Need to Get Somewhere? Try Walking in Circles.

William Blake's depiction of "Jacob's Ladder"

I once had a professor describe the difference between the way men think and the way women think. She drew a letter “A” on one side of the board and a letter “B” on the other side of the board. She said, “Men are typically linear thinkers. If they want to get from point A to point B, they go in a straight line.” She drew a straight line from the A to the B. Like this:

 “Women,” she said, “are typically nonlinear. If they want to get from point A to point B, they will wander in circles around it before they eventually get there.” She drew a line that started at the A and then wrapped around and around the B slowly spiraling inward. Like this:

My professor was mostly kidding, but it proved to be a moment of realization for me: I had a woman’s brain! Okay, not really. What I meant to say is that this was the first time I realized (A) I was a nonlinear thinker and (B) that was okay. I guess I just assumed up to that point in my life that everyone in the world was supposed to be linear thinkers. The better you were at it, the smarter you were. If you didn’t think this way, well, you either had ADD or you were dumb. It had never occurred to me that there was value in the whirlpool-like way that my brain worked.

The best way I’ve heard nonlinear thinking explained was by Chuck McCumber. He said, “It’s kind of like letting a puppy run wild on a walk up a mountain – anything of interest will be thoroughly investigated (and perhaps peed on) before jumping to the next, possibly non-related subject!”

I love this description for several reasons.

First, I like that he used a puppy and not a dog. A puppy implies playfulness, excitement, and energy. The childlike fascination with the world I feel is so integral to creativity.

Second, the puppy pees on stuff. That’s just funny. Also, I just happen to have the world’s smallest bladder and have to pee all the time!

Third, both the person walking the puppy and the puppy are going to the top of the mountain. The difference is, the person (linear thinker) will stay on the established trail and methodically work his/her way to the top. The puppy (nonlinear thinker), on the other hand, is wandering all over tarnation, and it’s going to see a whole lot more of that mountain. There’s a lot of exploring to do!

And fourth, McCumber’s description highlights the danger of being a nonlinear thinker. Namely: the puppy is going to take a lot longer to get to the top…if he/she ever makes it at all.

Not surprisingly, it turns out a lot of creative people tend to be puppies, or nonlinear thinkers if you prefer. (Someone should do a study to find out if creative people tend to have smaller bladders, too. I’ll bet there’s a correlation there.) Anyway, there’re a lot of people who are a whole lot smarter than me that have written on this topic. Go check them out if you’re interested. What I want to do, is show a few ways I use nonlinear thinking to help me come up with creative solutions when I run into problems.

First, the classic “idea web”. Boring, I know. You’ve already heard of it and already done it a million times. If it works for you, great. That’s probably because you are good at obeying the prime directive of brain storming: Don’t judge.

If idea webs don't work for you, that’s probably because you can’t get that stupid critic inside your head to shut up. He’s always saying things like, “That’s a dumb idea. That will never work!” Or “If you actually write that down, everyone within a ten mile radius will think you are the biggest idiot on the planet.” Or “If you actually write that down and post it on your blog, then everyone on the planet will think you are the biggest idiot on the planet.”

This is why, when you’re making an idea web, you need to kill your inner critic. That’s right, murder him. Don’t worry, he’s a jerk anyway. Plus, he’ll just resurrect himself in about two minutes and you’ll have to kill him all over again. On the bright side, I have noticed that the more times I kill him, the better I get at it, and the longer he stays dead. So, go ahead, murder your inner critic and let the ideas flow.

This is an idea web that I did while brainstorming ideas for this blog post.

Second, get a therapist. Not literally, of course. Although, to be fair, I've never tried talking to a real one and that might work as well, but it's a lot more expensive than my way. Instead, I pretend to write a letter to an imaginary "creativity therapist". In this letter I explain my problem in as much detail as I can. (Preferably, I do this while lying on a chaise longue to get the full effect). There’s just something about articulating your problem in writing that helps you to organize your thoughts and find solutions. Below is an example from my journal when I got stuck while writing my current novel. The three sections are three different days when I had to discuss things with my "therapist".

As you can see, it's not really in the form of a letter.
I just find that's a useful way to think of it.

I like to imagine that my therapist is the ghost of Yoda. He mostly just stares thoughtfully into space while I rant about my writing. Every once in a while he might nod or say, “Hmmm,” in an elusive way, but he otherwise never says a word. He just sits there all translucent like and listens. By the time I’m done going on about my problem for a few pages, I usually have a solution. As soon as I have it, I say, "Thanks, Yoda. Say hi to Obi-Wan for me. See you next time!" and he goes back to doing whatever the ghost of Yoda does when he's not listening to me.

Apparently, Kermit uses my same therapist.
"Easy Being Green, it is Not" by Peter Deseve.

