Accidental Genius Book Review
By Casey Douglass
Accidental Genius by Mark Levy is a book that offers to give you the tools to unlock your creativity in any area that requires thought, which is almost everything. I purchased it with the hope that it might further my understanding of the "Free writing" technique that I had only formerly met during my Open University writing course. There, it was given maybe a page in the coursebook and that was that.
Free writing, at it's most basic, is writing uninhibitedly for a set amount of time. You are not meant to judge your output nor over think things. It should be stream of consciousness type stuff flowing freely from your brain and onto the page. What this book does however, is give you so many more ways to use the technique, subtle nuances that really didn't occur to me before. I bought the book hoping it would expand my understanding and it certainly has. I have used free writing in a wholly new way since reading this book and I advise anyone to give it a read. I have used it to help brainstorm ideas for stories, articles, and even to gain clarity with life situations. I think that if you are any kind of writer, it might be especially valuable to you, and it does contain a few chapters on using the technique for writing issues.
My only criticism isn't really a criticism. Mark uses some marketing/business examples for a lot of the techniques described which, although amply driving home his point, verged on sending me to sleep at times. However I did learn what I needed to learn, so it's a very minor and probably subjective negative in my opinion.
A big thumbs up from me!
