Why you should never stop brainstorming

Our brains are constantly coming up with new and exciting ideas, and it doesn't seem to matter where we are when it happens.

Brainstorming is an integral part of the thought process. It could be for a book, paper, presentation, or even a text that will keep your romantic hopes alive. We need to think about all the different facets of our problems, and make sure that we can come up with the right solution. Most of the time we are searching for that one great idea, and we hope that if we sit at a desk long enough and write enough words down that it will magically appear.

However, great ideas aren't forced out, they pop out of nowhere. This is why last minute work is never our best, because we dont give our brains time to process. Much like the times when you try and think of a name and can't, only to think of it hours or days later, our brains are constantly working to find the information that we need, may it be a name, place, date, or even a great idea.

The mind needs to be stimulated by different things, breaking away from the normal autopilot that so many of function on. Sitting at a table or a desk trying to think of a solution to a problem hardly inspires great ideas. However going about our planned day and doing tasks as mundane as washing the dishes or getting groceries, could spark a moment of brilliance. These ideas can strike anytime and anywhere, and if we are ready, we can capture them and turn them into a reality.

However, if we are not ready, those great ideas can slip through our fingers and be lost in the murk of our subconscious forever. This is why practicing brainstorming is so critical.

In order to harvest this great technique of creating and holding on to those great ideas, we need to start thinking about taking down our ideas wherever we go. Download whichever app works best for you, and start a list, listing all the great ideas (and the normal ones too!) that you have throughout the day. You'd be surprised with what you come up with.

Once you start taking these down, you will get more and more practice at being brilliant. This will make it so much easier when you actually sit down and have to write that paper, presentation, chapter, or text that your entire love life hinges on.

You also begin to see ideas you would have previously missed that seemingly pop out of nowhere and are inspired by the most innocuous of circumstances.

My qualifications for such a statement? I wrote this article on an exercise bike using the Speare mobile app.

Start to actively brainstorm today. You can do it anytime. You can do it anywhere.

From Twitter to Texting: How the Internet Has Changed the Way We Write

Since the advent of the internet, there has been a seismic shift in the way that we write.

People are writing more than ever, and they are doing it in unconventional ways.

From trying to cram your thoughts on something political in a 140 characters to typing “k” to a lengthly text from a friend, there is no doubt that we are changing how we write.

We now want to write efficiently, saving ourselves time and effort by going back to the principals of writing. Brainstorming and outlining are coming back into vogue, and people are trying whichever new software will save them time. Things like Bullet Journal, Medium, and (more examples) are wildly popular, since they are able to succinctly capture your thoughts in a small amount of time.

However, the greatest amount of writing that we do is stuff that we don’t even think about. Social media has allowed us to pour out our thoughts, feelings, and ideas to those around us, and it has revolutionized how we interact with those around us.

When you are writing in succinct sentences, there is no need to fill that massive blank page in front of you, no need to stare at the vastness of it and completely draw a blank. You already feel accomplished, since you have written down many sentences of what you are intending to write.

The key to writing is to just write.

We spend so much time overthinking or fussing about formatting that we rarely get any actual writing done. With Twitter, you can agonize over a tweet, but that is rarely the case, as you hardly worry about what you are writing because its so short.

Why isn’t this the case when we write?

We need to just be able to pour our thoughts out onto the page, and then worry about editing, organizing and formatting later. We need things that have the capacity to be linear and non linear at the same time, because our brain doesn’t always think in a straight line.

We need a programs like Wattpad and what Speare promises to be, capturing thoughts wherever you would like to write. However, unlike Wattpad, Speare allows you to capture those succinct sentances and organize them however you wish. It also allows you to enter non-linear thoughts and keep them for later, out of the way of your main document.

These up and coming programs are changing how we can craft papers, write books, and even pen poems. But the real era of writing changed with that little text box inside social media, and we have just scratched the surface of this new age of writing.

Write 1.0: The First Age of Writing

Since the beginning of time, man has communicated in various forms. One of the most prevalent of these forms is the written word, which has been around for thousands of years. And for these thousands of years, various forms of paper and ink (what we are calling Write 1.0) was the medium for theses written words. This enabled man to take the verbal stories that had been passed down from generation to generation and set them to paper. 

