13.
Search for the idea
If there is no wind, row.
Latin proverb
The biggest sin is sitting on your ass.
Florynce Kennedy
Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
Gene Fowler
Cliff Einstein, the head of an advertising agency, says: “The best way to get an idea is to get an idea.”
He means that once you have an idea, the pressure is off to have an idea.
He also means that ideas have a way of snowballing, that the best way to get the whole process going is to prime it with an idea, any idea. It doesn’t matter if the idea makes sense or solves the problem or is even germane, just as long as it’s something new and different.
I know this sounds crazy, but try it sometime. It really works. Say: “Why don’t we paint it green?” Or “What if . . .”
Hal Riney, another agency head, said: “Actually, I suppose the creative process is probably nothing more than trial and error, guided by facts, experience, and taste.”
Linus Pauling said: “The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas.”
He was saying the same thing my friend in Chicago who gave the assignment on Swiss Army knives was saying—getting many ideas is easier than getting the impossible “right” one.
He was also saying that many times ideas don’t make it in the real world. So the best way to cover yourself “is to get a lot of ideas.”
But note one thing: All of these people are saying, “Do something, for heaven’s sake. Don’t just sit there and wait for an idea to come to you. Go after it. Work at it. Search for it. Do it.”
Here’s one of the exercises I gave my students:
“In the next ten minutes, I want you to give me fifty uses for a 2” x 2” x 2” block of wood.”
Over the years I’ve gotten everything from “wrap it as a gift and send it to my mother-in-law,” to “cut it into sixty-four squares and glue them together to form a chessboard,” to “throw it at the next teacher who asks me to give him fifty uses for a 2” x 2” x 2” block of wood.”
One thing I used to notice was that the students’ ideas would come hesitantly at first, then faster, and finally they were coming too fast to even record them with a key word on the blackboard.
Many problems are like that block-of-wood problem.
At first ideas seem as hard to find as crumbs on an oriental rug. Then they start coming in bunches. When they do, don’t stop to analyze them; if you do you’ll stop the flow, the rhythm, the magic. Write them down and go on to the next one.
Analysis is for later.
Here’s another thing I asked my students:
“What’s half of thirteen?”
Someone would say, “Six and a half,” and I’d write it on the blackboard.
“OK, what else is half of thirteen?”
Hesitantly someone would say, “Six point five?”
“Exactly. What else is half of thirteen?”
And they’d all give me the blank look that cows give to passing cars.
“OK,” I’d say, “I want you to remember what you’re thinking and feeling right now—that I’m crazy, that there are no other answers, that half of thirteen is six and a half or six point five and that’s it.
“Now, think about it, think: What else is half of thirteen?”
“One and three,” someone would finally say with a smile. A breakthrough.
“Exactly. What else is half of thirteen?”
“Four. Thirteen has eight letters. Half of eight is four.”
“Exactly. What else is half of thirteen?”
“Thir and teen.” They were getting into it now. Having fun.
“Exactly. What else is half of thirteen?”
A student would come to the blackboard, write THIRTEEN on it, erase the lower half of it, point to what was left and triumphantly say, “That’s half of thirteen.”
“Exactly. What else is half of thirteen?”
Then the same student would rewrite THIRTEEN on the board, erase the upper half, and say the same thing again. Wheee.
“Exactly. What else is half of thirteen?”
Another student would come to the blackboard and do what the previous student did only with the numerals 1 and 3 instead of the word THIRTEEN.
“Exactly. What else is half of thirteen?”
Another student would come to the blackboard and do what the previous students did only with the lowercase word thirteen.
“Exactly. What else is half of thirteen?”
“Eight. Thirteen in Roman numerals is XIII. The upper half of that is eight.” Another breakthrough. They were rolling.
“Exactly. What else is half of thirteen?”
A student would write the lower half of XIII on the board.
“Exactly. What else is half of thirteen?”
“Eleven and two. The right and left half of the Roman numeral XIII.”
“Exactly. What else is half of thirteen?”
“One-one and zero-one. In the binary system, thirteen is written one-one-zero-one. So half is one-one and zero-one. Also eleven and one.”
“Exactly. What else is half of thirteen?”
Someone would write 1101 on the board and erase the upper half, then write it again and erase the lower half.
“Exactly. What else is half of thirteen?”
“Two. One and three is four. Half of four is two.”
“Exactly. What else is half of thirteen?”
Someone would come to the board and write | | | | | | | and then erase half of the last |.
“Exactly. What else is half of thirteen?”
Someone would come to the board and write | | | | | | | | | | | | | and then erase the upper half, write it again and erase the lower half.
“Exactly. What else is half of thirteen?”
“Three. Thirteen is the six-letter word treize in French.” Another breakthrough. They were into foreign languages now. “Also the letters tre and ize because each of those is half of treize. Also the upper half of . . .”
“OK stop!” I’d say. “Remember back when we started? How you thought there was only one answer? Well now you know: There’s always another answer. You just have to search for it.”
And you do.
You must force yourself to look at the problem, to search for the idea, to find the solution the way Hal Silverman forced me to look look look at his chair.
Think laterally. Think visually. Play “What if?” Look for analogues. Look for things to combine. Ask yourself what assumptions you’re making, what rules you’re following. Ask yourself how a six-year old would solve it. Screw up your courage and attack.
If you need extra motivation to find the idea, do what the illustrator of this book sometimes does—he pretends that the idea he’s looking for contains a hundred dollar bill. “If you really want to find what you’re looking for, you’ll find it,” he says. “You always want to find a hundred dollars.”
But at some point you must stop looking for it, you must stop thinking about it.
Oh, I know that continual, unrelenting effort often produces dramatic results.
Andrew Wiles worked for seven years before he proved Pierre de Fermat’s Last Theorem—a proof that eluded thousands of mathematicians for centuries.
Richard Gatling spent four years working on a machine gun before he succeeded.
Nikola Tesla, the inventor of (among other things) alternating current, regularly worked from ten in the morning straight through until five the next morning, seven days a week.
Thomas Edison’s tenacity is a legend. So is Johannes Kepler’s. And Albert Einstein’s. And Sir Isaac Newton’s. And Linus Pauling’s. And and and and—the tenacity list goes on and on.
Still, there comes a time—and it will differ with every person and every problem—when enough is enough. You’ve (to paraphrase Koestler) uncovered, selected, reshuffled, combined, and synthesized all the already existing facts, ideas, faculties, and skills you can. And the idea still eludes you.
When that time comes follow the advice in the next chapter.
