We live in an anti-process culture. We love results. No — we are obsessed with them, addicted even. The faster, the easier and the bigger, the better. Education is reduced to test scores and report cards. A career is a string of job titles. Health is a number on a scale.

To grow up in this culture — obsessed with the finished product, the ta-da moment — is to live in perpetual anxiety, haunted by a fear that the opening, the launch, the big reveal will come up short. And who wouldn’t be stressed out beyond belief if they only had one shot to get it right?

Before this starts to sound like a conspiracy theory — like The Man is keeping us down — let’s think about it. Humans aren’t really wired for process. We gravitate to thinking about winning the race, crossing a finish line rather than daydream about the countless hours of training and gaining a hundredth of a second here and there. Process is kind of nebulous — not a neat little to do item you can check off of a list. In movies, it’s the stuff montages are made of.

It’s harder for us to remember process, too. Many studies have shown that memories for “neutral stimuli” diminish over time, but memories of “arousing stimuli” remain or improve. Translation: those Big Moments are chemically underlined in our brains; it’s called encoding. So if our memories consist mainly of positive or negative results, it’s no wonder that we tend to discount the importance of the in-between times.

Process is more than a sum of habits — it’s a critical ingredient in a creative life. It’s bushwhacking new mental territory, and sometimes making a divine mess of everything. And we need to get intimately acquainted with it because amazing things can happen when thoughts are given form — in words, in images, in actions, in enterprises.

There is no great work that travels from inside your mind to the outside world without friction. Everything depends on our ability to escape the drag of this friction — and how we do that is this wondrous thing called process.

Making peace with process begins with a willingness to do something badly.

Creativity is a Zen riddle in this way. It’s a paradox: in order to get great results, we have to not care so much about getting them. Entering into a creative process is setting off into the unknown — something we as a species routinely avoid. We sit around theorizing, wondering how we can attempt a straight shot from A to Z and avoid the intervening events. Trying to get it right before we start just prolongs our journey to our desired result — or worse yet, it means we never start.

That’s why we must be willing to begin with what Anne Lamott calls the “shitty first draft.” We must be willing to fuck up, piss people off and look stupid (though usually not as stupid as we think we look).

Get on the magic bus.

Have you ever been on a bus and you didn’t know exactly where you were getting off? Your attention and energy are bound up in not missing your stop. You may be a little anxious. Almost certainly you’re not present with what’s happening around you.

Process is like a magic bus. It’s a bus that you board not knowing where it will take you, but you are willing to go and find out. Since you don’t need to know where you’re headed, you can relax and check out what’s happening on the bus — and look for signs of your great work.

It might be scary, but it’s an exhilarating scary. There might be bumps, there almost certainly will be points you want to get off, but if you hang in there — the magic bus always takes you somewhere worth going.

If you’re going to do great work, you must commit to getting your ideas out of your head and into the world — no matter how messy the process gets. This commitment begins with accepting the fact that you’re not totally in control of how this happens, that the magic bus doesn’t go from A to Z in a straight line.

The sooner you can accept that, the sooner you can create something magical, beyond even your own expectations! A healthy process always has the potential to surprise you.

What do I mean by a healthy process? How do you find or create your own magic bus? Coming soon…watch this space.

Does that seem nuts in an age when the arts are often the first cut from school budgets? I don’t think so. I think we’re amidst a major cultural shift in the way we communicate — particularly online.

We’ve got more words to read than ever before — and this has resulted in a general sense of information overload. Is it any wonder, then, that we’re so obsessed with videos, info-graphics, visual resumés and Pinterest, the image bookmarking site?

We’re drowning in words. Images give us a life raft. 

We love images, in fact our brains prefer them — and until a relatively recent few thousand years ago, images were our dominant mode of communication. Dan Roam, who has made it his life’s work to teach guys in suits how to get comfortable with a set of markers, writes often about the steep cost of our cultural bias towards verbal-oriented thinking, and simultaneous dismissal of drawing silly stick figures. He wrote a fascinating manifesto for ChangeThis about how this happened called The 5000-year History of How We Lost Half Our Minds (spoiler alert: blame the Phoenicians.)

It’s possible that this 5,000-year detour into written communication is undergoing a dramatic course correction. Not only does cheap bandwidth and unprecedented access to technology make it easy to create and distribute images and video, we’re desperate for them due to the simple fact that we simply cannot process unlimited textual information. The simple fact of the matter is this: our brains are much better and faster at reading visual information.

