Lateral Thinking, Creative Thinking, Mindfulness and School Essays

In writing school essays, having something to say and saying it in a clear, concise, organized way is more important than a superb mastery of grammar and a ultra-rich vocabulary.

Here, I elaborate on "having something to say" part.  I believe adults too struggle with this issue.

I recommend the following steps to have ideas:

1. Be aware. Know your thoughts and feelings about the topic in the Question. 
2. Follow them bravely and quickly.
3. Collect them in a clear/simple order.

Collect our thoughts and feelings about something.

Will this work for adult/corporate/professional world?

Let's see what the Literature has to say about this:

Lateral thinking: creativity step by step By Edward De Bono

De Bono's Course in Thinking

Six Thinking Hats

Conceptual Blockbusting: A Guide To Better Ideas

How Breakthroughs Happen

The Myths of Innovation

I can easily whip up hundreds such links here.

It will take you hours to read them all, hours more to spot the gems scattered all over the places, and more to take and digest your notes.

I want to save you time and hassle. Here, I give them away in just 3 sentences.

1. Know thyself, especially, thy thoughts and feelings.
2. If they are in the same-old same-old areas/zones/routes/channels/domains, break free from them by leaving them alone or jumping out away from them.
3. Collect your new thoughts and feelings bravely and calmly.

I keep using the word "brave" here and there because bravery is required to think honestly, feel honestly, and capture the thoughts and the feelings honestly.

That is the topic of a future post.

A Website : Foundation for Written English

on December 20, 2009

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Your Written Works will be saved for you. You can view and/or edit them later at your leisure! You can print out any written works on this site, your own as well as those written by others.

If you cannot find a Type/Template you want in our list, you can ask us to do it for you . Just tell us what you want ( purpose, type of examination or test, how long you will have to write, difficulty level, and so on.) We will create a new type for you the way you want it, in 24 hours.

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However, as we have said, we need focus to help our users more effectively.

How to Write Cheaply in Examinations

Michael Cunningham , winner of  the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1998 for the novel The Hours, gave a lecture during the recent Singapore Writers Festival.

Here are some excerpts:

Every novel I've ever written, at a certain point, falls apart. Just disintegrates before me. Usually before page 100. It becomes clear to me that this is a bad idea, a silly idea ,.. It is for sure, a big, fat mistake.
  ...
 

What I began to realize is this: When a novel just turns to ash in front of you, it is not necessarily revealing its hopeless inadequacies, but defeating the little idea that took you into it and becoming something else.
 

As a species, we are not exactly smart enough to write novels with our conscious minds alone.We are using our consciousness to tap into our unconsciousness  ...

You have to survive that period as best you can.What's actually happening is that the novel you actually need to write is being born
 

Writing in Examinations

The novelist writing at leisure can afford to throw away the first 100 pages.

What about the student writing under severe time pressure in an exam situation?

S/he must test-write in mind only, and only in outline form. Such as traditional outlines, mindmapping, free association, or some other personally-tested methods.

The more pressure you feel, the more you need to plan and to plan cheaply.

And like, Cunningham, be open to the emerging new and better essay in you.