INNOVATION ABSTRACTS xo-6"

2 C NO. 6

2 A Published by the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development
With support from the WK. Kellogg Foundation and Sid W Richardson Fouridetiers

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INCREASING WRITTEN OUTPUT

There is a tremendous mystique surrounding the process of writing, a mystique left over from those days
in Mr. Hawthorne’s high school English class where we found ourselves counting and recounting the
number of words we’d managed to eke out of our not so fertile imaginations, hoping to have enough to
satisfy the theme requirements. The process seemed so difficult then that most of us developed a real
aversion to it and shrouded it in myths about the creative process.

Fortunately for us, research is now suggesting that those myths are not necessarily true. Dr. Robert Boice
at SUNY-Albany has been studying the writing process in academics and reports that there is hope for most
of us, after all (1982, 1983, 1984). He had great success making some simple suggestions to his fellow faculty
who had been experiencing difficulty in meeting their writing deadlines. Although the procedures were
aimed specifically at written output, a simultaneous increase in creative ideas was observed as well. We
have combined his suggestions with some from the literature on enhancing creative thought to produce an
expanded set of suggestions for those interested in increasing their written output.

1. Keep an idea notebook. Many people believe that creative ideas can’t be forced to occur at will; they
just come to us at the most inconvenient times. We have all had the experience of having a brilliant idea
occur to us just before going to sleep or in the shower or on the drive to work, only to forget what it was
when we sit down to write. The most obvious way to tap that spontaneous creativity is to provide a long-
term storage medium other than our rather shaky and overloaded memory. The medium most often
recommended is the idea notebook. Most busy people already carry some sort of calendar with them to
keep track of appointments and obligations. It is a simple matter to add a section to that calendar which
allows the recording of these random ideas in brief form for later work.

2. Set aside a regular time and place to be creative. Even though many of us believe you can’t force
creativity, in reality researchers report that many creative people do just that. Their results indicate that the
creative output of these people is more a result of regular hard work and persistence than large bursts of
inspiration. Many successful people also create a special environment in which to work, an environment
which becomes associated with that work and eventually comes to elicit it. I can speak from personal
experience on this one. I have now spent so much time sitting at a Macintosh writing with Mozart playing
in the background that simply assuming that position begins the flow of ideas and makes my work a lot
easier. There are many very valid psychological bases for this phenomenon, but underlying them all is the
assumption that creative behavior is really no different from other behavior. And just as we can learn to
drive a car automatically, we can learn to be productive writers and thinkers in the presence of certain cues.

As to the place requirements, the conditions don’t have to be away from your regular office. All you
need to do is make the environment slightly different from your regular interruptable work environment.
Close the door. Use a special desk lamp. Play a particular type of background music. Sit at a different
table. Any of these small changes could be enough to serve as the stimulus for writing or thinking. The
only requirement is that those conditions be used only when you want to work, not for anything else.

The amount of time you spend is another myth to overcome in increasing output. Many people are
defeated by the mistaken notion that they must have large blocks of time in order to get anything
meaningful done. While that may be true initially, once the habit of regular writing or thinking is
developed, it becomes easier to get a lot done in short blocks of time. And certainly, it’s a lot easier to put
aside 30 to 60 minutes than three to four hours. In fact, for many people experiencing writing blocks, the
shorter time periods are better because they help overcome that awful feeling of having to sit for hours and
be frustrated. You know it will be over in 30 minutes, and you can stand almost anything for 30 minutes.

3. Set a regular page or idea goal. One of the most successful of Boice’s techniques was the
establishment of goals for each writing period. Faculty participating in his studies were asked to write a
minimum of three pages in each of five writing periods a week for a total of 15 pages a week. They kept

 

 

Community College Leadership Program, The University of Texas at Austin, EDB 348, Austin, Texas 78712