Shortcut to the Brain

Compare the time it takes you to comprehend this sentence…

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

…And the time it takes you to comprehend this image:

It’s not much of a contest, and really a trick, because I’m willing to bet that the image above was one of the first things you “read” in this post.

The Picture Superiority Effect

You can thank something called the picture superiority effect for this. Instead of explaining what that is, why don’t I just show you?

This grid represents the sensory processing capacity of your brain:

Translation: 75% of your brain’s sensory processing is dedicated to visual information.

We consume images so quickly and easily that it barely feels like thinking. Comparatively, reading text is like performing mental gymnastics. A more appropriate metaphor might be that viewing an image is like lifting a heavy weight with an entire muscle group, and reading words is like lifting that same weight with your index finger alone.

Not Just Eye Candy

I won’t get on my soapbox here about how harmful it is to urge kids to abandon drawing “childish pictures” after 6^th grade and focus only on written communication. I think this the cognitive equivalent of discouraging them to use their left hand in favor of their right. We’re not even talking about teaching the arts per se — it doesn’t matter what the artistic quality of the image is for it to be effective (see my drawing above). It turns out that the very act of doodling improves cognition and recall by X%. We should be encouraging drawing in classrooms, as much as Dan Roam is encouraging it for conference rooms. (OK, I got on my soapbox).

What does this mean for you? It means that it would be a good idea to take your own visual literacy seriously. Not everything can or should be reduced to a cartoon, but here are just a few reasons to start building your visual thinking skill set:

• Working with visual devices supercharges problem solving
• Visual exercises support the writing process — from ideation to structure
• Sketching your ideas can help you explore and clarify your thoughts
• Visual content helps your ideas stand out and go farther, faster — bypassing the cognitive bottleneck created by too much text
• Understanding how to present your ideas visually will allow you to communicate more effectively with designers
• Doodling during class or a meeting actually enhances comprehension, retention and recall
• Learning to draw simple shapes will give you have an advantage when we revert back to using hieroglyphics.

Visuals are so delicious to our minds, they are such efficient ways to transfer information, that in his book Brain Rules, John Medina says “…there may be strong reasons for entire marketing departments to think seriously about making pictorial  presentations their primary way of transferring information.”

As a writer who was a designer and is an artist, I couldn’t be more thrilled at this rich, visual online universe in which we find ourselves. I’m certainly not about to abandon the written word — with all it’s nuance and interpretive power. In fact, what could be better than the amazing alchemy of words and images?

Toolkit for the Visual Revolutionary

So what can you do to develop your visual literacy and begin creating your own? I’ve put together this toolkit to help get you started.

Build your visual vocabulary.

Sunni Brown is a graphic facilitator and an outspoken champion of doodling. Her post the Miseducation of the Doodle gives a great overview of the basic visual vocabulary anyone can use, and she also offers a great course called Visual Notetaking 101. There’s also an assortment of other courses online at VizThinkU.

Also, check out books by Ed Emberley, I particularly like Make a World. Emberley shows you that you only need a few shapes and lines to draw everything. They’ll make you feel like you’re a kid again.

“Read” more visual information.

If you can learn a language by immersing yourself in it — speaking, reading, writing — then the same applies to becoming visually literate. Immerse yourself in visual language.

Browse the art and design section at your bookstore, where you’ll also find magazines like Communication Arts and Print. Go to an art gallery, read comic books and graphic novels (it’s not all about Spiderman, check out the amazing work of Chris Ware). Find art and design Tumblr blogs (check out this list for designers) and spend time browsing Pinterest for  interesting examples of visual communication.

Understand the process of visualization.

How do you create visual representations of concepts and data? You can start by reading books like the Back of the Napkin and Blah Blah Blah by Dan Roam. If you’re particularly interested in data visualization, read the work of Edward Tufte, or take his one-day workshop.

Find an interpreter.

Sometimes it helps to have someone help you translate your ideas into images. This can range from amazing illustrations by Marty of IdeaSchema, to straightforward stick figures to clarify and get your message across. For meetings and events, hire a graphic recorder or facilitator. (Want to become a graphic recorder? Check out AlphaChimp University.)

Special thanks to Sunni Brown, Austin Kleon and Dave Gray, whose panel at SXSW 2010 made all the lightbulbs come on.

We watched a movie.

It was Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train. It’s a haunting, dreamlike movie with three intertwined stories of foreigners traveling through Memphis, Tennessee.

Our first assignment: design a poster for the movie. These were the rules:

• One color
• One typeface: Univers 55, the most basic font in existence
• 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper

Terror set in.

