscious and unconscious minds work in harmony, the path is clear for inspiration to flow.

For more information on the whole subject, get a copy of my new book Blocks with free access to guided MP3 visualisations whic will take you into the altered state of consciousness where Eureka Moments happen  …

Following trends – or “trend surfing” (which instantly means I’ve got my metaphors mixed!) as it’s now called – is a proven way to make money. It’s also the number one “creative” model used by the majority of mainstream publishers. Whether this is a worthy artistic approach or not – is for another discussion. But as commercial approaches to writing a book go it’s worth trying out. So, how do you benefit from trends – even if the thought of joining the “me-too” brigade makes you sick? Here are two approaches…

Jump on The Bandwagon

This is the “creative” model used by most big publishers. Their researchers and analysts look at what’s selling well and encourage the publisher to cash-in on the trend while it’s still hot!

The good thing about jumping on a Bandwagon is that readers usually have an insatiable appetite for their chosen subject. If they’ve read all the Stephenie Meyer books they’ll be hungry for more – so your vampire book – if pitched well can find its way in. You can bet if readers devour one book on a subject they’ll want more – just fit in and get ready for sales.

Just look at any mainstream publisher’s lists and you’ll see the same sort of stuff – the more of it there is – the more they’re making money from it.

Lampoon (Jump Off) The Bandwagon

Again, you can use the “Go Against The Grain” approach (see earlier about mis-matching) with trends too – a book entitled “The Danger of Low GI Diets!” or “It’s Not A Secret Stupid!” or “The Law of Attraction Requires Action” are all ways to tap into an audience who is sick of the mainstream pulp and popular books while also getting the “true believers” interested enough in reading it too.

Copy Cat Books Abound - pic by -Sel

Currently Popular trends as I write this…

• Vampires
• Witches and Wizards
• Pirates
• Law of Attraction – The Secret
• Finance and Debt
• Low Carb Diets (How low many GI books do you need?)
• Twitter and Social Media

Universally Popular trends …

• Spirituality and Religion
• Relationships
• Health and Diets
• Celebrity
• Romance
• Travel

An example of a direct Parody of a popular series in its own right would be the “Barry Trotter” books by Michael Gerber (and not the guy who wrote The E-Myth – an excellent book – I might add). Plus, the best-selling book of all time – “The Bible” – was parodied (to much commercial success) by Richard Dawkins – with “The God Delusion”.

The Author’s Creativity Matrix

This uses elements of matching and mis-matching as well as big picture and detail to produce lots of ideas and content to bring out a full range of creative flexibility you may not have thought you had. What you do with the resulting content is up to you but it’s likely that inspiration for the following elements of your book can all be covered…

• The big idea, benefits or promise
• A title and subtitle
• The main chapter headings
• Your target audience
• Words for the blurb

There are three main ways we sort data in our minds. They are:

1. Chunking Up (where you’ll get all the benefits and reasons why)
2. Chunking Down (where you’ll get all the detail)
3. Chunking Laterally (where you’ll often find the weirdest stuff and metaphors)

This is useful to know because, what most people describe as creativity is really a form of chunking up and chunking laterally – and when you’re not feeling creative it’s almost always because the details are bogging you down.
So here’s what you’re going to do…

1. Get a big sheet of paper
2. Write a theme, topic, audience, main idea or your subject in the centre (draw it as a picture too if you like) – I’ll choose “Being An Author”
3. Draw the lines as shown below
4. Use the questions below to help you chunk in all the directions (up, down, lateral) and negatively (left) and positively (right) from your main theme

Here’s an example of a completed Creativity Matrix…

Now, if you’re more analytical and prefer to work to a proven formula then here are some other useful tools to spark your imagination to come up with potentially profitable and definitely brilliant book ideas…

Meta Program: Pain Vs Gain

Some people are more motivated by what they don’t want than by what they do. You’ll likely have a tendency to one extreme or another and this tendency can leave blind spots in your creative thinking. So follow these steps and see what comes up…

• Choose a target audience – we’ll go for authors again
• Divide your page into 6 columns – with Pain to the left and Gain to the right
• List all the things your audience “is afraid of”, “hates”, “doesn’t want” in the third column
• List all the things your audience “is excited about”, “loves”, “does want” in the fourth column – you should have something that looks like this…

Continue Reading

Adding quotations to your blog posts and your books can be a great way of adding illumination and giving poignancy to what you are writing.

I use one at the start of each chapter in Blocks to reinforce the points I want to get across.

I even contacted authors of quotes I used that were alive and not only got permission to use them but additional endorsements – a real unexpected bonus.

This site is a brilliant source of quotes you can use from a wide range of sources. Another is the books you use in your research.

Here’s a load from authors for example

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/type/type_author.html

There’s also a selection of RSS feeds of quotes as well as feeds of Today’s Birthdays and Today in History. You can use these to add content to your blog sites and online profiles (like Facebook and Twitter) automatically.

http://www.brainyquote.com/link/index.html

Have fun & let me share some of my favorites

“We are not humans on a spiritual journey but spirits on a human journey”
- Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

“This we know. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons and daughters of the earth. All things are connected. This we know.”
- Chief Seattle

“The only thing you can take with you is your evolution. The only thing you can leave behind is your art.”
- Me, inspired by a few others
[Lisa, Wendy & Arwen, thanks a million]