How to Brainstorm an Idea

I have been developing a lot of new content lately. At the same time, I’ve been trying to get myself into a routine appropriate to the slowly reopening world of mid-2020. In this process, I’ve found myself learning—or relearning, I suppose—how much attention ideas need before they take shape on paper.

I love structure. And that’s a good thing. The creative process demands structure for results. We need to meet deadlines and have a sense of what our working hours will be. Routine is good and necessary, even for creative tasks.

But brainstorming is not the stuff of routine. You can designate a period of time to give an idea attention, but there is no guarantee that it will come together on your timeline.

In her TED Talk, Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love) eloquently expresses this idea in terms of “genius,” a word that has changed meanings over time. To the ancient Romans, a genius was not a person but a fairy-like being that was believed to bring an idea to a creative person. It was only in the Renaissance that people began to think of ideas as coming from themselves.

Gilbert makes the case that it might be beneficial for creative people to adopt the ancient notion of an idea as something outside oneself. This notion protects the artist or writer from the psychological consequences of terrible failure and great success.

You, the creative person, are not some God-like creator. An idea merely visited you, and you captured it and put it on paper (or the Internet). You are not your idea, and your idea is not you.

I find Gilbert’s argument persuasive, especially when I think of my own brainstorming process. It isn’t always the systematic, rational process I would like it to be.

I remember one weekend of my senior year of college when I had almost no work to do. Anticipating a restful few days, I gave myself only one academic goal: come up with an idea for the second chapter of my Honors Thesis. I vaguely knew that this chapter would be about the female lead in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. But what did I have to say about her exactly?

I did not realize that I would spend almost every waking hour of the weekend mulling over this question, that I would lead myself into one of the most difficult academic puzzles of my college career, and that I would come nowhere near an answer until Sunday night. When the “eureka” moment finally arrived, I still couldn’t write down my idea right away because I was in the shower!

The creative process doesn’t always make sense, but we can influence it with strategies and develop it with practice, just like any other skill.

One of my favorite YouTubers, Cathrin Manning, shared a helpful video about how to brainstorm ideas for content. She finds an environment where she feels creative (like me, she enjoys coffeeshops). While there, she implements a strategy she calls “shut up and throw up.”

Similarly, Rachael Stephen* recommends a “brain dump,” in which you get all the ideas (even the bad ones) down on paper to give yourself some mental clarity. However, Stephen emphasizes that the real brainstorming is the act of problem-solving, whereas a brain dump is just a means to that end.

Like Gilbert, Stephen acknowledges we are not completely in control of how and when our ideas come into being. She compares the subconscious to a microwave. You consciously put information in your brain, but you have to wait a bit for the subconscious to “warm it up” before it’s ready.

It feels like a magical “lightbulb” moment when the idea is ready, but that moment is actually the result of hard work and attention. As one of my favorite professors once said, “It’s about feeding your brain.”

So here’s what I’m learning:

• Influence the process; don’t dictate it

• Ideas are discovered and captured, not made

• Designate time to brainstorm, but don’t expect a linear progression or instant results

*If you are interested in visiting her channel, you should know that Rachael Stephen uses a lot of profanity, but her Scottish accent is fabulous.