
An Immediate Path for Any Creative Task
by Win Wenger, Ph.D.
If you can ImageStream (and 99.999% of everyone can after learning the
simple procedure), you can always start any inspired creative project at
will without waiting for inspiration. You can always spill forward with
what comes next, and never have to pause or stall out until you've finished.
At the finish, you can always discover what you've left out and whether you
prefer to include or leave it out.
- When you ask your ImageStreaming faculties a question, they ALWAYS respond
with an image.
- You can always ask your ImageStreaming faculties such questions as the
following, and get an image
- What do I really want to say here?
- What's the main point I REALLY want to make here?
- How best do I start this?
- What comes next here?
- What's the most important thing I've left out here?
and ALWAYS get an image as answer.
- Write or sketch a few sentences of description of that image, and what
that image means in answer to that question will HIT you and you're on your
merry way!
In these uncertain times, you may be your own best resource.
Here is a wonderful project for you this summer...
With gas and travel prices being what they are, how about an intense
writing vacation?
Who, amongst our colleagues and participants here, has written and published
one or more books? Will not every one of you who has done so agree that
the creating of that first book or so did more than has almost anything else
to focus and develop your thoughts, your perceptions, your awarenessesnot
only on the topic you wrote on but generally?
Every one of you has seen things which no one else has seen, and thought
thoughts which no one else has thought. Some of these are valuable, even
invaluable.
Whoever here that's interested in personal development and in building
personal competencies: if you have not yet created such a book, then please,
time is slipping away. Create such a book!
Many of us here have remarked transformative experiences, those experiences
stemming from a lot of very different causes. I respectfully submit that
one of the most powerfully transformative experiences is to create a book,
especially on something that is important to you. Especially the first book
or sobut I've found even after fifty-some published books that each new
book is STILL a further transformative experience, powerfully further
focusing my thoughts, my perceptions and awarenesses. That process can do as
well for you.
It's not me that's anything special. I'm a very ordinary person who has
gotten into some very extraordinary things. Some of those things are
directly transformative in their own right, but one of the very strongest
for me has been the creating of books which I've known to the depths of my
being were meaningful.
Worlds await you.
Here are a few suggested ways to get yourself started on your own wonderful
journey of transformation:
- Never stall out. Since you ImageStream and now can always, every time, get
an answer in sensory images and impressions, whether understood or not,
- You can always ask your faculties, "How do I get started in this?" and
start describing what comes in response to that question. Within a few
sentences you have full inspiration underway. (Forgive this
redundandundandundancy, but this simple point cannot be emphasized enough!)
- You can always ask your faculties, "What comes next?" and start
describing what comes in response to that question. Never let yourself be
stalled for more than 30 seconds, at any point.
- You can always ask your faculties, "What's the most key thing I've
left out or underplayed?" and start describing what comes in response to
that question. Within a few sentences you will have a clear picture, clear
enough also to know whether you want to include the issue in question or to
leave the current draft intact.
Practice of ImageStreaming also brings up your vocabulary, language
comprehension and expressive skills, all very useful to your own writing.
- Don't worry about getting your writing right until after you've gotten
the first draft down on paper or into your computer. Not only is "most
writing re-writing": Freenoting and Windtunneling
are pretty good formats for flowing forward in and for digesting any event,
any development, any issue. Much of the resulting content you can pull into
your main draft afterward.
- Borrowing a page from Peter Elbow and his excellent book and program,
Writing Without Teachers: draft an essay and write it out to its conclusion.
Take that conclusion as a starting point for a new essay, write IT out to
its conclusion. Take THAT conclusion as a starting point for a new essay,
write THAT out to its conclusion... Within very few iterations, you will be
really saying what you mean, saying some truly essential things. Be
astonished at the powerful stuff you have it within you to say.
- Personal, first-hand observation and experience is worth 27 times as much
as an equal volume of other people's reported wisdom and information.
- Experiment with DEAM (Double Entry A-Ha! Method): On one sheet of paper begin the
writing out of a one-line description of your topic or sub-topic, but give
precedence to recording, on a second sheet of paper, all the associations and stray thoughts that occur
to you. By the time you are halfway through writing that one-line description of topic or subtopic, you may have two or
three pages of ideas recorded on the other paper. These secondary
associations and ideas always occur to you anyhow, but pass through
invisibly and are gone unless you use something like the piecemeal writing
of that one-line description on one sheet to "hold open the windows of your
perception" so you can notice the associated thoughts and perceptions
passing through them. Your determination to capture notice of these and
write them down plays an important part in your success with the DEAM
process.
- Write in sustained all-out bursts, for hours, if possible days at a time,
to capture as much as possible of your associated thoughts. Your re-writing
can be on some sort of regular schedule if you likewith more of the
contents already anchored on paper, less is likely to be lostbut make your
creative writing like a spouting firehose and get into record as much
as possible of that whole pattern of inspiration and associated ideas that
have just come to you.
- I find I do my own best work in the hour or so before waking, each
morning. How to activate that? Whether or not you remember anything from
before you woke, have notepad or audio recorder right where you can make
that the focus of your first conscious act in the mornings. Speak or
scribble a few sentences on anything that occurs to you to say, or anything
even if nothing has occurred to you to sayand suddenly your whole gestalt
of inspiration and actualization clicks into place. Get that down on paper
or into the computer immediately, defer that first cup of coffee until
afterward.
- In sustained bursts of creatively writing, get on a roll. Stay on that
roll as long as you can. When you fall off that roll, get back on it as
immediately as possible, until that whole inspired gestalt is safely on
paper or in your computer.
There's plenty more where these few suggestions came from. For example,
create your own writer-creating processes with
Toolbuilder.
Another example: Check out the more conventional but invaluable suggestions
contained in Writer's Market, available from the reference room of any
public library.
There is also all the information contained in my CoreBook with
Mark Bossert, End Writer's Block Forever!,
which has become an entire self-contained course of creativity methods for writers.
This wee little bit here, however, should be enough to get you started; and from there, if
you sustain your writing-related activities, feedback can teach you the rest
of what you need to know. Please let me know from time to time how you are
doing with this. Live long and prosper, in an increasingly richly
interesting world!
Main suggested readings:

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Win Wenger
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