But most business people need ideas to solve particular problems. They are restricted by the specific facts and conditions, and they also have a time limit in which to “come across” with something. This puts a very different approach to the problem than that of the more leisurely “creative” thinker. As a matter of fact, it takes considerably more creativeness to be creative on schedule than to amble along at one’s own serene pace. The tempo of modern business is such that it no longer wishes to wait even for time or tide. It seems to be getting even with the long eons in which time or tide refused to wait for man.
The concrete idea cannot proceed by stretching an arm into the blue sky and drawing down something to do business with. It depends on specific facts that must be previously gathered, organized and adapted to the purpose in view.
Playing with ideas without knowing the process is something like constructing a television set by using the trial and error method! You may finally get it done but it would surely be simpler if you knew how at the start.
Most of our ideas come to us from outside by way of seeing, hearing, feeling or some of the other senses. But these ideas are merely raw material for writers. They are shared in that form with all human beings. A creative mind does something to those ideas. He selects, adapts and transforms them.
For example, my mother had a long siege of insomnia which nothing seemed to help. So I decided that there must be some way of getting the better of it, and determined to do a lot of research and write a little book on How to Sleep Soundly. Was that an idea? No, up to that point it was merely an impulse. The idea only appeared after I did the research and knew how I was going to relate the factors. It became a successful idea after it was published and put all the readers to sleep—except my mother!
So, first of all, the writer selects certain impulses that arouse his interest. This determines his basic material, and to a large degree the personality of his writing as well. With other planned methods and skill, these impressions, fleeting glimpses of life and basic facts of human behavior are recombined into work that the writer has every right to call his own.
The same process of gathering raw material, selecting, refitting and refining, characterizes all idea development whether abstract or concrete. The chief requisite is imagination. This can be so aided and controlled by devices presently to be explained, that the process of idea-getting becomes almost automatic.
Ideas result from mental attitudes. They originate in points of view. Hence by seeking true and natural points of view one may secure the best and most superior ideas. The world is governed by ideas—good ones and bad ones. Each nation is ruled by its political policy which is the general expression of the ideas of its leading minds. Each individual is as he is by virtue of the particular ideas which prevail in him.
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