No fancy fonts?! No groovy Photoshop techniques?! No images?! Sketching by hand? We were forced to strip away our notions of design down to the very core. We couldn’t let the computer do the heavy lifting for us; in fact we had to do the mock ups by hand, just old-fashioned scissors and glue. 
Ugh!

The resulting poster may be, to this day, one of my favorite creations. (Sadly it’s on a zip disk that my computer can’t read somewhere in an attic box.) My brain, after going through some computer withdrawal, figured out how to create rhythm by simple repetitions of letters using different weights of Univers (bold, light, ultra light). I learned that a grid was my friend and that sketching first (before jumping to the computer) opened up entire vistas of possibilities that I wouldn’t have thought to try.

Then I became a writer.

The lesson stuck, but what does it mean to me now?

• Build on one good idea. All the bells and whistles in the world won’t help your product/essay/movie poster if the basic, underlying concepts aren’t compelling.
• Choose just one message. In my poster, I focused on the simple visual rhythm of a train going over tracks. If I’d tried to convey rhythm, and color and Memphis and Japanese tourists all at once, none would have come through.
• Your brain is connected to your hands and vice versa. Try writing a blog post or a chunk of eBook in your notebook first, roughing out a general idea before you take it onto the computer. You might be surprised how much more fluids your thoughts become.
• You don’t have to be ‘loud’ to get attention. Up to that point in my life I thought exciting design meant a lot of cool, flashy fonts. In this day and age when it seems everyone is trying to get our attention, small and quiet might stand out the most.

Just Begin

That moment in my first design class taught me that you need almost nothing to begin to create — it’s all waiting there in your wonderful brain. The tools you use are incidental.

I hope this demonstrates how seemingly impossible or confining limitations provide a challenge — a way to unlock creativity, not to suppress it. They can focus creative energy into a narrow channel in such a way that strengthens its impact. It’s my hope that all of our messages are strong and clear, travel far and wide, even if right now they just exist as scribbles on notebook paper.

1. Use a surprising image: Eat That Frog: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time (more than 450,000 copies sold and translated into 23 languages).
2. Imply the impossible: IttyBiz’s How to Make $12,246 In A Day
3. Be Tweetable: A recent post on Skelliewag.org: Productivity in 11 words: One thing at a time. / Most important thing first. / Start now. (Retweeted a gajillion times – unofficial count.)
4. Juxtapose concepts: How To Blog Like Shakespeare
5. Create an unusual metaphor: “Love is like racing across the frozen tundra on a snowmobile which flips over, trapping you underneath. At night, the ice-weasels come.” — Matt Groening
6. Controversial premise: How the Beatles Destroyed Rock and Roll
7. Jargonize: Make up your own term or nickname for something.
8. Be Seth Godin: Write cool manifestos
9. Be funny: See #5
10. Swear a little: Batshit Crazy: Creative Ways To Meet Your Goals
11. Evoke a feeling: Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur
12. Go negative: I Do Everything Wrong by Johnny B. Truant
13. Be Free Free Free: Dave Navarro’s time management manifesto requires no sign up and is under a Creative Commons license to allow free sharing, remixing and reuse of his content.
14. Never underestimate the power of story: Chicken Soup for the Soul books. Yeah, they’re corny. There are also 105 different titles at last count (and a brand of pet food) all built on simple uplifting stories.
15. Make it concrete: This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?

I needed a draft immediately.

Some say that the hardest part of any project is getting started, but there’s also that strange space in the middle when you’re half done: the dip. What if your ebook has three chapters written, maybe two outlined, and its just sitting on your hard drive, racking up the guilt? What would it take to kick that sketched out idea into full-blown shitty first draft?

Here are my suggestions on how to get a draft done in a hurry.

Make up a deadline.

Pick the last day of the month, your birthday, your dog’s birthday, Arbor Day — it doesn’t matter but it should feel like a mile marker and the nearness a little bit scary. April starts this week — I dare you to finish the draft of your ebook by April 30!

Pick a word count.

In order to really get this done by your deadline, you need to know when you’re “done.” I use quotes because after you cross the finish line, you might find you’ve got a few miles left in you — but this is the point at which you have permission to stop and celebrate! So even if it’s arbitrary, the important thing is to decide how many words or how many pages you want your project to be.

Don’t like to pick numbers out of thin air? Then start with 10,000 words. For most of us, this is a lot longer than you usually write for blog posts so it will be a stretch, but it’s a big enough chunk for a shorter ebook or a Kindle Single.

