Yesterday I tried the “clustering” technique for the first time. I was not pleased.
“Clustering” is an idea generation technique where you start with a core idea in the center (the nucleus), and start jotting other notions around it. This sort of random, free-association is what the right-brain does best, and clustering is a way to do that without the left-brain getting in the way.
In the book (Writing the Natural Way), Rico tells of how easily people fall into the technique of clustering, how even second graders are able to generate story ideas using it. It’s the “rare individual,” she says, who has problems with it.
Meet a “rare individual.”
It isn’t that I think the technique does not work. Far from it. As I was clustering topics around the nucleus word (“Turn”) I had several flashes of stories and essays that might build out of some of the branches I was building. What I didn’t get was Rico’s “a-ha!” moment, where it all falls together and the unifying “whole” is perceived. The shift from clustering to writing wasn’t seamless and natural; it was forced and unsatisfying.
But I think I may know why. It’s my damned left-brain.
My left-brain is a bastard. He accepts nothing but reasoned input, and expects nothing but perfection. He is determined to do well, and do well the first time. Failure is not an option. However, in this case, I believe he’s responsible for my failure.
I could sense my left-brain butting in, trying to divine the “correct answer”–as if there could be one in this type of exercise. I felt him clamping down on the free-association of the clustering process, allowing only the most literal branchings from the word “Turn.”
When clustering turned to writing, I actually made false starts, immediately editing my output, sure that what I’d started wouldn’t be good enough to achieve the desired goal.
I’m going to try this exercise a couple of times over the weekend because I believe it will work, and work well, if I can just get my left-brain to shut the frak up.
k
Unraveling Time
Desert Wind
Ploughman's Son
Ploughman King
The Year the Cloud Fell
The Spirit of Thunder
Shadow of the Storm
The Cry of the Wind
Beneath a Wounded Sky
Cryptogenesis: A Memoir
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 
I never seem to do well with these kinds of exercises. When I need an idea, I go to the grocery store and watch people. I make up their lives, and eventually someone will walk by that triggers something.
I might just be nuts, but even when I’m all alone I feel a lot of pressure to “perform” every time I try a new brainstorming thing.
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Hey, J. Heck, if you already have a good method, why mess with it? If it ain’t broke…right? But Ray Bradbury described this method to a T, and he did it every morning. I’m not looking at this as a way to generate stories (or, I should say, not as ONLY a way to generate stories) but as a way to clear the Left Brain from the creative process. My Left Brain is an insecure, jealous creature, and it hates being ignored. It needs to get over that. Left Brain has work, home repair, driving, editing, scheduling, and arguing all to itself. Poor little Right Brain just has dreaming and the occasional flash of insight. I want to give Writing over to Right Brain. He’s much better at it.
But Ilene and I do what you do with people-watching. We make up stories about them, or try to guess what they’re like.
One day, I gave myself the instruction: Create a story from the first odd thing you see today. On the way to the bus stop, I saw a raven dancing on Old Man Nixon’s doorstep. That was odd.
I got a short story, a sale, and a novel out of it.
There are many methods.
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I often share your left brain problem. But sometimes it does turn off. Like when I doodled a storyboard for my latest writing project on the back of the status report at work using stick figures and smiley faces. It was cute. ❤
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Actually, Rico says that doodling (overdrawing the connecting lines, drawing empty circles, etc.) helps open up the right-brain because the left-brain gets tired with hanging around such silliness. You’ve tapped into a natural side door!
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… if that’s the case, I wonder why my Left Brain ever engages, I doodle on everything I can get my hands on. Generally on the back of office papers and during meetings on my notes. 😉
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