my mind on books

I’ve been dipping into this book recently: Accidental Genius: Revolutionize Your Thinking Through Private Writing by Mark Levy.
Levy advocates timed private writing, a concept similar to Julia Cameron’s “morning pages” (see The Artist’s Way). What I like about Levy’s book is that he focuses on thinking much more than the process of writing. The book is billed as a business book so the examples tend to be business-oriented, but the process can be applied to any situation. It’s also a nice, short, easy read at around 130 pages.

For example, one chapter talks about “focus-changers” and gives a list of about 35 questions, such as:

• What was I thinking here?
• How else can I say that?
• How can I make this exciting?
• How can I add value?
• Why am I stuck at this particular point?
• What do I think about that?
• What does this remind me of? (p 42-43)

A limited preview is available at Google Book Search.

The author’s website has a “lost” chapter.