Alternatively, you can estimate from page count. Using a rough guide of 250 words per page (the final layout will have more white space than your text document), a 10,000-word ebook is about 40 pages, give or take.

Schedule it.

There are two parts to scheduling: the macro and the micro.

On the macro level, you want to look at your writing calendar on a weekly/monthly level. Let’s say you’re interested in writing a 10,000 word e-book in April. First of all, make sure that in your word processing program your margins are set up to approximately hold as much text as they will in the final layout. This helps you see how many pages you’re racking up as you go.

Divide your word count by the number of days you will be writing in April and you’ll see what you need to write each day. A really handy calculator that adjusts your word count goals as you progress is WriteTrack.

How to use WriteTrack:

• Register and create a new challenge for yourself.
• Enter today’s date as the starting date if you have a work in progress, or a later date when you plan to begin.
• Enter your target word count and finish date.
• Click on today’s calendar box and nter your current total word count for work you’ve already done.
• Write your target word count each day, enter your totals as you go.

The ingenious thing that this does is divide up the rest of your word count by the remaining days but allows for variation by allowing you to set weights. What you can do you is if there’s a day you don’t want to write — like Saturday or Sunday — then you set the weight of that day to 0. If there are days that you can work more, you can play with adjusting the weights of those days to over 100. I think of the weights as percentages, if I can do 100% of my target word count then I use 100, if I am only going to half the time on a given day, I’ll knock the weight down to 50. You’ll quickly see that if you don’t keep making steady progress, the word counts will start to increase to get you to your goal.

Micro-scheduling is making sure you have hours blocked off on your calendar — writing appointments with yourself. You’ll get the hang of how much time you need as you find a rhythm to your writing, but start with at least 30 minutes to an hour per writing day for a 10,000-word project in 30 days. If you don’t let yourself get hung up on the way it’s all going to look in the end and just dive in, you can probably get 500 words or more down.

Are you a procrastinator? Then the next two tips are for you.

Time it.

When I was doing NaNoWriMo last year, something that I found enormously helpful was to write in 15-minute sprints at our write-ins. Here’s how you do it:

• Set a timer on your computer or phone (here’s an online stopwatch) for 15 minutes.
• Start the timer, and write as fast as you can. It helps to do this with someone else so you can race and see who types more words at the end.
• Do NOT stop writing. Even if you’re stuck, write: “uh, I’m stuck, I have no idea what to write.”
• Count your words at the end of 15 minutes and be amazed.

I found when I got going that I could sometimes hit 500 or 600 words. It has the added benefit of helping shut down your inner editor and just getting the raw material out on the page. Then, you have something to work with and the page is no longer blank.

Speak it.

Talking out your ideas is essential for some people who process thoughts by hearing them out loud. Even if you like writing, transcribing existing audio or recording yourself thinking out loud can be a great way to seed your content, letting you get the gist down and come back for refining and expanding.

In fact, that is how this blog post began. I recently purchased MacSpeech Scribe (the PC equivalent is Dragon Naturally Speaking) and I am beginning to train it on my voice and the way I speak. The one drawback is that it doesn’t handle recordings with more than one speaker very well, so I’ll need to send out my recordings of teleclasses and interviews. If you don’t want to mess with software, you can use a web-based app like Jott to transcribe short audios and a transcription service (I like WriteAudio) to transcribe recordings of any length and number of different speakers.

Spring is here, it’s the time to begin — or begin again. So, what are you going to write?

Thanks to Áine for this great post idea and the discovery of WriteTrack. Check out her blog about recovering from heavy-metal toxicity.

My first thought was that good writing depends on the purpose. Just like a good car depends on whether you want to joyride in Hawaii with the top down or if you want to haul bricks. Is the writing effective in achieving the desired result?

When I took a moment to reflect, however, I realized that good writing is more than that.

Good writing is satisfying.

There are different ways to achieve satisfaction.

The arc of a story can satisfy us, just think of the last good novel you read.

Insight is satisfying. I enjoy writing that allows me to see differently or have a new awareness.

Beautiful prose can satisfy us just by being beautiful.

How do make your writing more satisfying?

You create an itch and then scratch it.

Have someone else read it, they’ll just feel where the gaps are.

Walk away from what you’re writing for awhile (at least a day) and come back. Like tasting a recipe, could it use a little seasoning? Is the portion size just right?

Most importantly, good writing never starts that way.

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something — anything — down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft — you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft — you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it’s loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy. — Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

And the most important bit of that:

Start by getting something — anything — down on paper.

Good writing can’t happen until you go through the bad and the okay writing first.