I've just finished a book called 'Blink'�. Coming so soon after NaNoWriMo, it seems kind of appropriate ' the month (thanks to other happenings) seems to have gone in a 'blink'�.

The idea behind 'Blink'� is that we, as people, get trained out of using our intuition, that sudden insight that helps us solve problems that apparently have no solution (or, to be more rigorously correct, no general solution).

I first encountered the phenomenon was back in the sixties, when the Rubick's Cube was all the rage. You see, I was one of those who 'solved'� it in less than 30 seconds. It didn't matter how well the cubelets were mixed up: hand it to me, and zip-zip-zip-zip, and it was done.

Then somebody asked me how I did it'�

I described a few 'moves'�, and broached the idea of 'orbits'� ' how a particular square moved around the cube based on doing the same set of moves a few times, until the square came back to the same place on the cube. That led to identifying six or ten different sequences of moves that could eventually lead to a solved Cube ' a 'generalized'� solution.

Sounds good since I could ALWAYS find a solution, except that I could no longer solve the Cube in less than two minutes! Most often, it would take me under five, and a really mixed up one could take up to 10 minutes.

What does this have to do with NaNo, and writing?

When we write, we are really working from our intuition, our ability to have insight into a problem. We set a scenario (the problem) and couch it in terms of our characters and their interactions. Then we let the characters run with the story, and put what they do into words.

That's why, in our minds, we think of the stories we tell as brilliant. In all honesty, they really are as brilliant as we think they are. Sometimes, we seem the story as complete, from start to finish; at other times, we might see it as a series of episodes, each episode complete in itself.

The key word is 'COMPLETE'�. The stories/episodes are complete in our minds.

Then we start to write the story, and that takes a 'generalized'� solution ' words, spelling, grammar, plot, subplot, inventions, etc.

An aside: do you know that most dreams, no matter how complete they are, last between two and five seconds? That's true, even when the dream, as we 'remember'� it, takes hours or even days in its own timeframe.

Our need to stick to 'formulas'� ' the structures, the desire to make the story shareable with others, etc. ' is our attempt to be objective. We want the story to be perfect in all its elements. When we do, the intuitive (complete) version of what we are trying to write does not really match what we actually write. Any story we put down on paper (that is making it objective) just can't match the perfection of our mind-story (totally subjective).

That's why NaNo is so important. Not because it gets us to write 50,000 words (or more), but because we don't have time to try and make it 'perfect'�.

We need the imperfect stuff that comes out of NaNo (or whatever your equivalent is) so that we can hone the piece to better match our perfect image of the story.

So, forget about waiting for inspiration for your magnificent piece ' it's already there. You just need the gumption to look at it in its imperfect state, its NaNo edition, if you will.

That's what make a writer ' not the words written!

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