Writing Tools: Approaches

Use these procedures for addressing or accomplishing your creative work.
Click below on "taxonomies" to learn types of mindsets, or scroll and search all 116 tools!

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  • Constraint
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  • Frame
  • Framework
  • Gauge
  • Lever
  • Model
  • Process
  • Strategy
  • Structure
  • System
  • Technique
  • Tension
  • Trick
  • Trigger
# 044

I don’t know when I’ve stumbled across something good

Natural Collaboration
Creating a more visceral and spontaneous contact with your work by designing systems and structures that invite nature as your collaborator.
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# 053

I want my audience to take action on my message

Scaffolding
Information architecture that makes your message more actionable for audiences
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# 052

I don’t know what the first step in my creative process should be

Tapping
Questions to mine the emotional tension of your immediate past experiences as raw source material for creative expression
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# 045

I don’t feel like doing this boring work

Bacon
A small collection of intrinsic triggers that stoke your creative fire regardless of circumstance
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# 022

I have all these ideas, but don’t know what to do with them

Organizing Principle
The core assumption, central reference point or guiding pole, which governs action and allows everything else in its proximity to derive value.
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# 021

I’m not sure what format to put this work in.

Agnosticism
Putting an end to the habitual anticipation of outcomes and listening for what wants to be created instead
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# 031

I totally screwed up and feel foolish

Mistakeoff
Using humiliation to convert mistakes into lessons and lessons into habits.
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# 033

I know what I want to do and should do, I just can’t do it

Disgust Of Wind
Create real, lasting change through the power of positive tension.
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# 008

I can’t stay motivated to keep working on projects

Creative Commitment
A theoretical constraint of treating your art as a daily practice, professionalizing your art and using daily momentum to keep yourself from feeling detached from the process.
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# 004

I can’t focus and my projects are spread too thin

Identity Based Creation
Tapping into your native endowments channeling them in the service of making your ideas happen.
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# 005

I can’t up with any new ideas

Gradualism
Rejecting the notion of the elusive eureka moment and practicing an existential and holistic approach to a creative life, living in a way that your art gets done over and over.
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# 020

I can’t make things with my mood, emotions or circumstance

Meaning Making Mission
An existential blueprint for noticing, naming, taming and reframing negative moods into positive fulfillment
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# 015

I think my idea is taking on a life of its own

Working Modular
Treating each idea as an uncategorized chunk of creative material, an objective, portable piece content that accumulates and categorizes into its own structure.
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# 014

I’m forget my ideas, or not sure what to do when they come to me

Ground Zero
The entry point into the creative processing workflow, the primary location for offloading raw materials into your idea factory, the central cockpit of creative control.
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# 016

I can’t maintain a constant flow of creativity

Unconscious Rumination
Allowing your inner mind to get to work mulling over, sorting out, organizing and categorizing material that has been previously absorbed, ultimately generating an idea at a time when the mental spotlight isn’t on it.
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