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Triggers
Good writing occurs when both the intellect and the senses are employed. However, in today's rapid-paced technology savvy world, the intellect is overworked, the senses hardly acknowledged. Put your senses to work and allow their perceptions to trigger off ideas that are inherent in your intellect.
Let's try an exercise by exploring the most common place inherent knowledge we possess but have been forced to forget. The meaning of a cliché: Wake up and smell the roses. Pierce the heart of this cliché and you will find yourself at the very fountainhead of all your sensual capabilities.
The purpose of this exercise is to evoke associations through pure, uncontaminated sensory perceptions. Once the associations are made, ideas will burgeon.
Smell the rose; inhale its intoxication. Of what does it remind you?
See it--the shy cloister of its bud, the elegant curve of it petal, the color of its creation. Touch it--the velvet of its skin, the fragility of its veins. How does this relate to the world around you?
Put your ear close to its heart. What do you hear? A condensed silence--the rose jealously mute, replete with its beauty. Remember the cacophonous din of the world?
Crush a petal between your fingertips. Now taste it--your tongue tastes fragrance. Go ahead, make an association.
Risk taking
Unlike free associations derived from sensory perception, risk taking forces the senses, the intellect to react. Novelty jolts the mind to attention. Do something daring; take a risk; step outside the realm of safe. Remember, each person's level of risk is in direct relation to his or her level of safe; one person's trying a new ice-cream flavor is another person's climbing a mountain. The advice here is not to take life threatening risks but effective ones; however, whatever risks you take, don't forget to employ both your senses and your intellect. Make a mental note of how you feel, what you learnt from the experience, how your senses responded to the stimuli. The abundance of ideas will surprise you.
Suggestions
Try an ice cream you wouldn't ordinarily choose.
On a road trip get off the highway and drive through winding inner roads.
Stop and have a chat with a neighbor you've never talked to before.
Try a new ethnic restaurant.
Eat a hot chili pepper. Try it between sips of coffee.
Indulge in a childhood game.
Free Writing
Another method to gather ideas is regurgitating them on paper. Pick a subject and jot down all your thoughts and impressions about it. Write everything about it that you know or, perhaps, want to know, uncaring of cohesion, organization, focus, grammar, punctuation. Just write. This will not only reveal ideas you didn't know you had, but will also help identify those that interest you most.
Reading
Reading is, perhaps, the best trigger of all, especially when dealing with a subject with which one might not be too familiar. To see how someone else has handled a subject, to read ideas expressed and expanded from some else's perception can goad your mind to begin thinking on similar lines. Perhaps, an expression of an idea you have read does not meet your approval. Perhaps, you can say it better, or from a different perspective. One idea in the book can lead to whole host of ideas in your head and consequently on your blank page.
The Blank Page
Last revised: March 30, 2002
© 2002 Meena A. Nayak