I have to be honest, I’m a huge fan of a book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, and in particular her ‘Morning Pages’ technique. When I read about Accidental Genius I wondered if it would be a very similar book.
I needn’t have worried. Mark Levy’s book, Accidental Genius stood on its own for me as a book that I am so pleased to have read, particularly at this point in time, and I will be keeping it with me on my personal writing journey.
Levy introduces the concept of ‘Free-writing’ that Cameron readers will be familiar with, but then goes on to explore and extend this concept much further, into a veritable suitcase of bite-size practical techniques that I will definitely be keeping next to my computer.
The book is organised into three parts and 28 chapters, with the core of the book centred on techniques for helping you to write freely and creatively, in the true meaning of that word. Levy’s book will coax you towards ideas you didn’t think you had if you follow some of the exercises.
The outline structure of Accidental Genius is as follows:-
Part One: Six Secrets to Free-writing.
Part Two: Powerful Refinements
Part Three: Going Public
The chapters I found most useful myself were Chapters 1—3, 15, and 24. The titles of these Chapters:
‘Try Easy’, ‘Write Fast and Continuously’, ‘Work Against a limit’, ‘Hold a paper conversation’, and ‘Notice stories everywhere’.
Chapters 12—14 were the least useful for me at this point in time, but like other process books I have found that the parts I’ve dismissed at first were often useful to me at a later stage. Sometimes the time is not right to ‘hear’ certain words.
I wondered if Chapter 10 ‘Escape Your Own Intelligence’ and Chapter 18 ‘Doubt Yourself’ could have been blended together as chapters as they seemed to talk about a similar overall concept. Also Chapter 5 ‘Go with the thought’ seemed to slightly contradict Chapter 11, ‘The Value in Disconnecting’. But I do think that both could be used at different points in time. This book is a bumper pack of techniques from which you can pick and choose according to your own particular needs at a certain point in time.
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