When I visited the Louvre, the thing I remember the most (besides the Mona Lisa mosh pit), was the secluded and dimly-lit room where renaissance sketches were kept.

Master painters would prepare to paint by drawing dozens of sketches. The sketches were rough, and contained only the essential element being studied. The overall composition. A facial expression. An eye. Only when the painter was satisfied, would he sketch directly on the canvas.

How else could they have produced their masterpieces?

We would never expect a painter to just start without a plan, and proceed like an inkjet printer: use a tiny brush, start at the top, and scan left-to-right until reaching the bottom. They would very quickly run into problems. Perspective would be off, composition cliched, and postures awkward. Unless the painter were extremely experienced, the piece would fall apart and be impossible to finish.

This is obviously a terrible way to paint.
But we do this all the time, when writing. Continue reading Sketching with Words →

[Author’s note: I am aware of that this is a poorly written article on how to write well. However, I struggle with perfectionism. So, contrary to my nature, I posted it instead of refining this forever.]

Unlimited Telepathy

Reading and writing is nothing short of a miracle. Stephen King notes that it’s similar to, but more powerful than telepathy. Marcus Aurelius, last great emperor of Rome, can send images, thoughts and ideas, to me and you, miles and centuries away.

But few writers really understand how this miracle works at the neurological level. And how doing so, can drastically improve their results.

Limitations

Imagine you could only hold 2 things in your mind at any given time. Let’s see what reading the sentence “I went to the station.” would be like:

“I went” (Ok, sometime in the past, I went somewhere)
“went to” (Someone went to somewhere)
“to the” (Something relating to some definite thing)
“the station.” (Something to do with the station).

At no point would you be able to hold the whole idea of “you having gone to the station” in your mind. With a short term memory of 2 items, reading anything longer than two sentences would be impossible.

Things are not much better with a limit of 3 items:
“I went to” (Sometime in the past, I went to somewhere)
“went to the” (Someone went to a definite place.)
“to the station.” (What happened to the station?)

Not much better.

The incredible thing is, we do have a limit like this, and though it’s not 2, it’s not much more than that.
Continue reading Hierarchy is the Key to Writing →

Core: We need to consciously choose to ignore the present if we want to see the future, or ignore the future to see the present. Trying to do both, leads to not being able to do either. Gingko is the only tool that lets you consciously do both.

I was watching a TED talk on the future of aviation. It’s titled “A 3D printed Jumbo Jet?“. That’s something I wanted to see, but I should have known what kind of talk to expect from the question mark in the title.

The talk basically goes through all manner of hazy thinking about the future of aviation, of manufacturing, etc. The specifics are sparse, and were always based on a mockup rendering, or on vague statements.

None of the technologies specified will be mature enough to implement in something like an airliner within the next 10 years.

I think this talk (and others of the kind), are a great example of what I call the Uncertainty Principle of Vision. The statement is as follows:
Continue reading The Uncertainty Principle of Vision →

Aristotle wrote about creativity, back in 300 BC. So did Cicero and Freud, Thomas Hobbes and da Vinci. And now, me.

Why in god’s name would you listen to me?

Sorry to disappoint, but you have more in common with me than with da Vinci. We’re both alive. We’re both inhabitants of the 21st century. And we both have access to the net.

Continue reading Silence & compelling creativity →