Andrew Sean Greer Quotes

When you stop thinking about something, the idea comes to you. It seems to work.

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.

Complex tasks are often better handled in the back of our mind, and that's often true of creative tasks - when you have something complex to deal with in writing or research or responding to an email. I'll start working, put it aside, and sometimes I'll wake up the next morning with a solution, or I'll find one when I exercise.

When I wake up, if I can't figure something out during the daytime and then wake up at 4 A.M., it's there immediately. I don't know if it's the subconscious mind working, but it just happens.

I'm sure I have a process, but it mostly takes place in my dreams.

I have found, for example, that if I have to write upon sum rather difficult topic, the best plan is to think about it with very great intensity-the greatest intensity of which I am capable-for a few hours or days, and at the end of that time give orders, so to speak (to my subconscious mind) that the work is to proceed underground. After some months I return consciously to the topic and find that the work has been done.

Your subconscious is always working in the background, unlocking things and solving problems.

Brainstorming, for me, takes place in my bed at night between the time I turn out my lights and I finally fall asleep. It is not a very violent storm, but what's happening is I am just thinking about different ideas and maybe things I've seen that day that I think might make a good story.

My real thinking and planning gets done when I'm doing something else like driving or walking or taking the shower.

Metaphorically speaking, of course, if I put a problem behind my pillow and fall asleep, very often because my brain went to sleep with that idea or the problem alive, very often in the middle of the night I wake up, and I wake up with a solution or with a direction of solution.

The best work for creative folks on the team is when the problem is big and the solution escapes everyone.

Whatever creativity is, it is in part a solution to a problem.

I apply the term 'creativity' broadly... it's problem solving. We are all faced with problems, and we have to address them and think of something new, and that's where creativity comes in.

The creative act always requires a stepping back. It's called the incubation period. The incubation period - one of the four phases of creativity - is when you're not consciously thinking of a problem, and you're letting it marinate. So this is why you hear time and again, people saying they had that "Eureka" moment in the bath, like Archimedes, or in the shower, or while going for a walk or in a coffeehouse.

There is a method in his madness, and the rudimentary idea in my mind is growing. It will be a whole idea soon, and then, oh, unconscious cerebration.

The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren't there. The answers are there in the morning.

If you're thinking about the idea in the shower. If you're thinking about the idea while you're walking your dog, there's probably something to it.

My mother used to say, "Tell your brain you want that piece of information or you want to solve this problem, and then just walk away from it. Just forget about it. Just do something else, completely distract yourself, and you'll see, it's like a computer. Eventually, it will deliver it up." And I find that's really true.

When one is working out a problem ... life becomes duality. One's ego transacts the ordinary routine of things, as if the mind had an upper and lower story and the regular performance of the day's duties moved and motivated on the upper floor, while down below the all-absorbing problem toils silently, forcefully, toward its solution.

I'm sure our brains are working unconsciously. When you have a creative thought, it's parts of the brain talking to each other without your awareness.

I still don't know how to jump-start a car, even though it's been told to me a million times. But I do love thinking about how creativity works.

If you really want to step up your team's creative thinking, take a hard look at how many people you're putting in a room together. More than three to five is probably too many.

I love creating. I love being with creative people who can think quickly on their feet.

Sometimes, it feels artificial to try to come up with a solution to something that none of us know how to solve.

Creative ideas aren't like Jenga blocks, where they fall apart and you've got to start from scratch, though it can feel that way.