Third, ram the brick wall. Yep, just put the pedal down and drive your car straight at that brick wall. I hate this one for obvious reasons. While it usually works, and I break right through that brick wall, sometimes it doesn’t, and then it really hurts.

Prize winning author Frances Itani said, “Write your way through all of the problems; don't sit around thinking about them.” Sure, okay, that sounds great and all except for the part where I take the chance of throwing several hours, days, or weeks of work in the garbage if it doesn't work out!

The "ram the brick wall" technique takes guts, a berserker mindset, and a lot of faith, but it does work...eventually. The only question is how much carnage we end up leaving in our wake along the way.

Fourth, the Taoist approach. Solve your problem by not trying to solve your problem. I’m probably totally misrepresenting Taoism here, but hopefully you get the idea. Walk away, go for a drive, do the laundry, pet the cat, make a bologna sandwich, most anything except your work. The more tedious the activity, the better. However, things like TV and video games are strictly off limits. We want monotonous activities that allow your mind to wander into a kind of meditative state, not mindless activities that rob us of our thoughts.

Done right, the Taoist approach is sort of like letting your problem soak in the dishwater for a while before trying to scrub it off. When you come back, you might be surprised to find that you have inadvertently come up with a solution. This one is always a gamble for me. It seems to work only about 50% of the time, but, hey, my wife really appreciates all the laundry I get done.

What a great opportunity for creative problem solving!
"Dirty Dishes" by Walter Beach Humphrey

Fifth, the extra-super-flowy chart. This is what happens when your linear self and your nonlinear self try to make a flow chart together and all they do is argue. It ends up being a flow chart that makes no sense. It’s intentionally chaotic, impossible for anyone other than you to follow, and kind of liberating. I stumbled onto this by accident while trying to think linearly. It went something like this:

My linear self said, “If our character is here, then logically the next step is to write a chapter in which he goes there.” So I drew a straight line from A to B.

Then my nonlinear self got kind of argumentative with my linear self and said, “Yeah, but he could also start here, here, or here, and then go there, there, or there.”

Then my linear self said, “Okay, calm down. If that’s the case, then each of those possibilities will lead to their own unique set of consequences like this, this, this, and–”

“Not necessarily,” my nonlinear self interrupted. “What if it led to this, that, or the other instead?" He  got more and more agitated as he went on. "What if it was upside-down, inside out, left-right-left-right-B-A-select-start? A butterfly flapping its wing in Utah causes a hurricane in China. The possibilities are endless! You don’t know!”

This went on for a while until my nonlinear head exploded. As my linear self searched through the debris, I was surprised to find that not only had I found a solution, I’d had a lot of fun doing it. Ever since then, this has become my “go to” technique for finding creative solutions.

This "extra-super-flowy chart" started as an attempt to
brainstorm characteristics of a new protagonist, 
and it ended up helping me to outline the entire plot
for my next novel. 

Sixth, doodle. My linear self is telling me that this is probably a subcategory of the Taoist approach. My nonlinear self is telling him, “Who cares? Why don’t you shut up and go make me a bologna sandwich or something?” I’m not sure why my nonlinear self is always so combative. Anyway, I doodle.

Doodling is another technique I discovered by accident, but it works really well. Better still, it works in combination with all of the other techniques I’ve listed except the “ram the brick wall” approach. I’ll be working on an idea web or an “extra-super-flowy chart” and start to run out of steam. Then, I doodle for a while and, suddenly, I have more ideas. Why? I have no idea, but it’s remarkably consistent in getting me results.

I've been thinking a lot about memory lately since it's a
major theme in my next novel. I started writing my 
thoughts, ran out of ideas, doodled the well/tree thing, 
got more ideas, and started writing again. 
It works almost every time. 

Seventh, think linearly. I know, I know, I don’t like it any better than you do, but sometimes you just need to get to the top of the mountain as fast and efficiently as possible, and leave the poor puppy at home. I don't like to think of him back there locked in the laundry room yipping and crying and pooping on the floor, either, but, the fact is, we need the linear side of us, too. Someone has to sift through the debris after our nonlinear head explodes. Someone has to organize, be logical, and set some limits for the trouble-making nonlinear self. We can brain storm all day long, but eventually we have to make a choice and buckle down. That's where the linear self comes in really handy. Otherwise, we might never get anything done.

For instance, did you notice the way I organized this post into two separate numbered lists? Yep, that was linear thinking for you. My linear self stepped in to put all the ideas into the form of something that was relatively coherent after my nonlinear self got done playing around and making a big mess.  If he hadn't, you would have been left trying to make sense of a doodled on idea-web-extra-super-flowy-chart-therapist-letter combo and nobody wants that...or do they?

A brainstorm I did for my next novel with little bit of everything thrown in! 

Feel free to share any of your techniques for creative problem solving in the comments below.