McNair Un-Plugged
Now HATCH! is available in pixels for those of you in Kindleville, Nook Nation, and the iPad provinces. I am delighted. HATCH! is the first book in my creativity series—a “four-book trilogy.”
If eHATCH! Is your first time through this book, I hope you will be inspired to grab an old-world paper edition to add your own doodles. Especially after you've read Chapter 14, The Doodle Factor. I suggest reading Chapter 14 first. It will enhance your trip through HATCH!
If you’ve already read non-virtual HATCH! (the book) you have likely made notes, markings, highlights, and left sticky notes. (If I write “Post-It” ™ do I have to send a check to somebody in Minneapolis—or will they send me a check ... or maybe a crate of, ah, sticky notes?)
That's Not In the Book
Possibly the biggest surprise in reader reactions to HATCH! has been that so many have said how inspired they were personally to access their own creativity. That is my paramount goal in all I do: to encourage and enable others to rediscover and engage their “factory-installed” creative spirit. Even so, I thought I had mostly avoided addressing that subject directly in HATCH! I knew, before writing a single sentence, that HATCH! would be the first in a series I planned to write on human creativity. (As opposed to squirrel creativity.)
I’ve always intended for the second book to make the case that every person has a creative spirit. Seeing that possibility, accepting it, and moving forward to “recapture your creative spirit”—and engage it for all areas of life—would be the focus of Book № 2 (NOT the title.)
But first ... a book showing people an effective, long-proven method of group problem-solving, planning, and creating—brainstorming—with a do-able set of principles. Another book that makes the case, shows the evidence, and convinces a person that they actually have a natural, creative spirit of their own is a different challenge.
Because I believed that brainstorming would be a more readily accepted message (and valuable tool for a broad array of people and organizations), I chose that subject to launch this series. That’s the book I thought I had crafted with HATCH!—focused on one subject, brainstorming.
How?
To begin, I separated in my mind, outline, and storyboard (Chapter 9) the two distinct subjects: brainstorming and personal creativity. Next I charted a course for the how-to of powerful group creativity. So if any group wants to invent, create, solve, design (or RE-design), and plan world-class products, services, places, and programs ... HERE’S HOW.
In developing HATCH! I wrote long sections on creativity as a personal expression of the human spirit. (I can’t help myself.) When I re-read those passages, I knew they had to be held aside for the next book. Good as those passages might be, they did not fit my objective for HATCH!
In all communications: articles, books, speeches, videos, seminars, and sermons, it is essential to establish a clear objective—to provide only material that answers the question “Why this message?” What do you want your reader (or listener) to do as a result your presentation? Without a specific, straightforward, and announced objective, you will deliver multiple messages. That confuses the audience, reader. All those mini-messages stuffed into one place (book, article, live presentation) can be interesting, but lack clarity. The objective is your purpose? WHY deliver this material to this audience?
Once you have identified and are committed to your objective, this will force you to include in your outline only information that supports your message. I learned this “objective” technique from my friend Ken Davis in his Dynamic Communicators Workshop. The objective is the “O” in his S.C.O.R.R.E. method of outlining any presentation. I began teaching for Ken in 1992, and I continue to use SCORRE to develop every keynote and seminar, and as an outlining tool for my past three books.
Without SCORRE (especially a clear objective), I’d just be Alice chasing another tardy leporidae down a hole in Wonderland. But I’m getting ahead of myself ... at least a book or two ahead.
I Tried, Really … I Did
Writing about the creative spirit in each of us is always in my frontal lobes (like a blinking light outside the window of a cheap hotel, flashing through the night ... ALL–NITE DONUTS, ALL–NITE DONUTS ... day and night … EVERYONE IS CREATIVE. Just wait. Lots more coming on that in Book No. ... you know.
As much as I tried to keep the you are creative message out of HACTH! it sneaked in when I wasn’t looking. (I’m having my locks changed.) I did not realize how strong and obvious it was—all through the book—until it showed up in so many reviews, e-mails, and interview questions. Almost every interviewer asked, “Do you really think everyone has some creativity in them?”
“No,” I said, which shocked more than a few interviewers. “I think everyone has a LOT of creativity in them. ‘Some’ creativity is for dogs and dolphins.”
Before starting school, we all were endlessly curious and creative. Life really was an adventure. We discovered and learned new stuff every day. Seventy-five percent of all learning happens visually. Our curiosity was set at full-wonder as children, and we went about learning. We danced, doodled, painted, sang, made up stories, and built forts and castles with anything that wasn’t out of reach or nailed down.
We were discovering ... everything.
Every day there’s lots more to discover, and creativity is our map—throughout our life.
I believe our creative spirit is still in us, in a big, covered pot set on “simmer” —not even slow boil. If we knew the signs of creativity, the possibilities to expand it (turn up the heat) are boundless.
In every copy of HATCH! that I sign, I inscribe, “The sky is NOT the limit!” (In HATCH! you’ll find a list of the only twelve men who have walked on the moon ... so far. They broke the sky limit.) Breaking that sky limit will be the objective of the next book in this series—the book I’m working on every day, everywhere. In that book we will tackle head-on the opportunity, the journey, the adventure of Recapturing Your Creative Spirit. That book will be your guide ... your map. Bring a compass ... or your pocket astrolabe.
Ready For Fun?
If you have not yetread HATCH! you are in for a fun, fast-paced, story-filled read—with plenty of playful doodles and illustrations throughout to keep the pages turning. All those illustrations from the paper version are here in eHATCH! Most of the HATCH! drawings are escapees, rescued from more than one-hundred fifty of my personal sketchbooks.
I hope you will consider a live HATCH! event, where I will teach your team, organization, or non-profit powerful brainstorming ... or keynote your convention on how to move not just from good to great, but beyond great. Whatever is next for your organization, why not make it the best you can imagine—together?
Thanks for grabbing HATCH! ... in any form. A special bow to everyone who has given HATCH! to a friend, coworker, or boss—a hearty Kungaloosh.
If you enjoy HATCH! please DO post your thoughts in the reader review area of Amazon.com, HERE. When you post your review, recommendation, or other thoughts on your own website or blog, please post the link on www.Facebook.com/Hatch–by–McNair–Wilson.
If you do not enjoy HATCH!, feel free to rest quietly at home, with some hot, Pu-erh tea—honey optional.
Onward,
Sipping a latte
at “The Principal’s Office”
Ivywild School, Colorado Springs
July 2015
