#3:Systematising creativity, the wrong way to plan, and one year on
Here's what I've written in the last month
Hi!
Here’s what I’ve written lately.
Notes on ideation
To systematise creativity, try:
Intentionally entering diffuse mode (mind-wandering) — take a walk or shower, think about the problem before bed, work in it first thing in the morning, meditate on a topic.
Make idea lists — list every possible solution to a problem, list 100 ideas then prune down to one, generate many and use the least common ones.
Combine/recombine existing ideas
Use random prompts (e.g. a random word generator) as a starting point — someday I’d like to challenge myself to write 100 words on each of 100 randomly generated words
Use thought experiments — constrain resources, increase resources, eliminate options, work backwards from a solution.
Use question prompts — So what? What if? What if the opposite is true? Does it matter? What if I needed to solve this once and for good? What would X do?
Incorporate constraints — remove restrictions, add restrictions, redefine boundaries, constrain time.
Reframe the problem — list and reject assumptions, look at it from someone else’s perspective, look at it with different emotions, look at it through the lens of a different discipline, ask someone else what they would do, replace words with non-sensical stand-ins, treat everything you’ve done so far as research.
(Keep reading) (Read on Medium)
One year in the fishbowl
At the start of the pandemic, I told myself I wouldn’t write about it. I still believed the mass destabilisation was a mere blip I’d later prefer to forget.
Seeing as I try to keep my writing ahistorical-ish when possible, why jump on the bandwagon of picking over what would surely just be a few weird weeks? Hey, remember when we all lost our minds and started sanitising groceries and bumping elbows? Yeah, that was a strange moment.
One year on, not writing about the pandemic is an impossibility. When I try, I end up writing nothing. So here’s where I’m at. (Keep reading) (Read on Medium)
Planning is just escapism
(Recently updated.) Crack open a crisp new notebook. Open a neat calendar, the days dissected into slots. Pull up a to-do list app with its buttery smooth design.
And you step away from the messy, chaotic world of delayed trains, split coffees, and lost chargers. You step into a serene world where everything is certain, nothing goes wrong, no one panics or procrastinates, and life is logical.
(Keep reading) (Read on Medium)
Some thoughts on website design
A few people have emailed lately with similar questions about the design of my site so I thought I’d summarise my comments here.
The platform: I use Squarespace. Not sponsored. If I were starting a site today, I would go for something else because its functionality has become progressively more limited over time, it’s expensive, and there’s less room for experimentation. However, the idea of moving the site is too exhausting and it made sense when I initially just wanted something quick to set up.
I use the Wells template, with a lot of tweaking and a few things I’ve kind of cobbled together to get around the platform’s limitations. My aim was to keep it simple, so my photographs don’t become chaotic and to keep the text uncluttered. At the same time, I wanted it to very much be my own corner of the internet.
Typography: The font is called Inconsolata. I decided to use a monospace font after reading this article which describes it as connotating writing that isn’t quite finished yet. Seeing as I regard everything I publish as a work-in-progress—never a complete idea—using it for my site feels appropriate. It’s also well-suited to notes posts and I’m a sucker for the analogue feel.
A little more on design: the almost nothing I know about web design comes from Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug, How To Make Sense of Any Mess by Abby Covert, and various O’Reilly textbooks. These are all fantastic books if you just want to understand the basic principles behind user-friendly design well enough to make your own site look good. Tweaking details is one of my favourite ways to procrastinate writing, so I have a rule about only doing a big overhaul once per year.
Other stuff
A while back, I wrote a full-length review of In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. I’m currently working on one of A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. Let me know: would you want to read more in-depth reviews by me? Are there any particular books you’d like to see me cover?
I updated my About page and Gallery page.
My mother mailed me this old family photo, probably from sometime around the start of WW2. I don’t know anything about its history or the names of any of the people, but I love it:
Book 3 in The Great Mental Models series, which I’m helping to write, is at the final stages of preparing for printing. It’s hard to predict precisely when it will be available due to the complexities of international logistics, but I’m ridiculously excited to hold it in my hands at last in the near future.
I enjoyed this post about writing more and this advice column from The Concessionist.
What would you put in a pandemic time capsule?
See you next month.
All the best,
Rosie
P.S. If you’d like to connect elsewhere, you can follow me on Twitter or Medium, connect with me on Linkedin, or friend me on Goodreads.