MBR: Accidental Genius by Mark Levy

I decided I was going to read a book a week for a year, here’s a quick review of this weeks book. You can see the ongoing list here.

Basic Info

Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content by Mark Levy.

Why I bought it

As someone who publishes something weekly and earns a living writing various types of documents I was looking for a book that would give me some much needed structure to my approach to writing. This book did exactly that.

How it connects to the public sector

It doesn’t, it’s about the mechanics of writing, and how to get better at it.

What I got out of reading it

The book argues that freewriting (fast, furious, and unedited writing) is where you best work emerges. The best lesson I took away from the book was that you need to separate your writing and editing phases. I often find myself carefully crafting each sentence as I go. This, according to Levy, not only slows down my writing but also my thinking, which often results in inadvertently omitting key insights from my final written products. I used freewriting to draft last week’s post on the confluence of Lego and Public Policy and I wad really impressed with the results. Since reading it I’ve also completely changed how I structure all of my unfinished thoughts in Evernote. If you are interested in being a better writer, I suggest grabbing a copy of the Accidental Genius.

Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.ca
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