To think is to write. To write is to think. Write, write, write.

Some of you reading my blog may know that one of my favorite themes is how to generate ideas.  I see an idea as a new way of taking observations, new and old, seemingly unconnected, and combining them in a new concept or a new story that changes the way one thinks, big or small. To have an idea is to transcend traditional boundaries and link the seemingly random dots into something that makes sense.  It is, in essence, to make simple and meaningful the complicated world we live in.

What is the best recipe to generate ideas?  Clearly, knowledge is key. Those are the random points that you must connect to have an idea. No knowledge, no ideas.  There are no shortcuts. Too often, I hear all these inspirational speakers, most of them American businessmen and women, some academics, giving advice on how to be creative and generate ideas.  TED talks are an example.  It all sounds so easy when you listen to these master speakers, but they always seem to forget to tell you that you still need to do the hard work and know your subject better than anyone else.

But knowing is not the same as idea generation.  I know many people who seem to be an encyclopedia of knowledge, but have yet to ever generate a useful idea. More often than not, such people excel at being critics or naysayers. They don't have the unbridled optimism that idea generators often have.

So what is the key to generating ideas?  Some may argue it's an innate ability. But I actually think it can be trained, provided one works hard enough at it.  As I said above, I fundamentally believe ideas are about making connections and so one should train themselves to make connections.  Ever since I was a kid, for some reason, I just loved telling stories and drawing pictures. I would love the exercise of being handed two objects, for example, and try to tell a story that involved the two objects.  By telling the story, you're forcing yourself to try to make a connection between two objects.  For example, there is a truck and an apple.  On the one hand, they shouldn't be related, but you could come up with all sorts of interesting stories that bring the truck and the apple together.  And when you start making these connections, your mind naturally wanders all over the place, exploring so many possibilities, trying to find the most interesting, yet believable connection that might exist. If you're an artist-type, have someone hand you a random scribble and then try to turn it into something else, something more fantastic.  This is essentially what I do when I do research. We collect data, but then we just let our imaginations run wild. We try out myriads of stories, until we hit one that makes sense.  I've never taken a creative writing course, but, naively, I would think that this is what creative writing is about.

And how do we know a story makes sense?  I start to write. When one writes, one is forced to lay one's story out logically or at least understandbly.  Writing is the epitome of thinking. In writing, you are trying to communicate how you figured out the story. You have to walk people through your story. You have to get your facts straight, your story straight. If you can't, it means either you don't understand or, perhaps, your story isn't the right one. And you will never know if you're going down the right path unless you start writing. What seems reasonable in your head may not be that reasonable when it comes out on paper.  The very act of writing is about piecing the pieces together and telling a story, which means, as you write, you are making the connections.  Idea generators are always prolific writers.  Prolific writers always have lots of ideas, mostly bad, but all you need is a few good ideas. If you don't write, you likely won't have many ideas.

So if you want to generate ideas, write, write and write.  If you're a scientist, I don't want you to think that this necessarily means write a lot of papers, but at some level, I do mean that.  Some critics may say one should weigh quality over quantity. And while I agree completely with this, I don't think every single one of your papers needs to be a slam dunk, Nature or Science article. There is still value in writing up a boring paper. Even if nobody reads it, the very act of finishing is a testament that you can make even boring things interesting, at least to yourself.  That is the highest form of telling a story. If you can tell a story about things everyone else thinks is mundane, you will have arrived.  Again, not all of your papers need to be slam dunks, but every paper is a step or chapter in your journey to training yourself into a thinker.  As I have said many times before in previous blogs, I write papers not for the world, but for myself, as stepping stones in my thinking.  Each paper, even the ones that seem boring, are essential to my development as a scientist, as a story teller.  To not write up all your work is robbing yourself of your ability to grow as a scientist.

But writing doesn't have to be just scientific writing. Any chance you get to write, to lay out your thoughts, you should do so.  Writing poems. Writing blogs. Writing essays. Writing long love letters.  Writing long emails to your colleagues (hopefully not love letters and hopefully not hate mail).  The act of writing, in whatever context, exercises those parts of your brain that excel at making connections.  Much of your extracurricular writing might be horrible, but as long as you're doing it, you're moving forward.  You don't actually have to show your horrible stuff publicly (I have no shame), but even allowing yourself to write horribly, perhaps in private, helps you become a better scientist or artist because in the process, you are freeing your mind, allowing your mind to wander.  You have to wander a bit until you land on the right story.  Believe it or not, wandering itself takes practice.

All of this reminds me of a coral honeysuckle vine I just planted in my yard.  I planted it a little bit away from other plants and structures. Everyday, I see the tip of the vine, like a long tentacle, in a different position as it slowly makes sweeping arcs in search of some hard structure to grab hold of.  The vine does not have eyes, but sure enough, as it allows itself to wander, it eventually grabs hold of a structure, and from that moment on, it takes off.  Let yourself wander.  If you're too afraid to wander, you'll never find anything to grab hold of.

To think is to write. To write is to think.  So write, write, write and write. If you follow my advice, you will find that writing is fun, because it's all about storytelling.  As scientists, we often forget that we are essentially storytellers.