A Thought Provoking Read!

When you're in the writing business, you constantly need to be on the lookout for ideas and lots of them. Writing consumes ideas at a rate of knots so you require an endless supply of them in order to sate the monster. And, of course, a lot of the time and just when you need them most, the idea river runs dry and leaves you in the lurch with only an empty head and a creaky old ballpoint for guidance.

The natural instinct when this happens is to hit the panic button. But there really is no need as help is nearby. In my times of drought, I've often turned to the little treasure you see below for guidance and I have to say that, since it was recommended to me by an art director in a Dublin ad agency over twenty years ago, it has never let me down.

A Technique for Producing Ideas is a short book, not even fifty fiddly pages long, that shows really clearly and concisely how coming up with ideas is hardly ever the stuff of great genius but rather of carefully considering all angles of the problem that requires fixing ... and then of leaving the brain to do its own work behind the scenes. Though it was originally written for advertising students in the days before TV, it remains fresh and relevant even in today's sophisticated digital age and its content can apply to any walk of life where finding the right connection makes all the difference.

To give you a small example of how helpful it is, I was looking for a topic to talk about today and I couldn't come up with anything. Then I just saw the book on the shelf and off I went! 

More soon ...

Well worth a read!