A Technique for Getting Ideas

Creativity is defined as the use of imagination or original ideas to create something (Oxford Dictionary). The outcome of a creative act could be a piece of tangible artwork, or an intangible idea through which something new and somehow valuable can be formed.

In his short book A Technique for Getting Ideas, James Wood Young shared in learning any art the important things to learn are, first, principles; and second, methods. Bits of knowledge may be good to know but principle and methods are everything, in that our mind can be trained through method by which ideas are produced, and through principle which are the source of all ideas.

In my view the aforementioned de-mystify any creative acts, whether it be advertising, painting, composing or writing, and hopefully makes creative practice less daunting to the general public. Though creativity and the germination of an idea can often be seen as a mysterious process, James W. Young somehow was able to distil the process into fives steps which couldn’t be more true from my own experience.

Here are the five steps:

1. For the mind to gather its raw materials. Irrespective the context for one to generate an output, gathering the raw material, both specific and general, are important. In academic writing, the starting point of any paper always starts with extensive…