“Organizing Creativity” Book as PDF
There is a first and second edition — the second edition is currently a rough draft, but much, much improved. See the links below for both versions.
When I started writing “Organizing Creativity”, I wanted to convey a few ideas, mainly:
- creativity is more than one idea, for example, a book consists of more ideas than an idea for a plot, but also characters, settings, etc. pp. and that this needs organization because you simply cannot remember all ideas and have them available when you need them
- creativity (in the sense of producing something new and useful) is a process that consists of acquiring knowledge, generating ideas, capturing and collecting these ideas, realizing the project, and (possibly) archiving it
- creativity takes hard work and time to achieve the preconditions to be creative and hard work and time to realize the projects — it is nothing like the “creativity” usually “achieved” by “artists” who “spend [their] time sopping up sauce or blowing weed, and talking about the [works they are] going to do” (modified quote from “I will fear no evil” by Robert A. Heinlein)
- present multiple ways to support creativity with analog and digital tools for capturing and collecting ideas and discuss the criteria for capturing and collecting tools
I am not sure whether I have achieved this with this book, or whether making it available as html-pages on this website helps. Perhaps in a year or so, I’ll try again with a more concise version. But perhaps I simply need to provide the book in another way. So, additionally to the text on this site, I’m making the book available as .pdf here. Gasp! Yes, the PDF for free, here.
You are free to download it, however, it is still copyrighted. If you want to use parts of it, cite it and adhere to fair use! If you like it, buy it as paperback (albeit in black and white) or as eBook (much cheaper, albeit essentially the same as the PDF below). BTW, the file is not protected, this does not work anyway and the only consequence is that it needs one smart cow first to make it available unprotected somewhere else. So I might as well offer it here:
Organizing Creativity Book – First Edition (PDF)
Note: The strongly revised second edition (much improved) is as of January 2012 still only a rough draft — but you can find the PDF here.
Happy reading
Daniel
I look forward to reading this!
Hoi Christopher,
thank you, as written in this posting here, I think it’s a little long-winded. It contains a lot of information, but I expect/hope/work to it that version 2 will be concise and more readable (and updated).
And probably available before the end of 2011.
All the best
Daniel
Hi Daniel, nice to read your blog. I am downloading your ebook now and it’s sound great book! thanks for sharing!
Hoi Johny,
thank you for your comment. I’ve updated the content but I am not finished with creating the new version of it — however, you can read the updated content at http://wiki.organizingcreativity.com/doku.php . I hope to finish the new version until the end of this year, we’ll see.
Best regards
Daniel
Hello Daniel,
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I can’t tell you the number of hours I have spent to determine which software is best for my research workflow, but you probably know from your own experience … it’s never-ending. At any rate, here I am, at the point of putting it all together & finally getting down to the business of creating some new knowledge.
Now, with your help, through the generous use of your time to build this wonderful website, I have a guide that can help me quickly winnow out the wheat from the chaff.
Thank you so much. I hope that someday I am able to contribute, in some small way, tips that would help others too.
Regards,
Wayne
Hello Wayne,
thank you very much for this positive feedback.
I am still working on the second edition and the progress is slow but steady.
All the best
Daniel