This also enabled copying, with more than one copy becoming available. This served as a perfect form of long distance communication, as one message could now get passed quickly and efficiently from man to man and reach the intended recipient untouched and unchanged. However, this written form of copying was a long and arduous process, taking years for even the most accomplished copiers to complete a single book. Enter the printing press.

 Gutenberg obviously saw this as a problem, and he determined that he wanted to make the process more streamlined, so that printing could be available to the masses. Namely, he wanted the public to have access to the Bible, so that they could read the contents for themselves, and not have to rely on it being read to them by corruptible papal figures. This was a revolution, as people now had access to all the information that before had only been accessible to a chosen few. We can call this the first information age, as we now live in the second and far greater information age. 

With the printing press, people were free to copy whatever they desired (and could afford), making daily newspapers possible and skyrocketing the number of existing readers and writers.  This also made possible "best selling books," starting out with shorter versions of religious books to keep the costs low, and then eventually turning into books like Pilgrims Progress and Robinson Crusoe, which were both highly published around the world. The costs of publishing books were then lowered during the industrial revolution, and people were able to afford longer books, thus making it possible for the Bible to become the best selling book of all time. 

With all these ideas and stories being created, people began to demand an even more streamlined version of the printing press. This, coupled with the fact that hand writing a book is a slow process and painful (literally), facilitated the advent of the typewriter. This machine allowed for people to have the power of creating a finished document in their own home. They even became portable, with the grand exception being the Chinese Typewriter, which some call the precursor to the modern day computer, due to the complexity of the 2,500 character machine. 

However, as humans do, we craved even more innovation. We needed something more. We wanted to be able to easily edit our documents and we wanted to write them even faster. This desire to innovate and improve led to the word processor, and to the second age of writing: Write 2.0.

Writing: An Overview

As the human race has progressed, we have developed so much in healthcare, technology, science, and travel. But the most pivotal advancement that we have gone through is that of the written word. Communication through writing is what has driven our race to such great heights, and we believe that it has gone through three major stages. We have given these stages designations of Write 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, much like the Web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 that you see today. We hope to start a conversation about what the future of writing is going to be, and hopefully spark some interest in pushing writing to the next level. This is just a brief overview of our thoughts, and we will go into much more depth on each topic in the posts to follow.

Write 1.0

The minute the first hieroglyphs were etched thousands of years ago, Write 1.0 was put into effect. This quickly evolved onto papyrus, and then eventually became the ink on paper form of handwriting that we recognize today. But then the printing press was invented and writing was completely flipped onto its head. The concept of a “Best Seller” was now a possibility, and people all over the world could share their ideas and stories with one another. This concept was made even more possible by the advent of a faster form of writing, the typewriter. Hardly realizing it, an entire generation of writers adopted the QWERTY keyboard standard. This paved the way for the second revolution of writing, which we know as the word processor, advancing from mechanization to digitization.

Write 2.0

Once the computer was invented, we needed software where we could edit what we wrote down without having to start over on a new piece of paper. This was solved by the word processor. People were now able to edit what they had previously written, making the whole writing process incredibly streamlined. They could then send these documents to others who could view and edit them as well. This allowed for more content than we could have ever imagined to be shared globally, in both books and the Internet. This is the information age, and we have the word processor to thank for bringing all of this information to us.  But now what? Where do we go from here? Is the word processor becoming outdated? Possibly, which brings us to the present. We believe that we are seeing significant changes in the new writing standard, as this new generation has become so much more prolific with communication, all through platforms. This is what we see Write 3.0 to be. A new era, heralded by how a new generation writes and creates, socially. 

Write 3.0

If the pen is mightier than the sword, then the platform text box is the atomic bomb. The platform is the most powerful technological tool out there, and the backbone and foundation of the Internet today. We believe that this is the future, that people should be writing down and following thoughts, stories, and ideas into a beautifully streamlined platform that uses the text box as the main driver. This enables people to make what they write a social platform, having people comment, share, or even like or dislike specific sentences. The writer can get instant data from their book, and see the people constantly interacting with said book, even taking designated surveys after each chapter. The depth that the reader and writer will connect will help to catapult writing into another age, and this next age is coming. Write 3.0 is coming.

Join us in the conversation of defining what Write 3.0 is to you. How will authoring books via a platform change the way that books are written? What will writing books look like on a platform? Let us know what you think! Comment below or email us at support@getspeare.com. Talk to you soon!

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