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Use these writing tools

Ever hear of Tony Buzan? I discovered Tony Buzan back in the mid 70s. Tony introduced me and countless others to the concept of mind mapping. It changed the way I looked at organizaing ideas. Similar terms to mind mapping are clustering and branching.

I stress the use of three writing tools and encourage you to use them. They are:

A. Brainstorming
B. Mind mapping
C. Freewriting, sometimes called Rapidwriting

A. Brainstorming

For those of you unsure about this one, the brainstorming writing tool is simply a session, usually with a group, though you can do it on your own, where you search for ideas/thoughts about a particular topic/question/
issue and get these ideas/thoughts written down one after the other on paper, or on the computer. The rules are:
  • Record/write down every idea/thought that you come up with.
  • Don’t censor yourself or others however weird, or seemingly invalid the ideas/thoughts that show up. You never know when one of these crazy ideas will work.

Once you’re done, look at what you’ve got and decide which information to keep, set aside, get more of, or discard.

B. Mind mapping

Mind mapping is rather like organized brainstorming. This writing tool is built on establishing relationships or branches between ideas.

When developing a proposal, you have to come up with an outline or sequence to follow. The proposal-writing guide sets up that sequence. But where does the sequence itself come from? For me, mind mapping is a superb way to achieve this. There are two types of mind mapping you can use:

  1. Regular mind map
    2. The topic is placed in the middle of a page like the trunk of a tree. Any ideas form branches off this central trunk
  2. Self-stick note mind map
    3. The topic is written on a self-stick note and placed at the top of the page. Any ideas form columns below this top heading.
Mind maps give an immediate picture of a situation. It's a writing tool that can tell me what’s missing, what connections there might be between branches, and most importantly, what the priorities are.

C. Freewriting or Rapidwriting

What is freewriting? Just what it says it is - you simply write non stop on the proposal topic for 5, 10, 20 minutes – as long as you think you can. The important thing is not to censor what you write or go back and correct something, or think “I shouldn’t have written that!”

At this stage, it’s all about flow, letting yourself write whatever comes to mind. When you’ve finished, check what you’ve written and identify those thoughts/ideas that may be of value. You may be surprised at what you’ve come up with.

Complete information on how to use these writing tools can be found in How to Write Proposals, Sales Letters & Reports.


Copyright 2008 The NS Group

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