Get to Aha!

Creative process helps you write better, easier and faster

Have you ever come up with a brilliant idea — on the way home from the brainstorming meeting? Developed a creative theme for the annual report while pulling weeds? Written the perfect headline in the shower?

Colorful results The 5-step creative process helps you produce better ideas, more colorful pieces. Image by rawpixel.com

Welcome to the wonderful world of the creative process, where working sometimes doesn’t look like working, and where sticking with it is often the worst thing you can do to move ahead.

I have used the five-step creative process every day since I learned it at Hallmark Cards a million years ago. But I’ve recently learned — thank you, Brain Pickings — that it was the creation of a pre-Mad Men-era ad executive named James Webb Young, who put it down in a book called A Technique for Producing Ideas.

5-step creative process

To make the most of every writing minute in your day, use a process that works with — not against — your brain. Perform these steps in this order:

Produce better ideas, more colorful pieces

3 ways to explore: Tips for foraging from the author of IdeaSpotting Incubation in action: Take your mind off the problem. If all else fails, run out of gas

Get to Aha!

Master a creative process that works with — not against — your brain

Want to come up with fresher, faster, more inspired story ideas and writing insights?

Creative spark Produce more and better ideas when you master a five-step creative process. Image by Aleks Dorohovich

Welcome to the wonderful world of the creative process.

“The production of ideas is just as definite a process as the production of Fords,” writes James Webb Young, author of A Technique for Producing Ideas. “The production of ideas, too, runs on an assembly line.”

At Master the Art of the Storyteller — our two-day creative-writing master class on Sept. 25-26 in New York — you’ll master a five-step creative process that helps you produce more and better ideas.

Specifically, you’ll learn how to:

• Take five simple steps to a new idea: The more you understand how your brain creates, the more creative you’ll be.
• Write while washing the dishes: Find out why taking a walk, a nap or a break is actually part of the creative process.
• Treat writer’s block, procrastination and formulaic thinking: When you understand the creative process, you can end-run some of the common problems that writers and editors face.
• Avoid “creative incest”: Stop creating communications that are dull replicas of the same thing you did last year — and the year before that.
• Practice Papa Hemingway’s advice on the creative process: Find out what to do after you come up with your brilliant idea.

This is our final Master the Art of the Storyteller workshop for 2017. Don’t miss out. Register now.

Save $100 when you register by Aug. 25.

Polish your skills at these Master Classes

Learn to Master the Art of the Storyteller, Catch Your Readers, Get Clicked, Cut Through the Clutter and more

San Francisco | Aug. 17-18 New York | Sept. 25-26

Kansas City | Nov. 16-17 Miami | Dec. 11-12

Rather bring Ann in to train your whole team? Invite Ann